Welcome to philosophy's underworld

Cool is a spectrum and you’ll find philosophers all along it.

At one end of the spectrum, you have philosophers who are mathematicians in disguise. They talk in syllogisms, have blackboards full of calcs, and put the “anal” in analytic.

A bit further along, you have the bookish bunch. “No parties or narcotics for me, please. I’m too busy re-reading Either/Or.” This lot finds more in common with 19th-century Denmark than any modern shindigging.

Next up, you have the philosophers-in-name-only. Their knowledge mostly comes from the internet or a few light books. They’re good for dropping in some cool aphorisms now and then, but they’re pretty much just like anyone else except they always carry a performative copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra wherever they go.

Then, you have the passionate philosophers. They are obsessed with one ideology or person. It could be Wittgenstein, Foucault, or De Beauvoir (which is ironic), but it’s almost always Marx. Loose clothes, a swishy scarf, and perhaps a beret. They have faded posters of revolutionaries on their wall, and they meet for drinks with The Resistance every other Wednesday.

Then, you have the cynics. They’ve read so much philosophy they don’t know what to believe. They mock Marx, they mock religion, they mock everything, actually. They’re often guilty of being patronizing — “Oh, I used to think that once, too” — but their jaded ennui has a Camusian cool.

Finally, nearer the other end of the spectrum, you get the dark philosophers. They have ridden through the shadowy, brutal, disturbing underworld of philosophy, and they’re not coming out whole or happy. They’ve seen some stuff. Even the cynics find it hard to mock them.

This week, we’re looking at the dark philosophers. We’re looking at three of the most negative, upsetting, pessimistic theories in philosophy and measuring just how damaging they are.

Go well,
Jonny