Tuesday December 16, 2003

AM I DIDEROT OR NOT. Thanks to En Banc for pointing to this Ethical Philosophy Selector -- a kind of "What Famous Philosopher R U?" quiz that ranks the relevance of a number of philosophers' to your outlook as revealed by a cloze test.

En Banc's PG, for example, scored 100% on Kant and 99% on John Stuart Mill, but only 7% on Thomas Hobbes and 9% on the Cynics. This led me unto doubt about the test: From his writing, PG seems like he'd be a fun guy to drink with, but if you'd just shown me his scores, I would have imagined him a dullard and a grind.

So take it with a grain of salt, but my lowest-scoring avatar was that stupid cunt Ayn Rand, while I scored a hundred percent match with... the Epicureans!

Well, it makes some sense: " The sage who has a crust of bread, said Epicurus, has no reason to envy Zeus." And so say I.