#154 Lizard King (guest comic)

#154 Lizard King (guest comic)

Today’s fabulous comic is essentially a guest comic by Ben Burgis, for the text was stolen almost verbatim (with Ben’s permission, of course) from a dialog in his latest blog post, which you can read right here.

And as long as you’re reading things written by Ben Burgis, you may as well also check out this excellent short story that he recently had published in Atomjack, it’s great stuff.

That’s all for today, have a good week!


Discussion (21)¬

  1. Canuovea says:

    *Facepalm*

    And over here I just finished reading “The Communist Manifesto” for political science… Again…

    *Facepalm with other hand*

    Isn’t Nietzsche just great? I can’t wait until I have to read “Genealogy of Morality”… also for political science.

    *Bangs head on table*

  2. Emil says:

    That sounds like continental philosophy…

  3. chaospet says:

    Canuovea: To be fair, there are slightly more plausible ways of reading Nietzsche than what I (or rather Ben) portrayed here, if you look at his blog you can see it explained a bit further. Also you might listen to this podcast where Brian Leiter dispels a lot of myths about and mischaracterizations of what Nietzsche was up to.

    Emil: Yup, or at least a parody of a particular strain of continental philosophy.

  4. Ben says:

    What Ryan said.

    The point wasn’t to diss Nietzsche himself, or really to say much of anything about him (above and beyond the assertion that he seems to be read in a strange way by certain sorts of contemporary continental philosophy and “theory” types). In fact, the original version of the dialogue in the blog post was between a normal, careful academic Nietzsche scholar and the sort of Nietzsche admirer who subscribes to extreme forms of “post-modern” skepticism about truth and meaning and tries to retroactively enlist Nietzsche to their cause.

  5. Canuovea says:

    I know. Nietzsche isn’t that crazy. But I am still somewhat apprehensive about reading him (though I am looking forward to it). After all, according to my Political Science Professor Nietzsche “F*&^#s with your head.” And you only get him if you find yourself confused, with a headache, and seriously thinking about it. At least so says my Political Science Prof.

    And I was at first a little surprised that we would be reading Nietzsche in Political Science of all things (though not as odd as reading Marx for Literature, which a friend of mine did). But by now I suppose it all makes sense. Nietzsche saying that Obama is a “Lizard-like alien creature” is pretty political (I kid). Anyway I suppose I can’t really say anything with a decent foundation about Mr. Crazy until I actually get around to reading him (sometimes crazy is right after all). Hopefully that leads me to something like understanding about poor Nietzsche.

    And if I start getting that Nietzsche is calling Obama a lizard alien thing then I’ll know I’ve gone the wrong way… Yeah. Hopefully.

  6. LEGION says:

    ahh, I see. It all makes sense now, Obama IS a lizard.

  7. Emil says:

    It seems to me that it is common for philosophers to try to retroactively gather supporters among famous philosophers. I wonder what they think it helps, even if they succeed.

  8. Wm Tanksley says:

    Emil, I think “retroactively gather support” is an uncharitable interpretation of the activity; the actual motivation is usually (I think) trying to prove that one is not arrogant enough to claim total innovation.

    On the other hand, Chaospet himself could and probably should attempt to retroactively gather support from long-dead philosophers — with the limitation that since he’s given no indication of being a dualist, he’d have to actually find the dead bodies of the philosophers in order to reanimate them into his supporters. As a substance dualist, I have the advantage of only needing to invoke their spirits, thereby leaving him with only philosophical zombies (hardly the most impressive of supporters).

  9. chaospet says:

    Wm: Hah! I would take a collection of zombie supporters over a collection of ghost supporters any day.

  10. Wm Tanksley says:

    You admit, then, that you haven’t the ghost of a supporter?

  11. Canuovea says:

    Wm Tanksley: Oh. Hahahaha… That’s good. Really. Nicely done. Wow. “ghost of a supporter” gee.

    Chances are I’d support chaospet (thought I’m not a ghost… yet). If I agreed and actually had the means to. I don’t know what good it would do though.

    So… is the support of the living better than the support of “zombies” or “ghosts” or not? Or does it depend?

    And yes, I know I just took this whole thing off into a random corner.

  12. Canuovea says:

    Oops accidentally added an extra “L” when writing the “mail” part of the email. Odd.

  13. chaospet says:

    Wm: Sure, but I ain’t afraid of no ghost.

  14. Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gordon_Ryan: Why it’s not fruitful to discuss Nietzsche with postmodernists – http://bit.ly/2mzaXd

  15. […] Reading Nietzsche Post-Modernly This week from Chaos Pet: […]

  16. lyndon says:

    Oh, those bad, bad continental philosophers. Yawn.

  17. Great! Great way to popularize philosophy, especially of the relevant kind. Thanks.

  18. John P. Denver says:

    Analytical=American.
    That’s how we invented the Statue of Liberty.
    FUCK YEAH!

  19. Kurtosis says:

    The Emperor’s New Clothes. Look up ‘Alan Sokal hoax’.

  20. Huesos says:

    “Analytical=American.
    That’s how we invented the Statue of Liberty.
    FUCK YEAH!”

    Eh, no. Analytic philosophy is the dominant tradition in Great Britain and Scandinavia as well.

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