Saul Kripke, Kit Fine, Timothy Williamson, John McDowell, Jonathan Schaffer, Graham Priest, Robert Brandom, and other philosophers are the unwitting stars of films created by an unknown YouTuber who is editing footage of them speaking in order to produce bizarre montages, shorts with augmented visuals and music, and other strange and funny videos.
[archived image unavailable]
Going only by the nickname “Feallsanachd” (Scottish Gaelic for “philosophy”) and revealing only a location of somewhere in Canada, the maker of these videos has posted about 40 of them since the end of January.
This is niche humor in an absurdist style, but some of it really works.
Here, for example, is a Jonathan Schaffer “metaphysics” supercut:
Watch archived video on YouTube
Sometimes what’s funny to capture is what isn’t said, as in this “talk” by Kit Fine:
Watch archived video on YouTube
…or the highly expressive faces and gesticulations of philosophers, abstracted from their context, as we see here from Saul Kripke:
Watch archived video on YouTube
Occasionally Feallsanachd will add visual and audio effects, as in this supercut of Graham Priest talking about nothing in particular:
Watch archived video on YouTube
The videos provide not only some laughs, but also some perspective on how philosophers might come off to others.
The whole collection can be found here.
(via Brandon Warmke on Twitter)
