Halloween Costumes of Famous Philosophers
Happy Halloween! If well-known philosophers were to dress up for Halloween in what they’d think are scary costumes, what would their costumes be?
To get the pumpkin rolling…
Kant: a murderer at a door
Hume: backgammon set with missing checkers and no dice
Heraclitus: the same thing as last year
Readers?
Murderer at the Door Costume (JW)
Wittgenstein: Scrabble
Wittgenstein after 12am: Sexy Scrabble
David Benatar: a baby
Plato: a sophist
Epicurus: Donald Trump
Descartes: a demon no less powerful than evil
Zeno of Elea: a finish line
Nietzsche – the corpse of God
Kierkegaard – Knight of ? ( no one can tell which Knight he is)
Frege – the number 2. Or the letter A. Maybe both?
These are all great. Love the Zeno one, especially. And the Benatar one. And…
Frege is going as the concept Horse.
Quine: the merely possible fat man in the doorway
Dennett: something behaviorally identical to a monster, but that isn’t a monster
Rabbit slices!
David Lewis: A giant hovering eyeball, staring incredulously
Also:
David Lewis: a donkey part
Also:
David Lewis: a Meinongian incomplete cat.
Robert Nozick: Wilt Chamberlain
John Rawls: a veil with “ignorance” written on it
GA Cohen: someone outfitted for a camping trip
Hobbes: a sword, a crosier, and a bunch of small dolls glued to one’s shirt
Thomas Nagel: a bat
Derek Parfit: a hospital gown and a dotted line drawn down the middle of one’s forehead
Shulamith Firestone: an artificial womb with a baby doll inside
Mary Midgley: a samurai sword
Emmanuel Levinas: either of the main characters from Face/Off
Martha Nussbaum: cover yourself up like the person on the cover of Hiding from Humanity
bell hooks: a bell and some hooks
Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons: a glass of water labeled “twater”
David Lewis: whatever you can possibly wear
Garret Hardin: a lifeboat passenger: life jacket, missing a shoe, whatever
Peter Singer: wet clothes and a baby doll
It has been pointed out to me that I failed to read the prompt clearly: I missed the part about costumes that the philosophers would find scary. My mistake! Hopefully someone finds these costume ideas useful for this Halloween or the future, though!
I just need you to know they did help someone, me. 3 years later. Thank you :,)
David Chalmers: philosophical zombie
Ibn Sina: clear platform shoes so it looks like you’re hanging in the air
William Molyneaux: a sphere, a cube, and a blindfold
Bertrand Russell: a barber offering to shave anyone who doesn’t shave themselves
Saul Kripke: Cicero, with a name tag that reads “Sully”
Richard Rorty: a philosophy book and a mirror covered with twigs and leaves and other natural things
John Corvino: a same-sex couple (couple’s costume idea)
Albert Camus: a rock to push around
Jon Elster: Ulysses tied to a mast, or a fox with a cluster of grapes
David Enoch: a bowl of spinach
Bernard Suits: a grasshopper
Charles Mills and Carole Pateman: two people, each with one half of a ripped contract (couple’s costume idea)
Ronald Dworkin: a hedgehog
Ronald Dworkin: clamshells, and a bundle of goods
Sorry, a name tag that reads TULLY. If you want to be Tom Hanks in that Clint Eastwood movie you need the Sully name tag.
Another option for Camus: Sisyphus sad
Jerry Fodor — His grandmother
Peter Singer — A Bengali refugee
Saul Kripke — An un-elected Richard Nixon
Quine — A rabbit, with outlines delineating all of its parts
Hegel — an owl, but he definitely waits until dusk to start trick-or-treating
Heidegger — a broken hammer
Socrates — lots of options (gadfly, torpedo fish, midwife, etc.)
Aquinas: an ox
Leibniz: a plastic bubble ball
Berkeley: a cartoon thought bubble
Hempel: a raven
For Hempel, a flagpole would be scarier
Plato: The form of a halloween costume
Ockham: Barber
Hobbes: Something nasty, brutish, and short
Berkeley: The ghost of a departed quantity
Hume: The missing shade of boo
McTaggart: Clock (or maybe a tombstone with a picture of clock on it…)
Russell: Flying teapot
“Hobbes: Something nasty, brutish, and short”
So, a toddler?
Michael Otsuka: An oversized jumper made of human hair that he can’t give to his freezing friend
Jason Brennan: a hooligan with an “I voted” sticker
sartre would go as a lobster
Or maybe Sartre would go as a chestnut tree on Boulevard Noir.
Richard Jeffrey: a flat prior.
Timothy Williamson: a flat posterior.
Buridan: A donkey. And no bag for candy.
Foot: A runaway trolley.
Laurie Paul: A vampire
Derrida as a pipe.
Rousseau’s scary costume would be Rodin’s ‘the thinker’.
(cf. “If nature destined us to be healthy, … the state of reflection is contrary to nature and … the man who meditates is a depraved animal.” — Discourse on Inequality)
Alvin Plantinga: The Son of the Great Pumpkin
Scott Soames: Rigid Designator
Saul Kripke: Saul Kripke
Robert Brandom: John McDowell
John McDowell: Robert Brandom
Hegel: Synthesis of John McDowell and Robert Brandom
Kant: Nietzsche
Nietzsche: Oscar Wilde
Heidegger: Krampus
Krampus: Heidegger
McGinn: Leather Glove
Pogge: Ronell
this is a tour de force!
Whitehead: a process server
AN Prior: a giant aspirin
van Inwagen: an interrobang
CL Stevenson: Donald Trump
Phillippa Foot-a trolley car
Dennet: a kind off Frankenstein.
Feuerbach: the stomach of a lion.
Bernard Williams: botanical expeditioner
good name!
but really, BDubs should be: someone who is about to (a) have their memories and psychological dispositions erased, then (b) be implanted with the memories and psychological dispositions of someone else (who is in turn implanted with their own memories and psychological dispositions and given a million dollars in the bargain), and then (c) be tortured.
David Hull: An essential character
Gordon Hull: echo chamber
Sorry to be late for the party! Here are some ideas for next year:
Hegel: a black cow on a dark night
Bentham: the Auto-Icon as it actually turned out (as opposed to how he might have imagined it)
Rousseau: a generous friend who offers help
Aristotle: a woman who is every bit as rational as a man (i.e., any given woman)
Locke: something, I know not what
Wittgenstein: a lion who speaks perfect English (or German . . . or both!)
Hume: Rousseau