Great Minds on Small Things
The patter of philosophers usually leans towards epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, logic and trifles like the meaning of life.
But, just occasionally, the great minds stray from their usual turf and write about, for example, farting, cheese and dancing…
Aristotle on Farting
Aristotle suggested that ‘farting is breath from the lower stomach’.
Sometimes even geniuses talk out of their arse.
Nietzsche on The Horn
Friedrich Nietzsche – who had very little success with women – was so terrified and flummoxed by the whole business of sexual attraction that he pondered:
‘Is it not better to be in the hands of a murderer than to be on a horny woman’s mind?’
No, Friedrich, it is not. Try losing the tash, lad.
Arendt on Dancing
Hannah Arendt associated dancing with freedom, and she thought we must push through our inhibitions, as she explains:
‘Anyone who wishes to dance the fandango and ceases in the midst of it from awkwardness or lack of strength, has not carried out an act of freedom.’
Scaramouche! Scaramouche!
Baldwin on Smoking
James Baldwin was rarely pictured without a cigarette in his hand, but he knew it wasn’t an admirable habit.
When invited for dinner at the house of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, he ‘felt guilty about the cigarettes’ in his pocket.
We wonder what he would think about vapes.
Wollstonecraft on Cheese
Mary Wollstonecraft, it seems, wasn’t the biggest fan. She wrote that those who have lived at sea on a diet of ‘Cheese [were] feeling uncommon pains’ and reported from her travels in Sweden ‘that cheese was the bane of this country’.
Mary’s memo clearly didn’t reach fellow philosopher Immanuel Kant. He loved the stuff so much that he reportedly died of a surfeit of cheese sandwiches.
Don’t cheddar tear over him.
Enjoying these magnificently mundane musings?
Well, we have plenty more for you in Great Minds on Small Things…
Wollstonecraft to Wittgenstein, Laozi to Locke, Aristotle to Arendt, this beautifully crafted, illustrated collection brings together the varied observations of history’s most celebrated philosophers.
The perfect gift for the armchair philosopher in your life!
Three centuries ago, Voltaire published his Dictionnaire philosophique, taking in such idiosyncratic topics as adultery, mountains, nakedness, and others besides. In 1957, another French philosopher of more recent vintage, Roland Barthes, mused in his Mythologies on the masculine pursuits of wrestling, striptease and the Citroën DS. Since the dawn of philosophy, the world’s great thinkers have been unable to resist the lure of applying their formidable brains not only to the meaning of life, but also to the meaning of coffee, trapped wind or efficient boiler installation…
