Otterfox
Tuesday 7th April 2009 7:45pm
Tipperary
1,207 posts
GRAND RATIONAL.
TYPICAL HORSE-RACING COMMENTATOR WHOSE EXCITEMENT INCREASES AS THE RACE UNFOLDS...
...Hello and welcome to the first reality TV show to focus on philosophers. We want to test both the mental and physical sharpness of the average philosopher & we felt this could be accomplished by getting them to run the racecourse at Aintree while debating their decision to do so.
So join us now for this years Grand Rational. They line up at the start, we see all the major philosophers there Nietzsche, Kant, Descartes, Heidegger, Plato, John Stuart Mill and Hegel in the blue... And they're away first time!
Straight away Mill takes the lead and it's Descartes in the blinkers in 2nd place then its Wittgenstein, Arthur Schopenhauer, Kant and Plato.
Mill now is making the point that it is such a rarity for philosophers to be in the public eye to this extent that the opportunity should be grasped with both hands.
Wittgenstein is taking up a contrary position as they jump Beechers neck&neck. Closely followed by Schopenhauer, Kant and Plato, Plato is gone at the 1st! He quickly gets up and with a look of indignance on his face he says that he doesn't care because the race is just a pale imitation anyway.
Hegel and Hume are now in serious debate as they race down towards the water. Hume turns back to Hegel to hammer home his point of course he should be -...OOH! Hume never saw that fence atall & fell very heavily, face 1st into the water.
Schopenhauer is making some good running & Socrates is shouting from 5lengths back that he feels it cheapens philosophers to take part in such a show. Schopenhauer tries to take up a contrary position but can't. He's pulled up! Arthur Schopenhauer is out of the race, he could'nt think of a retaliatory answer & is left with no choice but to pull up.
Hegel has set up a blackboard at the Canal Turn to explain his dialectic method where he states, to study things in there own being and movement and thus to- And Fridrich Nietzsche has come along and kicked the whole thing down! He was having none of it.
One of the back markers has to use the bathroom. It looks like one of the Greeks, Epicurus or Pythagoras perhaps. What a dilemma to be in, to pee or not to pee, that is the question.
It's still very close between the front 6 or 7 as they jump the 15th almost in unison. Aristotle went there at the 15th.
It's all getting very exciting now. Hegel has hit the front and Nietzsche is running like a demon. There's no love lost between these 2. Mill is next, sprouting his utilitarianisn to anyone who will listen. Immanuel Kant is counter-acting with his categorical imperative, then its Martin Heidegger who is making some good ground on the inside and Descartes is doubting if he is even in the race.
Now its Kant who is making most of the noise and is getting quite animated and is stating that his imperative would be 1 which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself without reference to any other purpose. And he has run right into the fence! What kind of an action was that? (Candidly) The eejit!
And they're over the last. Who's going to win the 2009 Rational? Mill has gained a bit of ground but it's Nietzsche on the outside that's doing all the running & theres nothing in it as they enter the home straight. This has to be one of the closest Rationals in years.
Mill and Nietzsche seem to be going all out now, they are in deep debate. Nietzsche is having none of that and he is questioning Mills intellig- but look at Hegel! He feels he's done all his debating back at the Canal Turn.
Nietzsche rolls his ears in frustration and tries to react, can he? No!
It's Hegel by a nose. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wins the Rational followed by Nietzsche, Mills takes 3rd, Descartes and Martin Heidegger in 5th. What excitement as Hegel enters the winners enclosure.
EXPENSIVELY DRESSED LADY(CLEARLY HEGELS OWNER)RUNS OVER TO HIM AND RUBS HEGELS HAIR AND PATS HIM ON THE NECK.
END.
hall we do our song, darling?
singing) "Here we go Looby-Loo
K...Louis?
oor little thing.
