BY TIMOTHY L. S. SPRIGGE
March 5, 2003
1. There once was a thinker called Plato
Who said "this our world's second rate-oh,
Its just a poor copy
Of something less sloppy
Where all is precise and first rate-oh".
2. That crafty old man Aristotle
Took his friends to look at a bottle
Saying "its causes are four,
No less and no more,
Glass, shape, vintner and drinking full throttle".
3. A French soldier known as Descartes
Said "I hope that you've taken to heart
That without a safe line
To something divine,
Each is stuck at his self engrossed start."
4. There once was a tutor called Locke
Who said that the self's like a sock
Though the wool is quite new
It's still really you
Because its been darned without shock.
5. That skilful lens grinder Baruch
Said "nothing can happen by fluke
For nothing is free
From Nature's decree,
Free will is just gobledy gook".
6. That worldly wise Gottfried Leibniz
Had most of the angels in fits
When he said "your external relations
Are just private sensations
From one monad to 'tother nowt flits".
7. There once was a vicar called Berkeley
Who said to his friends somewhat darkly
"This whole vale of tears
Is nowt but ideas"
That astonishing vicar called Berkeley.
8. That somewhat stout Scot David Hume
Said "this cosmos of ours has no room
For forces or powers
Its just hours and hours
Of impressions, then ideas, till the tomb".
9. That punctilious pedestrian Kant
Said the realness of ought I must grant
As for time and for space
You may laugh in my face
But call them genuinely real I just shan't.
10. That rather unnerving chap Hegel
Tried us all to the view to inveigle
That pure Nothing and Being
Far from not agreeing
In becoming are playboy and playgirl.
11. That gloomy old Sage Schopenhauer
Said "there's much more nettle than flower"
Nothing more he reviled
Than the person who smiled
And grieved not at the Cosmic Will's power.
12. That sad fellow Friedrich Nietzsche
Was once a fine classical teacher
Till a voice in his head
Told him God was now dead -
This became of his thought the chief feature.
13. Shall I marry her? asked Kierkegaard
I love her but Christ surely more
He sought mediation
To end hesitation
But God called out NO: - EITHER/OR.
14. That temperate man T. H. Green
Said "There's something divine but unseen
Which spins the relations
Which make our sensations.
A real world, if you see what I mean".
15. Said that soldierly mystic called Bradley
"Please don't take my system too sadly
Its really quite fun
Thinking everything's One
We should all feel unreal very gladly".
16. The Hegelian inclined Bosanquet
Said "its really, you know, rather wet
To expect each finite chappy
To be well fed and happy
For the Absolute ain't in our debt".
17. That most honest of thinkers McTaggart
Although very far from a braggart
Felt some pride in his proof
That time was a spoof
Which could never take in a McTaggart.
18. William James declared that the true
Is the thought which works best for you
And it works through its dealing
With those streams of pure feeling
Known as matter, mind, (and God too)
19. Martin Heidegger said don't repine
If you don't quite catch what's my line
You don't need much German
To follow my sermon
As long as you know the word Sein.
20. A man in a cafe called Sartre
Gave the other chaps there quite a start
By looking around
For someone not to be found
But whose absence still haunted Montmartre 1.
1 The demands of rhyme forced me to move Sartre from his more usual haunt of Montparnasse
.
21. A weirdo yclept Wittgenstein
Called out this whole world is "just mine"
But later he noted
That an ego so bloated
Had no room for mine or for thine.
22. A man from Ohio now dead3
Would lurk in the fields, so it is said,
So that when others screamed "rabbit"
He could indulge in his habit
Of shouting "Gavagai" instead.
23. A brain in a vat called Putnam
Said "perhaps this whole world's just a scam
Still, my thoughts must refer
To their causes out there
What they are I don't care a damn."
3This was written and recited to the Edinburgh Philosophy Department just after Quine's death. So it may become undated (I mean, because his death will no longer be something special.)
24. The truth of all this it seems plain
Is that philosophy would indeed be in vain
If its aim were a view
So objectively true
It will not be discarded again
25. But cheer yourselves up my good friends
Though its true that the search never ends
We may each in our day
Have our personal say
And feel free to ignore current trends.
1 comment:
For the record, I didn't know about this before I turned in those notes, haha.
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