Discursive Limericks about Western Philosophy

If there’s one thing that stands out when I think back on the philosophy courses I took at UCLA, it’s the voices of my professors. Sometimes the primary texts would be too obscure for my 19-year-old mind to comprehend, so I attended every lecture, listened with rapt attention, and waited for the message of lucid clarification.

But all I ever heard was the monotonous drone of a second-rate scholar in bad need of a glass of water, or maybe something stronger. If anything could have possibly made the subject matter less inspiring than their lifeless recitation, I cannot image what. It’s too bad, but in those days none of us knew a thing about philosophical limericks.

The following is a small sampling of limericks about the Western philosophical tradition, from Thomas Aquinas right up to the modern day. You can also check out my collections of limericks about German philosophy, ancient Greeks, and existentialism.

Medieval Philosophers

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
There once was a Jesuit knight
Who proved with his logic air-tight
That all of infinity’s
Touched by divinity
Starting with “Let there be light”

William of Ockham (1284-1347)
There’s a razor belonging to Ockham
Whose logic had no room for hokum
His rules of deduction
Relied on reduction
The Pope was determined to choke him

Enlightenment Philosophers

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Descartes he once wondered because
Of the mind and the things that it does
His quest for the truth
Was lacking in proof
But he thought and so therefore he was

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
There once was a man from Geneva
At odds with Señor Acquaviva
Rousseau put his trust
In man to be just
He must have been smoking sativa

Limericks about Greek Philosophy Aristotle

Philosophical Reflections

Over the course of my limerick writing career, I shifted from writing about philosophers, to writing about philosophy, to writing philosophy. I like to think of this as an evolution of growth and maturation.

Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith
The omnipotent Being has been here all along
And could have provided us evidence strong
But instead it’s a game
Oblique and arcane
Where plumbing for proof is just shallow and wrong

Pantheistic Perambulations
Perusing Spinoza by the crackling hearth
His isms and theorems instill me with mirth
Passing the minutes
With deep metaphysics
I pray that the geek shall inherit the earth

Inner Visions
Pseudo-scientific, or so it’s been called
Tell that to the Greeks — they’d be shocked and appalled
For knowing thyself
Is the key to good health
Your life can’t be measured, but only recalled

Footnote to Western Philosophy

Lionized by right-wingers and pseudo-intellectuals, Ayn Rand has recently risen to a sort of Messianic status in all the wrong circles. But serious philosophers can’t take her seriously. According to Alfred North Whitehead, western philosophy is really just “a series of footnotes Plato.” I maintain that Rand’s proper place within the western tradition is as a footnote to the footnote.

Atlas Flubbed
There’s a scourge overwhelming the land
And I’m not saying she ought to be banned
But bankers and crooks
Love her tedious books
That petty polemicist Rand