HI.
It’s Halloween time again, and that means it’s that time of year when we forget there’s a November and go straight to playing Christmas music 24/7.
Personally, I’m not much into Christmas (yuletide only reminds me of how poor I am — but hey, I chose a career in philosophy — what did I expect?), but Halloween has always been my kind of thing. For some folks, Halloween is the unnecessary evil between the return of pumpkin spice lattes and blasting “All I Want For Christmas Is You” , but for me, Halloween means:
The spookiness.
Black cats and witches.
AMC’s Monsterfest©
…and all the candy I can eat.
Except for candy corn.
The fact that candy corn is an actual thing is definitive proof that the devil exists.
Now, I’m way past the age that is acceptable to go out trick-or-treating, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like dressing up for Halloween.
My usual costume is “person who never goes out anymore and just sits at home and overthinks about everything” (the scariest costume of all), but from time to time I try to find a costume that’s not only spooky, but also philosophically appropriate. Unfortunately, I have to say that I haven’t found a spooky, yet philosophically correct Halloween costume.
This disappoints me.
I was really hoping to dress up as sexy Diogenes this year.
SERIOUSLY. What do philosophers do at Halloweentime? What’s a philosophical ghost story? What do poo philosophers do — tell each other spooky stories about logical positivism?
Still…despite the lack of philosophically-themed Halloween costumes, there’s still plenty of scary things that keep this lover of wisdom up at night:
- Re-reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
- Discovering there’s a whole section of Pornhub devoted to “Jeremy Bentham” and “head”.
- A weekend film festival on the philosophical analysis of the films on Michael Bay.
- Sketches of Schopenhauer based in the style of Tom of Finland.
- Hegel.
- A world where everyone is a utilitarian (or, the possibility that utilitarianism is the only correct moral theory).
- A series of films based on popular philosophical thought experiments, including a feature-length film based on Kant’s ax murderer scenario, directed by Zach Snyder.
…actually, that last one might not be so horrifying. Maybe swap out Zach Snyder for Eli Roth…it’ll be the PCU — the Philosophical Cinematic Universe..…
Picture it: a saga of Nietzsche-based flicks starring Dwayne Johnson as the Ubermensch.
Hey! Nobody steal my idea!!!
Who am I kidding. There ain’t gonna be a PCU.
Although I am kind of surprised that hasn’t been a major motion picture based on the life and tragic death of Camus.
Sure, it’s not Halloween, but how can anyone look at a picture of Camus in the trench with a cigarette and not immediately think that image alone demands a movie starring James Franco as the novelist/philosopher.
Any of this frighten you yet?
No? Maybe you should listen to “All i Want For Christmas Is You”.
I swear, that song scares the hell out of me.
the mindless philosopher 