Philosopher/Musician Mixups
My journal has of late been rather filled with fairly serious and/or child-focused stuff.
So here's a bit of highbrow silliness.
I riffed with a friend on the potential confusion between the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the songsmith Irving Berlin. (I should fess up that this was in fact a genuine confusion in my mind at one point.) What sort of polymathic genius could produce both the analytical power of White Christmas and the timeless crowd-pleaser The Hedgehog and The Fox? To say nothing of his syncretic meisterwerk, Top Hat, White Tie and Two Concepts of Liberty?
Since I am, as steer has observed, never one to knowingly underuse a joke, here's an incomplete list of philosophers and musicians who are frequently confused or conflated. Or perhaps should be.
Isaiah Berlin / Irving Berlin
William James Brown
Dewey Lewis and the News
Wittgenstein / Rammstein
Friedrich "Freddie" Nietzsche and the Dreamers
Whitehead / Whitesnake
Immannuel Kant / Brian Cant
Plato / Placebo
Rene Descartes and Renata
Jacques Derrida / Crazy Frog
Baudrillard / Bo Diddley
Foucault / Foo Fighters
Seneca / Sinitta
Aristotle / 'Arry Secombe
David Hume / David Gray
Peter, Paul and Mary Warnock
Crosby, Stills and John Nash [fn1]
Kierkegaard / Kiri Te Kanawa
Eddie Husserl / Eddie van Halen [fn2]
Baudrillard / Bo Diddley
John Locke / Jon Bon Jovi
Gottfried Leibniz / Godley and Creme
Celine Di Beauvoir
Paul Simon de Beauvoir [fn3]
Little Richard Rorty
Black Eyed Piagets
Gnarls Berkeley
Sammy Davis, Bruner
Descartes / Des O'Connor
Robbie Williams of Occam
Peter Abba-lard
Rolf Harristotle
Machiavelli / Mantovani
Thomas Ackerbilkuinas
Bill Haley and his Camus
Elton John-Jacques Rousseau
Spinozsa-zsa Gabor [fn4]
S(in)artre
Any more for any more? Or suggestions for works produced by these composite creators?
[fn1] What do you mean he's not a philosopher? Game Theory is surely in the philosopher's C20th Top 40.
[fn2] It's a little known fact that his given name is Edmund Lodewijk van Halen.
[fn3] I did say 'never one to knowingly underuse a joke'.
[fn4] What do you mean she's not a musician? She did a tiny bit of singing at the start of her career. And I couldn't let a red hot pun like that pass un-logged.
So here's a bit of highbrow silliness.
I riffed with a friend on the potential confusion between the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the songsmith Irving Berlin. (I should fess up that this was in fact a genuine confusion in my mind at one point.) What sort of polymathic genius could produce both the analytical power of White Christmas and the timeless crowd-pleaser The Hedgehog and The Fox? To say nothing of his syncretic meisterwerk, Top Hat, White Tie and Two Concepts of Liberty?
Since I am, as steer has observed, never one to knowingly underuse a joke, here's an incomplete list of philosophers and musicians who are frequently confused or conflated. Or perhaps should be.
Isaiah Berlin / Irving Berlin
William James Brown
Dewey Lewis and the News
Wittgenstein / Rammstein
Friedrich "Freddie" Nietzsche and the Dreamers
Whitehead / Whitesnake
Immannuel Kant / Brian Cant
Plato / Placebo
Rene Descartes and Renata
Jacques Derrida / Crazy Frog
Baudrillard / Bo Diddley
Foucault / Foo Fighters
Seneca / Sinitta
Aristotle / 'Arry Secombe
David Hume / David Gray
Peter, Paul and Mary Warnock
Crosby, Stills and John Nash [fn1]
Kierkegaard / Kiri Te Kanawa
Eddie Husserl / Eddie van Halen [fn2]
Baudrillard / Bo Diddley
John Locke / Jon Bon Jovi
Gottfried Leibniz / Godley and Creme
Celine Di Beauvoir
Paul Simon de Beauvoir [fn3]
Little Richard Rorty
Black Eyed Piagets
Gnarls Berkeley
Sammy Davis, Bruner
Descartes / Des O'Connor
Robbie Williams of Occam
Peter Abba-lard
Rolf Harristotle
Machiavelli / Mantovani
Thomas Ackerbilkuinas
Bill Haley and his Camus
Elton John-Jacques Rousseau
Spinozsa-zsa Gabor [fn4]
S(in)artre
Any more for any more? Or suggestions for works produced by these composite creators?
[fn1] What do you mean he's not a philosopher? Game Theory is surely in the philosopher's C20th Top 40.
[fn2] It's a little known fact that his given name is Edmund Lodewijk van Halen.
[fn3] I did say 'never one to knowingly underuse a joke'.
[fn4] What do you mean she's not a musician? She did a tiny bit of singing at the start of her career. And I couldn't let a red hot pun like that pass un-logged.