Philosophical Clerihews

By Dean Zimmerman

I've wasted an inordinate amount of time on the lowest verse form in existence, the Clerihew. Here's the cream or the dregs, depending on how you look at it.

The first one ever written (1890, by the 16-year-old E. Clerihew Bentley) went like this:

Sir Humphry Davy

Detested gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered Sodium.

Here's a really good one by Maurice Hare:

Alfred de Musset

Used to call his cat Pusset.

His accent was affected.

That was to be expected.

The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary of Frances Stillman defines the clerihew as "a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with lines of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose. It is short and pithy, and often contains or implies a moral reflection of some kind. The name of the individual who is the subject of the quatrain usually supplies the first line."

Bentley himself wrote a few on philosophers. W. H. Auden has a book of clerihews with ones on Kierkegaard, Hegel, and a couple of others. Paul Horgan's book of clerihews has a few as well. By and large the ones on philosophers aren't very good. The best I know of are these:

Desiderius Erasmus

Suffered from one of the rare asthmas.

His worst wheezes

Were caused by over-ripe cheeses.

(Paul Horgan)

John Stuart Mill,

By a mighty effort of will,

Overcame his natural bonhomie

And wrote Principles of Political Economy*

*-`With some of their Applications to Social Philosophy'.

It was a weakness of Voltaire's

To forget to say his prayers,

And one which to his shame

He never overcame.

Sir James Jeans

Always says what he means;

He is really perfectly serious

About the Universe being Mysterious.

(all by Bentley)

But the largest batch of philosophical clerihews follows...

Philosophical Clerihews

by Dean W. Zimmerman



This form was evidently

invented by E. Clerihew Bentley.

He did nothing else well,

but what the hell?

Moses Maimonides

wrote vast quantities

and stood for amity

in an age of Kalamity.

G. E. Moore

was a bit of a bore;

more an old fossil

than a Cambridge Apostle.

By ghosts, C.D. Broad

was not generally overawed;

but he looked a trifle haggard

after his Examination of McTaggart.

Fearing Wittgenstein was blotto,

Popper adopted the motto:

"I will not argue with a joker

who's brandishing a red-hot poker."

"Peter Geach!" said God,

"would it not be slipshod

were I to raise not the authentical

you, but someone relatively identical?"

Roderick Chisholm

was never accused of asceticism

by Roderick Firth,

who was equally down-to-earth.

Nicholas Rescher

is under no pressure

to write another book;

but look!

Edwin B. Allaire

prefers particulars bare;

he doesn't find them rude

in the nude.

Jaegwon Kim,

writing poetry under a psuedonym,

met with considerable inconvenience

in rhyming "supervenience".

"I sneezed", explained Al Plantinga,

"as I scaled the rockface, barely panting. 'Ge-

sundheit!' said a voice; but not God's, inasmuch

as that's German not Dutch."

If your battery's dead, don't ask Bradley

to give you a jump. He'll say: "Gladly,

I have jumper cables; but need another item:

a cable to connect the cables" and so ad infinitum.

The British railroad

was the ruin of C.E.M. Joad.

Back then it wasn't cricket

to be caught without a ticket.

Jose Benardete

cooks large batches of spaghetti.

His noodles make you full

when you've eaten Aleph-null.

Alfred Freddoso

thinks his own work's just so-so;

he'd never go so far as

to compare it to Suarez's.

Sydney's David Malet

Armstrong had little palate

for Marxism;

and that'll spark schism.

Derek Parfit

wouldn't wear a scarf. It

made him more bold

to think someone else would catch cold.

G. H. von Wright

is not very strict.

He remains polite

when called "von Wright".

Here's a moral pilfered

from Wilfrid

Sellars: Have enough to drink

and all ice cubes look pink.

Wilfrid Sellars

abhorred poor spellers;

they made his blood congeal

and gave him a raw feel.

When he was younger,

the ignorance of Peter Unger

was vast;

but it didn't last.

A handy acronym

invented by Colin McGinn

explains why

philosophers shouldn't even try.

There's no disputin'

that Grigori Rasputin

had more will to power

than Schopenhauer.

Susan K. Langer

liked instruments that twang. Her

Philosophy in a New Key

was dedicated to Paul Stookey.

Unfortunately, Thales

never tried Bailey's.

It's smoother than water, so better suited

to be that of which all is constituted.

The metaphysics of Ernie Sosa

has little in common with that of Spinoza,

except for this: both claim to show

all things are like a ball of snow.

Although it hurt Curt Ducasse

to be kicked in the ass,

he was filled with elation

at the observability of the causal relation.

Escaping at night from the embalmer's,

The zombies sought help from Dave Chalmers.

Though their speech was mere echolalia,

He knew what they wanted: dancing qualia.

With parenthetical suggestions for cartoons:

(Gritting his teeth, fingers twitching)

Stephen Stich

wouldn't scratch an itch:

one mustn't accept the ontology

of common sense psychology.

(Picture of a bat with Nagel's face, putting wing over face in vampire fashion to avoid looking at a bust of Hegel)

Don't ask Thomas Nagel

to study Hegel;

he'd rather be a bat

than do that.

(Dancing waltzily while sensing redly)

Michael Tye,

while just a young guy,

had an enthusiasm for the adverbial

that was proverbial.

(In Saturday Night Fever outfit at a disco, opening letter and looking depressed)

In youth, Frege

could really shake a leg. A

correspondence with Russell

left him unable to do The Hustle.

And here are some by Brian Leftow:

Who better to get my first clerihew

Than Yale's new chair, Robert Merrihew

Adams? His job is one to admire. He

Should hire me.

Goodman trades classes

for all possible scattered masses:

No matter where the parts are from,

they are many, ergo sum.

Hobbes has no abstracta

Just entia tacta-

what isn't in chunks

flunks.

"To be or not to be?"

Said Parfit, "totally

redundant. Hamlet pushed the issue way too far.

What matters isn't B, but R."

That Alvin

Rhymes with Calvin

Is, in my estimation,

Proof of predestination.

Quine and Cartwright point with glee

to the 1992 Times, where we

read that Mr. Bobbitt

was for awhile a scattered object.

Richard Rorty

Wrote philosophy till forty.

Then midlife crisis hit

And he quit to write... pragmatism.

If reference is inscrutable

And ostension mutable

There's just no knowing

where Quine is going.

When reading David Lewis

One can't say what the thing to do is-

Gape? Guffaw? Collapse and fall?

Elsewhere some counterpart does them all.

G.W.F. Hegel

Is less nutritious than a bagel.

A bagel has just one hole in the dough-

Hegel's all holes, wherever you go.

Antony Flew

Wouldn't be caught dead in a pew.

A wiser head

Would worry that some day he'll be caught dead.

According to W.V. Quine

Any ontology's fine

And that's why I

Think he's a heckgavagai.

According to John Stuart Mill,

Better check whether 2+2 still

Make four. They did today,

But as for tomorrow - who can say?

Nietzsche thought that all events

Repeat themselves- which makes no sense.

Nietzsche thought that all events

Repeat themselves- which makes no sense.





One more by Tom Kirby-Smith:

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Hardly ever went out to dine.

Be the menu never so abundant,

He found "green leafy lettuce salad" tautological and redundant.

