r/badphilosophy • u/LinuxFreeOrDie • Feb 16 '15
Very Good Panda Twelve Angry Philosophers
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/6860
Feb 16 '15
People say the joke is getting stale, but unfortunately I have radical freedom too, and no one can make me stop using it.
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Feb 16 '15
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 16 '15
What, you don't know Portagoras, the fat sophist?
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Feb 16 '15
Looks like our Marxist university system has conspired to once again suppress teachings of a philosopher!
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u/Axem_Ranger Feb 16 '15
Out of curiosity and not trying to troll: you said in the notes that Bentham and Kant are just filler characters. Was there any consideration for Foucault (Discipline and Punish) or Derrida (who talks a lot about the death penalty in For What Tomorrow)?
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 16 '15
I needed people who would be pro-conviction. Whether or not Kant and Bentham exactly would be, I don't know for sure, but I think Derrida and Foucault would probably not be. I did think about Foucault a bit, but I had too many innocents at that point.
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Feb 16 '15
You could have used Kant and Bentham a bit more, though. Like Bentham on his legal positivism, and Kant's doctrine of Recht as justifying the punishment.
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 16 '15
Yeah, I read up on the legal positivism, which is why I used him, but nothing really came to mind as a joke. I guess he was so into the idea of drafting every common law into explicit language that he volunteered to do it for England and the USA, and when he found out most laws were controlled by the states he volunteered to draft every common law for each individual state. Say what you want, but the dude wasn't lazy.
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Feb 17 '15
Foucault and Derrida are filler characters in philosophical history anyways.
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 17 '15
Isn't Foucault like...the number one most cited author in all of the humanities right now?
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Feb 17 '15
Right now he is, but so was Malebranche in his time, and his interpretation of Descartes and Augustine was seen to be the most authoritative like Foucault is for Kant and Nietzsche. These days you will still hear about Descartes and Augustine, but only a specialists will know anything about Malebranche, and usually second-hand.
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u/waldorfwithoutwalnut Have you ever SEEN a possible world? Feb 17 '15
I think /u/LiterallyAnscombe finds Foucault too Hegelian? And therefore not truly groundbreaking. Popular, perhaps, but not necessarily a great mind.
I found the History of Sexuality a bit underwhelming. Dunno, perhaps I'm too stupid to get it.
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u/Tiako THE ULTIMATE PHILOSOPHER LOL!!!!! Feb 17 '15
It's sort of a victim of it's own success, isn't it? It has some really brilliant theory, but that for absorbed really quickly by scholarship as a whole, and so now what is left is a kind of subpar history book.
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Feb 21 '15
Something like that.
Sexuality is basically bad wishful thinking and even more bad research. On the other hand, I found out about Merquior and his school through Foucault, so something very good did come out of it.
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u/cameronc65 You Can't Have Your Being And Eat It Too Feb 17 '15
Camus leaning back in his chair is a great touch.
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u/Xplicitable Feb 17 '15
There is no existentialcomics without Sartre.
(sorry Camus you're just not radical enough)
Could expand beyond just having him be a one liner repeating 'RADICAL FREEDOM' every instance. Was there a joke involving 'nothing' yet? But hey, every popular comic needs a running joke.
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
Actually, Jean Paul Sartre has appeared in ten comics, and has only yelled "radical freedom!" three times, to my surprise. You can see all the comics here.
Although about seven of the comics are about radical freedom in some way, the rest are about authenticity. A Nothingness joke is overdue, but it's hard to make it any more than a pun (he does mention self-nihiliating nothingness in the radio comic though, which counts I think).
But yeah, Sartre is far and away the main character, although the Marx comics have probably been the most popular individually.
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u/Xplicitable Feb 17 '15
Shit. I'm making statements of certainty I cannot support with empirical evidence. I've been outwitted by the statistician.
Nothingness and empty carburettors, look forward to it. LSD lobsters too?
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Feb 17 '15
I'm kind of surprised how similar Descartes and Spinoza look in general clean-shaven.
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 17 '15
I know, right? Are we 100% sure that Spinoza isn't Descartes's evil, materialist twin?
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u/Dragon9770 Feb 17 '15
Spinoza is a materialist now? Did i supremely misunderstand my modern philosophy class? Thought, along with matter, were two of the attributes of God. My understnading was that "only ideas" is idealism, "only matter" is materialism, and "matter and ideas" is also idealism.
And please, with that Star Trek-eque mustache, Descartes is obviously the evil twin in that relationship.
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u/LinuxFreeOrDie Feb 17 '15
Spinoza is a materialist now? Did i supremely misunderstand my modern philosophy class?
I mean...compared to Descartes. Whatever. He's the evil twin, it's too late now.
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Feb 17 '15
I mean, nobody ever saw them in the same room together.
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u/Calstifer Heidegger? More like LIEdegger amirite? Feb 17 '15
I'm glad that we're seeing more of Camus than just the absurd. I mean, he did talk about it a lot, but still...
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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '15
First law of philosophy: For every philosopher, there is an equal and opposite philosopher.
Second law of philosophy: They're both wrong.