Ben and some of the McCollum Kids
As a quick aside for those of you who did not attend the prestigious California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo: Everyone who passes through the school’s learned halls must complete an opus that represents the acme of their academic work; everyone must complete a Senior Project that will be stored in the honorable Robert E. Kennedy Library for posterity. I wrote an ironic (misunderstood) essay on the history of the spiritual ramifications of the Bauhaus between the years of 1919 and 1932 – I know that it has been viewed on microfiche at least three times since being entered into the Library database.
Unless you object (which no doubt you’d like to, my most objectionable readers), I will carry on with the story at hand. Ben is a philosopher…
“Eric, this had better not be a boring philosophy story!” you will no doubt rudely interject. “Didn’t you learn your lesson after writing ‘Le Morte D’Bushman’ and had your audience sighing over your asinine, fifty paged attempt at wit?”
Well, I’m sure not all of my readers are quite so perturbed as you, dear reader, and thus I must ask for your patience (and tact) to be exercised in this instance. As I was saying, Ben is a philosopher, and as such he is given to philosophizing. His Senior Project is an attempt to move beyond justification though citation into original thought.
Dame Iris Murdoch
Now, if you know anything about Ben’s philosophical background, you know that he is hell-bent on discrediting Kant and making him the laughingstock of the philosophical world. Ben is attempting to use Dame Iris Murdoch’s philosophy to prove that Kant was speaking out of an orifice that most scholarship seems to come from. While I appreciate Ben’s project, I do not believe that Kant needs to be refuted from a philosophical standpoint, but rather I find it categorically imperative to defeat Kant once and for all in the realm of aesthetics!
Dear reader, this is our enemy, Immanuel Kant:
As you can see, Kant’s portraits range from looking downright evil to baboonish. Point the first, if we were to take Kant’s philosophy to act in a universilizabile fashion seriously, then I would ask for Immanuel to have a constant look about him! How can I take a stand of constancy when he can’t make up his mind to look like a bat out of hell or a Neanderthal!?
Point the second, look at him! The only reason he wants us to treat people as an ends unto themselves is because he knows that I could take him in a fight. Shoot, a one-armed, anemic child in an iron lung could rough him up! If the only groundwork he can lay for morals is that he doesn’t want to get thrashed by a school-girl returning home after having snow rubbed up her nose, then I don’t think we can take him all that seriously.
Point the third, to critique his reason practically and purely one only needs insert his name into little puns like, “If he Kant be ‘Emmanuel,’ then I Kant read Immanuel.” He would never see that one coming.
Lastly, point the fourth, the only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of Kant can be found by students biting their thumbs at their philosophy professors when they tell their students that they ought to be doing their reading. If Kant can’t write clearly enough to prove to me that he thought, I don’t think he deserves to exist.
In conclusion, Kant is a big weenie, and even if Ben can’t refute him using Iris’ arguments, I believe that she could take him in a fistfight. And I refuted Kant thus!
The moral of the story is: You can choose your battles, but you Kant always fight fair. That one will never get old.
8 comments:
Kant--the philosophy of quitters.
p.s. I love how that picture gets all our dispositions just right. I look affectedly ticked off at the world, Ben looks confused but comforted, Katie looks happy as a clam, and Brian looks like he's thinking about doing some serious eating.
i do believe that our dear friend Mr. Somma also refuted Kant. Seems to be all the rage these days.
Wait - I read fifty pages about Brian being turned into a woman??!
I Kant stand Kant. Thanks for this.
This is good, because while I can help refute Kant in academic circles, Eric brings the message to the masses through the clever use of pun.
o how discouraged i was when i attempted to refute kant... "i kant do it i simply kant!" i cried. but then i did. so, mr. barczi, it appears that you, in fact, kant refute kant, because kant kant be what kant wants, i have already proven thus!
This is getting out of control. Some of us think that Nietzsche refutes Kant on an important point or two, albeit in a very underhanded, weaselly way. But refutes isn't quite the right word here. Maybe "circumvents"?
Anyway, the real point here is that weaseling out of things is important for us to learn in college. It's what separates us from the animals... Except the weasel.
I Kant stand him either. I think it was Paul who told me that aside from being absolutely incoherent, he was also the most boring, insipid, drab, and scheduled German ever to exist. I Kan refute Kant as well by posing the following question: Can you imagine this guy at a McCollum Street Prom? Not only would Iris Murdoch beat Kant at a fist fight. I also imagine she would wipe the floor with him in a dance contest.
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