From the always amusing New York Sun:
[...] a New York University senior bit into a razor-filled muffin left on a classroom table last week, according to university officials. The student was not injured.
The muffin was baked for a philosophy course. According to a spokesman for the university, John Beckham, a student brought in the booby-trapped confection along with several normal muffins as part of a project on absurdism, a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless.
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***NEW THOUGHT!!!***
Or is the use of a non-absurd object (a razor-filled muffin) as an exemplification of absurdity itself absurd? Someone call Alanis Morissette, that is, if anyone remembers that has been who never should have been.
17 comments:
It sounds more like the philosophy of being sick of someone stealing your lunch.
I did it once years ago, i sprayed white lithium grease inside a twinkie and left it in a bag clearly marked wwith my name on it. that day a guy i work with ate it and then was actually mad at me for him eating something that wasn't his.
Bones:
You work with dicks.
The universe really is meaningless!
actually my coworkers WORK with a dick
Bones:
That too. All you dicks deserve each other.
The really surprising thing is that this course is in the NYU Philosophy Department! I looked at their spring catalogue and the only undergraduate course this semester that seems even remotely that it might have included something like "Absurdism" is the Aesthetics course. Maybe I missed something, though.
Absurdism comes from the Existentialist tradition, Kierkegaard and Camus, particularly. While this may settle the matter, it happens that baking razors into a muffin for a relatively idiotic purpose like attempting to do a project on Absurdism, mirrors the actions of Mersault in "The Stranger," who shoots and murders an Arab on account of "the sun" (i.e. for an absurd "reason"). Ultimately, the student could have killed or seriously injured someone out of utter pointlessness, and narrowly missed doing so. Technically, the project is an "absurdist" success on "absurdist grounds." Maybe having failed to kill someone lessens the success, but maybe embarrassing the NYU philosophy department is sufficient. However, there are no "grounds" for anything whatsoever given Absurdism's initial (self-refuting) claim, so the student should get a grade of "Z" (and be pursued in court by the kid that mistakenly bit the muffin). When I teach this stuff, which is pretty rare, I use the text to reveal the hidden colonialist and racist world view tacit in the work (ignored and unaccounted for), and show how the "Absurd Hero" (Camus's term), can justifiably be interpreted as a sociopath. The work is a reductio of Absurdism.
In any case, we have yet another reason for not teaching this stuff.
729:
I know the Camus connection, but still don't see how the razor-muffin could plausibly be seen as an exemplification of *that* point.
Btw: Existentialism is philosophy for privileged suburban 18 year-olds. It's the equivalent of The Cure and Joy Division. Kill yourself already....
I thought I had been *fairly* clear about this unclarity. Perhaps, in thinking (charitably) that the student was somehow attempting to mirror Mersault, that was making too much of a point about the utter pointlessness of the whole thing. Do forgive.
729:
A grade of "Z" is the best thing I've heard all day. I'll be handing more of those out. Also: razor blades with muffins in them.
I have no philosophical comment.
But I never pass up the opportunity to call Alanis Morrisette a caterwalling bitch.
Bah. I meant caterwauling.
My bad.
729:
Got it. Thanks.
Imipolex is correct to commend 729 for the grade "Z" idea. Fucking genius.
Exparrot: point noted.
RE: grade Z
When I was a little under-puppy one of my philosophy profs told me about one of his philosophy profs announcing at the beginning of the semester that grades would be on a scale from one to a thousand points and at the end of the semester everyone got either a 27 or a 28.
I once saw a paper for a seminar in Vagueness graded by a famously clever philosopher with the initials R.S. The paper was graded on a 10-point scale. The grade was: 9.29487298913457
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