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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9160 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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I do think that a philosopher ought righty to be judged by his death. As Solon tells us, judge no man happy until his death. Similarly, we ought to judge no man wise unless we approve of his death. It seems relevant when discussing Foucault, and especially his work on human sexuality, that he dies of AIDS. The question of what one thinks of Socrates is mostly a question of what one thinks of the Hemlock, and of course there's Empedocles. Similarly, I admire David Foster Wallace's writing, but when people cite his philosophical insights from This is Water

By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

I think it's relevant to note that DFW hanged himself. Is that kind of radical empathy perhaps beautiful and perhaps true and perhaps admirable? Sure. But can you live with it? DFW couldn't, could he? Does this imply that this kind of effort to constantly consider the circumstances of everyone around you might be overwhelming, that in fact we need to degrade others to meaningless NPCs in order to survive the world we live in? Sure it would be nice to live in a world where we consider the circumstances of everyone in traffic with us and have empathy for them, but does that make living in a world with traffic impossible?

I think it's relevant to note that Bourdain hanged himself when considering his lifestyle and his life advice. I loved Kitchen Confidential, it's an upper-end beach read, and No Reservations was a great cable content show, a little higher brow than your typical cooking show but ultimately within the same format and the same relaxing emotional range.

But when one assesses the philosophical depth of his malattributed and oft-memed deepities, we should consider that Anthony Bourdain hanged himself, and that maybe that way of living doesn't actually work if it's most famous adherent wound up tying that knot. Willful suicide*, the negation of life, seems to undermine any idea of one knowing the way to the Good Life. And clearly there are a lot of people who still admire and seek to imitate Bourdain, when you consider that there's an active subreddit for him years after his autopsy. So it's relevant to talk about why he shouldn't be uncritically admired.

There's a flip side to this where people want to hate on Bourdain and say he wasn't that talented or that interesting, I've even seen accusations that he was a bad cook and a nepo baby in publishing, but I think that goes too far. He was a pretty good media celebrity, as they go. And I think there's something to enjoying oysters fresh off the beach. But we have to consider where it all ends up.

*I should note that the word "willful" is necessary, instrumental suicide like Socrates or other ancients choosing suicide as a particular form of death sentence, or the proverbial secret agent biting down on a cyanide molar to avoid torture, or a soldier jumping on a grenade, may meet the technical definition of self-killing, but they're rather different implications philosophically.

((As an aside, while I think it's valid to question someone's moral fiber or entire life philosophy as a result of their suicide, I don't think we should over-attribute someone's suicide to particular circumstances or the actions of other individuals. For every bad thing that happens to anyone that kills themselves, there are a dozen people who had the same thing happen and are still here. It's hardly common for an unfaithful model/actress gf to drive men to suicide. I knew people who killed themselves after divorce, but I know more people who didn't. I don't think you can really drive someone to suicide, some people kill themselves and some people don't in any given circumstance.))

"This is Water" has good practical value for organizing your thoughts against the tedious chore that is grocery shopping. It's worth reading for that reason, at least.

As far as its actual advice about taking control of your thoughts goes: it seems of dubious value for the average person (at least going off of myself and my own brain, where I strongly doubt I could successfully redirect my thinking processes intentionally in any direction over any long-lasting timescale).

However: you could argue that for the peculiar mind that is DFW (and perhaps others who go down that insane path that is becoming a writer), it might have helped him compared to the counterfactual where he didn't follow that advice, where maybe he would have otherwise killed himself sooner.

I do think that a philosopher ought righty to be judged by his death.

Should we judge a book purely by its final page, a song by its last verse?

By their nature philosophers are not happy people and are more likely to die by their own hand. Happy, fulfilled people do not go around looking for meaning in life, they've already found it. That doesn't mean that there isn't value for others in what they found while out searching. People are not all cast from the same mould, no "one-size fits all" method of finding happiness and meaning exists.

I think it's relevant to note that DFW hanged himself. Is that kind of radical empathy perhaps beautiful and perhaps true and perhaps admirable? Sure. But can you live with it? DFW couldn't, could he?

Also I just have to add that I find this a bizarre line of thought, imagining someone finding a man's hanging body, shaking their head sadly as they mutter to themselves "If only he'd berated more cashiers".

Should we judge a book purely by its final page, a song by its last verse?

Point out where I said we should judge philosophers only by their deaths.

I admire both Bourdain's and DFW's works, and would say I admire their life philosophies and think there is something to be drawn from them. I would also say that it's relevant, if not dispositive, to consider how they died when considering their advice on how to live.

Also I just have to add that I find this a bizarre line of thought, imagining someone finding a man's hanging body, shaking their head sadly as they mutter to themselves "If only he'd berated more cashiers".

This is an exceedingly common line of thought that goes back to at least Victor Hugo, that of the man so obsessed with moral purity with no outlet for his human vices and desires, who eventually snaps and does something evil or self destructive. This is just applying the same standard we apply to a puritan Christian to a liberal icon.

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