My Courses are a JOKE.

Dear American Literati, Readers in Humanity,
Dialecticians and Colleageus Across the
Curriculum (Courses w/o Borders Series)
 
Thoreau’s practicality is idealistic.
We discussed this a couple classes back.
 
People love him and hate him. Is he
arrogant or humble?   Pure or corrupt?
Calling the kettle black?   If he’s truly
humble, he will seem arrogant. If truly
arrogant, we will appear humble.
 
“All Cretans are Liars,”
says Epimenides, the Cretan.
 
If he’s telling the truth, he’s lying.
If he’s lying, he’s telling the truth.
 
This is known famously by philosophers
and logicians as The Liar Paradox.
 
None of us can tell the truth without lying. 
Lies are as true as we can get.
True?  False?

   You think this is just playing with        
                   words?

Demitri: “I’m finally beginning to see
 through you. Tasso. This whole philosophy
 thing is is just playing games with words!

Tasso: Exactly! Now we’re getting somewhere..
 
Demitri: So you admit it:  philosophy is just
semantics.!

Tasso  Just semantics? How else would you
do philosophy? With grunts and giggles?  
(Cathart & Kleirn. Plato and a Platybus Walk Into a Bar.)
 
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  True?
 
“I wouldn’t cross the street to save the world.”  Is Thoreau
being arrogant?  Or humble?
 
Demitri: This clarifies everything we’ve been  talking
about

Tasso: In what way?.
 
Demitri: What you call philosophy, I call  a joke.
 
                        JOKE (jocose, jocular)
                   Indo European: yek: “to say” -->
         joke, gem, juggle, jocose, jocular, jeopardy.      
      
Punch Line? (ouch, oof,  umm somabitch, damint, just
 right for dialectic.)   I told you even before we met:    
 
       "This Course is a Joke."
 
Was I being arrogant?  Or humble? Telling the truth? Or lying? 
Need we argue?  Or course. We must. Or what’s a college for?
Get it?

xxxooo, Sam