Fun:Philosopher

Tired of laughing? RationalWiki has a slightly more serious article about philosophy.

A philosopher is a person who talks about everyday subjects using forms of language which are unintelligible to the average person. If the philosopher can quote other philosophers, preferably long dead ones, who also used impenetrable language — preferably a foreign one, then he will be even more greatly esteemed.

Some have said that philosophy is just the process of adding footnotes to Plato, others that Immanuel Kant summed up the entire field in his surname.

Anyone talking in a fashion which "the man in the street" can understand is obviously not a philosopher by definition — he is merely popularising his point of view.

“” Immanuel Kant was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable. Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar Who could think you under the table. David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel, And Wittgenstein was a beery swine Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel. There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist. Socrates himself was permanently pissed. John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill. Plato, they say, could stick it away — Half a crate of whisky every day. Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle. Hobbes was fond of his dram, And René Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am." Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed, A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.

—Eric Idle, The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief, 1973

Synonym

• Bullshit Artist

See also

• Postmodernism