My guess is Schopenhaur will kill a lot of people.

August 10, 2016 4:26 AM

Who would win in a knife fight between all the philsophers. Unlike the United States Presidency, Philosophy has been going on for thousands of years, so instead of 44 contestants there are a whopping 89. Don’t be afraid of the numbers, for I guarantee you won’t get bored; philosophers are a very interesting bunch of people, and the most rewarding part of this post has been researching their lives and finding out how crazy they all are. This will be a wild knife fight.

The Rules:

All philosophers are assumed to be in their prime and at their strongest, although they are of indeterminate ages. Their entire life story is taken into account. All anecdotes about the philosophers are assumed to be true.

The arena is a Hunger Games style prison, and no one may leave the fight until the game is over.

Everyone has a knife.


Inspired by the presidential knife fight (previously)

posted by Just this guy, y'know (54 comments total)

And of course, the first rule of philosopher fight club is, if no one talks about philosopher fight club, does it really exist.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:26 AM on August 10, 2016 [9 favorites]

Also also, the previously should have been this.
I linked to the presidential bar fight, not the presidential knife fight. Oops.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:32 AM on August 10, 2016

My money's on Camus -

(a) the only philosopher ever who was good at sport, and
(b) existentialists don't give a fuck.

"Existence precedes essence, therefore knife the bastard now and do the paperwork later."
posted by Segundus at 4:38 AM on August 10, 2016 [10 favorites]

88 dudes and 1 woman.
posted by cnanderson at 5:07 AM on August 10, 2016 [10 favorites]

Euclid would triumphally shout something about "bisecting an Angle" after stabbing Medieval English philosophers. (With his... boeing knife? Clearly the author didn't take Philosophy of Knives.)
posted by XMLicious at 5:16 AM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]

On the one hand, the history of philosophy is heavily male and so that something like this wold skew heavily toward men is not surprising.

On the other hand, he includes every existentialist except Beauvoir? She's the best, most influential one of the lot.

Fuck that noise.

(How you leave out Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson from any list of influential philosophers is beyond me. Seriously.)
posted by oddman at 5:20 AM on August 10, 2016 [8 favorites]

Couldn't they just play football instead? Or perhaps engage in a rap battle?
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:21 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Kill Nietszche first, otherwise he just gets stronger.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:25 AM on August 10, 2016 [39 favorites]

Good luck getting them to accept this premise. They never accept the premise.
posted by Think_Long at 5:27 AM on August 10, 2016 [11 favorites]

You anglo-saxon folks tend to see existantialists everywhere. Just because someone is not a plain idealist does not make him a existantialist.
Camus was not a existantialist, he even confronted Sartre all his short career long. He was a strong advocate for dialog and a fierce adversary of pulsion driven behavior and violence : "un homme, ça s'empêche" ("a real man restrains himself").
In my humble opinion !
This apart, I would have put my money on Bakounine (7ft - 300 lbs) if he was on the list.
posted by gobeau at 5:30 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Team Žižek
posted by sammyo at 5:40 AM on August 10, 2016

I think Socrates would take a gun to a knife fight, possibly borrowed from Billy the Kid.
posted by biffa at 5:52 AM on August 10, 2016 [10 favorites]

You know, I adore Schopenhauer, lecturing to an empty hall while everyone was in Hegel's class and all that, but I'm not sure that he could actually handle a knife fight.
posted by thelonius at 5:57 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Socrates is a combat veteran. Don't drink with him.
posted by thelonius at 5:57 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Team Žižek

Worst possible outcome
posted by clockzero at 6:07 AM on August 10, 2016

I agree with Segundus. Goalkeeping will have given him the right training for a good lunge.
posted by quarsan at 6:17 AM on August 10, 2016

Marginally related, but I feel like those reading this post and thread may need to be made aware of Existential Comics, if they were not aware beforehand. Beauvoir definitely gets her due there.
posted by General Malaise at 6:28 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

William of Ockham has a really bad prediction. Have you ever seen a razor fight? Gruesome.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:20 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

"The question is if (Thoreau's) woodcraft will be enough to face the final Greek fury of Socrates and Thales when he has to fight in the open."
posted by Bob Regular at 7:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Let's talk about the rules of philosophy club
posted by rtimmel at 7:52 AM on August 10, 2016

Diogenes was robbed.
posted by idiopath at 8:15 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Zeno ranked a 'fighter'? Early casualty, surely. His knife strikes would get ever closer to his target, but never actually reach it.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:18 AM on August 10, 2016 [12 favorites]

All anecdotes about the philosophers are assumed to be true.

OK, then Aristotle is the author of Secretum Secretorum, and basically a wizard. My money's on him.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:23 AM on August 10, 2016

Since it's a boeing knife fight, the ancients will have no idea that these knives can fly, and the early saints will lose their shit when they hear jet engine powered blades gutting Descartes. Moderns in 3 rounds, Sartre for the win. Hell is other people with flying knives.
posted by benzenedream at 8:28 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Jeezus, Simone would wipe the floor with Jean-Paul, but she didn't make the list.

(It's a fun idea (i guess?) but a weird list.)
posted by allthinky at 8:32 AM on August 10, 2016

I gotta go with Socrates. Military veteran (I'm assuming hoplite skills are transferable to knife fights), and a wily fuck. Short and stocky, so a low centre of gravity. Ugly. Ugly guys don't need to worry in a fight.

Mainly, though, Socrates was an exasperating, infuriating man. If he could get through life without someone killing him -- and I could only assume he had a fair number of punches thrown at him during his life, either by Xanthippe or any hothead in the Agora -- dude's gotta have skilz. Only Socrates could kill Socrates, no-one else. He's not the King for nuthin'.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]

My money is 100% on Wittgenstein. He'd circle the lot, pounding his forehead while offering various epithets on why if you really wanted to understand philosophy you should join a knife fight and then get lost in a loop about what exactly the rules of this knife game were before seeing Karl Popper and Russell and going into a stabbing rage.

I don't know that he could will himself to stab Moore though, if it came down to it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:39 AM on August 10, 2016

All these weak fucks are lucky Hassan-i Sabbah was left off the list.
posted by idiopath at 8:39 AM on August 10, 2016 [6 favorites]

Jeezus, Simone would wipe the floor with Jean-Paul...

He'd never see it coming.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:40 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

His description of Nietzsche shows that he has a very shallow and uninformed understanding of at least one of these people. It makes me doubt his other descriptions. As a handicapper he's a joke.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:41 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Although Peirce, Peirce could be an unexpected contender, depending on whether he was in one of his depressed, drunken moods or one of his erratic, productive ones.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:41 AM on August 10, 2016

Simone would wipe the floor with Jean-Paul, but she didn't make the list.

The two would fight side by side in a coke-fueled rage until they were the last standing. Then Sartre would whisper pet names at Simone while she stabbed him through the heart.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:44 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

88 dudes and 1 woman

and that woman isn't Simone de Beauvoir or Simone Weil
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:11 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

If we included, like, Hassan-i Sabbah or Milarepa with these rules, there would have to be a much bigger special effects budget.
posted by cmoj at 9:16 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Plato was a wrestler. His name is a reference to him being Huge.
posted by grobstein at 9:23 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm picking l.wittgenstein...he's good with tools
posted by judson at 9:26 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm assuming hoplite skills are transferable to knife fights

They're really not. Hoplites operated in units, sheltered behind overlapping tall shields, poking at people with spears. Pretty much the opposite of an every-man-for-himself knife fight.

Also, no will to win.

My money's on Marcus Aurelius.
posted by praemunire at 9:35 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't turn my back on Abelard. he was ruthless, ambitious and incredibly arrogant.

and seriously: one whole woman!!! oh goody!
posted by supermedusa at 9:40 AM on August 10, 2016

Someone get Jon Bois to set up and play out the bracket.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:36 AM on August 10, 2016

Yeah I just want to ++ Existential Comics. And if you are on Twitter, follow the account. It makes my empty, meaningless existence a little brighter, every day.
posted by dame at 10:44 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure that Jeremy Bentham would lose his head eventually.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:15 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

I will win.
posted by wittgenstein at 11:29 AM on August 10, 2016 [8 favorites]

Sartre may not have the stomach for all that blood, given that he's prone to nausea.
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:31 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm also gonna have to go with M. Aurelius. Didn't the guy spend 5 hours a day training to be a killer for his first 18 years? With the best trainers in the world? He maybe could have taken on Bruce Lee.
posted by bukvich at 12:35 PM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Unfortunately for him, Voltaire already has some experience with this sort of thing.
posted by Fuchsoid at 1:17 PM on August 10, 2016

My money is 100% on Wittgenstein.]

Don't depend on Wittgenstein, he was beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel!
posted by Zedcaster at 2:31 PM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I will win.

It might just appear that way.
posted by solarion at 4:10 PM on August 10, 2016

20 quid that Bentham still has a switchblade in his watch pocket.
posted by clavdivs at 6:19 PM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

What, there's only one entry on this and he never followed up again? DIsappoint.
Erm, never mind, I found page 2 to click on in a different spot than I thought. I am dumb and can't read.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:45 PM on August 10, 2016

Definitely Wittgenstein. Via Wikipedia...

The [Cambridge Moral Sciences Club] became infamous within popular philosophy because of a meeting on 25 October 1946 at Richard Braithwaite's rooms in King's, where Karl Popper, another Viennese philosopher, had been invited as the guest speaker. Popper's paper was Are there philosophical problems?, in which he struck up a position against Wittgenstein's, contending that problems in philosophy are real, not just linguistic puzzles as Wittgenstein argued. Accounts vary as to what happened next, but Wittgenstein apparently started waving a hot poker, demanding that Popper give him an example of a moral rule. Popper offered one—"Not to threaten visiting speakers with pokers"—at which point Russell told Wittgenstein he had misunderstood and Wittgenstein left.

posted by jcruelty at 10:10 AM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

C'mon. Everyone knows they'd all just drop the knives and get drunk.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:12 PM on August 11, 2016

Oh, and fuck this guy. Sun Tzu wins, every single fucking time!
posted by Mental Wimp at 6:26 PM on August 11, 2016

From Wikipedia:

Sun Tzu's Art of War has influenced many notable figures. Sima Qian recounted that China's first historical emperor, Qin's Shi Huangdi, considered the book invaluable in ending the time of the Warring States.

Qin Shi Huangdi is reputed to have carried out 焚書坑儒, the "burning of books and burying of scholars", a purge that eliminated all schools of thought apart from the official government philosophy. Possibly he had them fight to the death with knives.
posted by XMLicious at 12:39 AM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

OK, dude is a philosophy major at Notre Dame, which probably explains the overrepresentation of Christians and the scant attention to non-Westerners.

China alone could field a much more effective team, such as...

The Duke of Zhou, inventor of the Mandate of Heaven, first political philosopher of China. You need a master propagandist once the alliances start forming.

Laozi, about whom nothing is really known, so you know he's a master ninja.

Zhuangzi, who had some confusion over whether he was a man, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man, but also invented alchemy and devised pills of immortality, which seem like useful skills.

Mozi, who preached pacifism but more importantly, created fortifications for kings threatened by war. A valuable ally who thought outside the box.

Mencius, who was kind of useless as a strategic advisor, but would be important backup for Confucius.

Han Fei, one of the Legalists behind Qin Shihuangdi's rise... makes Nietzsche look like a Salvation Army bellringer.

Cao Cao... well, mostly a general and clever usurper, but also a pretty good poet. The Three Kingdoms was a knife fight and he was a master at the game.

Zhuge Liang, Daoist and general, who usually was able to defeat Cao, and only rarely had to resort to supernatural means.

Xuanzang, the monk who spent 16 years in India finding Buddhist scriptures. Come on, Thoreau got in the list for spending a year in a shack in the suburbs; he obviously had mad survival skills.

Wu Zetian-- all right, not a philosopher at all, but the only woman in 2000 years to become empress is a woman who can get in doors not meant for her.

Li Bai, who died when he reached for the moon while drunk, and drowned in a lake. Maybe an early casualty, but that who-gives-a-fuck attitude might serve him well in a knife fight.

Zhu Xi, inventor of neo-Confucianism, kind of a jerk, but as influential as Confucius.

Sun Yat-sen, whose political philosophy was a model of vaguely satisfying everyone. His knack for funding and for publicity could make him an essential ally in a long fight.

Mao Zedong... do I even have to explain why.

Jiang Qing, his wife, a force behind the Cultural Revolution... not someone to take lightly.

Deng Xiaoping, a man you can knock down, but who only rises up more powerful than before.
posted by zompist at 1:37 AM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]