Mockers

Apes have invaded the academy. They hoot in the ruins. It’s clear! They swing from the ceilings.


We should deepen the decline, Livia thought. Bottom it out. See where the university becomes when it hits rock bottom.


We were a philosophy department. To think!

Remembering the great departments of yore. Remembering legendary philosophy departments. Departments of strong personalities. With different views. Often clashing! Often heated! But serious – intensely so.

Embodying an ideal life – the academic life. Showing students what the intellectual life could be.

High mindedness! General academic loftiness! Places of discussion! Debate!


No one will write the history of UK European Philosophy. No one will remember it.

Our kind will simply disappear. The whole scene will just … evaporate.

It’s as though none of this were real. Everything everyone cares about so deeply. It’s transitory. It’s on its way out. Analytic hegemony will triumph in the end.


Our time has passed. We’re anachronisms. We’re too-laters. The party’s over.


We missed the boat. But then we never would have made the boat. We would never have even been admitted onto the boat.

We’re the products of mass higher education! We’re what happens when you expand the universities! We’re the result of generations of educational collapse! Full of personality disorders. Psychological disorders!


They appointed us. Livia appointed us. To mock philosophy? To mock everything. Of course! This was a time that deserved only mockery, Livia said. And that was her role: the mocker in chief.