The Ugly Christmas Sweater: From ironic nostalgia to festive simulation

a couple of hounds by his side would have completed it nicely.

Yall forgetting the arch-hipster, Sartre:



But check out this selfie with Che and de Beauvoir:



(OK probably not a selfie but close enough). There's others with him and Castro too, really cool shit.

haaaa, that sweater article couldn't be more perfect here.

It's the whole package, man. If you don't see it, you don't see it.

Cioran is not pretending to be anything other than he is, which is a somewhat disheveled, absent-minded, anxiety-ridden, pessimistic aphorism coiner. Derrida and co. have clearly taken pains to make sure they are photographed a certain way so as to enhance their coolness. I mean, c'mon.

Somewhere or other Cioran wrote about his experience of seeing Beckett on a parkbench and feeling deep envy at how much more Beckett exuded suffering.

I find it difficult to understand (and I don't mean this rhetorically, it's authentically mystifying to me) how you can't see the way in which Schopenhauer and Cioran have clearly taken pains to make sure they are photographed in a certain way so as to enhance their suffering genius-ness.

The only thing I can think is that, maybe, the valorization of the suffering genius is something you hold very dear, so that you're blinded to the kitschy elements of such photographs (the same way a very sentimental grandfather might be blinded to the kitschy elements of Norman Rockwell.)

Anyway, yeah, a lot of French thinkers pose, I agree, but, like, most people pose, even the v smart sadboys what are misunderstood.

Camus a douche? According to Adam Gopnic of the New Yorker April 4, 2012 Camus was the Don Draper of existentialism.

The French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus was a terrifically good-looking guy whom women fell for helplessly—the Don Draper of existentialism. This may seem a trivial thing to harp on, except that it is almost always the first thing that comes up when people who knew Camus talk about what he was like. When Elizabeth Hawes, whose lovely 2009 book “Camus: A Romance” is essentially the rueful story of her own college-girl crush on his image, asked survivors of the Partisan Review crowd, who met Camus on his one trip to New York, in 1946, what he was like, they said that he reminded them of Bogart. “All I can tell you is that Camus was the most attractive man I have ever met,” William Phillips, the journal’s editor, said, while the thorny Lionel Abel not only compared him to Bogart but kept telling Hawes that Camus’s central trait was his “elegance.” ...

Sounds like quite the hunk. I was thinking that maybe the French picked up that look from the American beatniks, but now I see it was the other way around.

Foucault doesn't appear to be posing. To me it looks like he's been caught at the weekend on his way to the Castro, but doesn't mind stopping for a photo.

From the web site "Critical Theory": 9 INSANE STORIES FROM THE LIVES OF FAMOUS EXISTENTIALISTS

#1 Jean-Paul Sartre Was Literally Obsessed With Crabs. Also, Mescaline.
#2 Speaking of Mescaline, Sartre Was Essentially the Junkie Equivalent of an Ubermensch
#3 Soren Kierkegaard Employed an Array of Ridiculous Pseudonyms That Might as Well Have Been Pulled from the Pages of Harry Potter
#4 Albert Camus Really Liked the Central Park Zoo and Credits Soccer With Everything He Knew
#5 Franz Kafka Loved Weird Porno and Paying for Sex
#6 Nietzsche Went Crazy, Saved a Horse from Whipping, and Proceeded to Believe He Was Napoleon (who-- the horse or Nietzsche?)
#7 Simone de Beauvoir’s Work is Still Banned in the Vatican for Being Lesbian Propaganda
#8 Camus Essentially Predicted His Own Death
#9 Dostoyevsky Was Once Seconds Away From Being Executed

yeah but he's wearing a leather jacket like a big old douche

David Chalmers

Anyway, yeah, a lot of French thinkers pose, I agree — csalisbury

Victoire.

Doing my best French douche.

Hand on the chin, cardigan, and deeply penetrating gaze--but no pipe. Try harder.

But what looks like a hand on the chin is actually a hand holding a cigarette! Close enough?

Ah, sorry, I didn't see the cigarette. Yep, pretty good.

↪Bitter Crank You're living in your own private Idaho. — Metaphysician Undercover

Too true, too true.

You look rather despondent there. Perhaps you should unfriend that peach colored sweater wearing fellow petting you. He seems patronizing.

haha, its tough being a statue of a maine lobsterman

"#4 Albert Camus Really Liked the Central Park Zoo and Credits Soccer With Everything He Knew"

That one makes a whole lot of sense to me. Here I am like a week or two ago after doing a roof, I always have a giant goof expression, and my face is usually obstructed by shadow as I wear a hat because I'm bald, and would prefer to let people assume otherwise until given reason not to, lol.

You look really pretentious on that roof.

Lol, oh I am.

That picture is not representative of Chalmers' style, which is a shame, because he has one of my favorite 'philosopher looks.'

While I doubt I'm anywhere near as enthusiastic as you are, I very much enjoyed what I have read from him. I don't know what personal failings people mock him with - perhaps his ugliness or his lack of success in love - but I would regard bringing them into a discussion of his philosophy, unless there was a very clear link between them and the philosophy itself - as delete-worthy behavior. I am relatively new on here so I don't know all the available buttons yet, but I imagine there is a Report button you could use to report such posts to moderators. — andrewk

Certainly it would be an ad hominem to attack Schopenhauer's philosophy simply because he was a dick - but it really was the case that good ol' Arthur could be a real ass, even going as far as to rip ad hominems on Hegel and co. For example, Schopenhauer has this to say about Hegel:

"An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte’s, Schelling’s or Hegel’s] books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt. … The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. … From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible."

In other words, Schopenhauer was pissy cause everyone went to Hegel's seminars and nobody went to his own, even though he scheduled them at around the same time. Interestingly enough I think this criticism of Hegel's works can be applied to Schopenhauer's works at times, what with his worship of Kant and his assertions about human development (accurate or not). If tone was all that mattered to truth, then Schopenhauer would be right with his despised nemesis.

He was an elitest, a misogynist, a hypocrite, and he hated his mother (oh my!). None of this touches the validity of his philosophy - but it certainly doesn't paint him in a good light either. No wonder nobody wanted to be associated with him.

Thank God Chalmers cut his hair.

Now here's an unpretentious dude:



(That's Kit Fine)

#1 Jean-Paul Sartre Was Literally Obsessed With Crabs. — Bitter Crank

If only he'd spent less time with women of questionable virtue.

If this is what we're doing, then here's my contribution.



Also this, although I suspect it isn't genuine. The gun looks too modern.