Miscellany

The clerihew is one of the very lowest forms of poetry. It's about as high as I aspire. But I enjoy trying to represent historical truth (or something close to it) in brief verses. For other examples of philosophical clerihews I recommend Dean Zimmermann and Ronnie de Sousa.

My Philosophical Clerihews

Philosophers, in roughly chronological order

Parmenides

Had rather weak knees

He preferred to be carriot

In Aletheia’s chariot

Of Elea, Zeno

Was certain we see no

Things really in motion

Though he swam in the ocean

The great Heraclitus

Inspired St. Vitus

’s followers, who know

That to dance is to flow

Philosopher Plato

Whether early or late, oh

So many questions raised

Lack of answers unfazed

Of Hippo, Augustine

Abhorred sexual lustin’

And his own youthful sessions

Led to truthful confessions

William of Ockham

Was liable to shock ’em

By denying the reality

Of universality

Bishop George Berkeley

Saw through a glass darkly

The people all chatter

As though there were matter

The great David Hume

Was wont to consume

Large quantities of port

When exhausted by thought

Bolzano, Bernard

Found no subject hard

Showed progressive defiance

And wrote Theory of Science

Frege, Herr Gottlob

Was once taught in Notlob

Where students were infatuated

With functions unsaturated

Alexius Meinong

Did not enjoy wine; ong

the contrary, preferred

Nonexistents absurd

J. M. E. McTaggart

Was driven quite haggard

By all those who feel

Time really is real

Alfred North Whitehead

Of moving to Harvard was not frighted

He needed little persuasion

On that actual occasion

Alfred North Whitehead

School rugby playing tight head

Found tackles reveal

A sense of the real

G. E. Moore

Showed sceptics the door

They were forced to disband

When he held up his hand

Lord Bertie Russell

Was well known to bustle

Through women and books

Despite his odd looks

Professor Moritz Schlick

Made the Vienna Circle tick

They admired him a lot

But he sadly was shot

Leśniewski, Big Stan

A strange sort of man

Continually frets

To have parts replace sets

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thought logic was just fine

But gave little credit

To people who said it

Professor Rudolf Carnap

Always took a car nap

When by his wife, Ina, he

Was driven through the scenery

Frank Plumpton Ramsey

Had fists like hams; he

Did not think it great

To be seventeen stone in weight

W. V. Quine

Preferred whisky to wine

Scots think him a saviour

For his assenting behaviour

Peter T. Geach

Was well known to reach

When less godly or soulish

For expletives in Polish

Prof J. Karel Lambert

Empty names found no scam, but

Was proud to decree

Let your logic be free

David K. Lewis

One of the few is

Whose lip never curled

At a possible world

Edgar Morscher

Consummate Forscher

Convinced us there are no

Chaps beating Bolzano

David Hugh Mellor

Rumbustious feller

Thought tense not sublime

But accepted real time

Sir Roger V. Scruton

Loved putting the boot on

The other foot hefty

When bashing things lefty

The Brentanian Sequence

The young Franz Brentano

Was worried there are no

Things outside the mind

He intended to find

But the middle-aged Franz

Was led a long dance

By authorities; harried

Because he got married

The now former preacher

Was still a great teacher

Of descriptive psychology

Or phenomenology

Though one student annoyed

him, the young Sigmund Freud

Whose unconscious acts

For Brentano weren’t facts

By blindness undeflected

All abstract things rejected

No Christian, but theist

Ontologically reist

His many great pupils

Curriculum new fills

From Stumpf to Twardowski

You can’t write them offski

So while late Brentano

Was certain there are no

Irreal things, his fundamentality

Revived intentionality

Non-philosophical

I have given up even thinking about writing clerihews about politicians. It's too depressing, because the reality is more absurd than any satire or humour could be.

(The next sequence was written in 2015 after Richard III’s moving reburial in Leicester Cathedral, which like the original burial site is close to where my father once ran a pharmacy. It reveals my Ricardian sympathies, which were about the only matter of history on which I seriously disagreed with the late David Armstrong (unlike politics or philosophy, where we disagreed more). On balance I think it more likely that it was Buckingham who had the princes murdered, not Richard.)

The Ricardian Sequence

King Richard the Third

A man of whom murd-

er of princes suspected

Was lately detected

The then Duke of Gloucester

Dissension did foster

Whatever his throne was worth

He lost it at Bosworth

The final Plantagenet

Was trying to cadge an at

Least half-decent horse

When he fell in the course

The King of the Realm

Unhorsed, without helm

Departed this state

When they skewered his pate

Leaving Leicester, King Rich

Hit his spur on Bow Bridge

But returning, now dead

Hit the same with his head

This third King Dickon

Many English did sicken

So they left him to fester

In a small grave in Leicester

For Richard the King

The grey friars would sing

Until Henry (the Eighth)

Threw them out and changed feighth

Over Dick in his grave

No church and no nave –

It was said the White Boar

Had been thrown in the Soar

But the last English monarch

Was under a car park

Ricardians, belated

Got the site excavated

Now Richard the Third

Has been disinterred

His own DNA

Proved he was who they say

The last Yorkist monarch King Richard the Third

Has finally, regally, been reinterred

In Leicester Cathedral the people did sing

As they properly buried this once-valiant King.