This blog is still officially on hiatus, but as i have in recent days re-discovered the fact that I actually quite enjoy philosophy, politics etc, rather than it being a seemingly never-ending drudgery of boredom and stress, I thought I would take a break from Raz’s analysis of rights, and repeat a wonderfully bad esoteric joke I heard from Chris Brooke the other day:
In the year 2517 young initiates at the University of Cambridge are beginning their study of the History of Political Thought. Having been educated at Oxford, they are under the mistaken impression that one can discern the meaning and importance of 20th Century Texts simply by reading them ‘over and over again’, thinking of them as part of an inter-generational intellectual dialogue. However they are quickly put right: “We must not read historical texts that way! To understand the great figures of Political History you must contextualise them thoroughly”, declares their aged Professor. “This term you will officially be reading Brian Barry’s ‘The Liberal Theory of Justice’. However, you cannot possibly understand this book in isolation; in order to make any sense of it you must read a forgotten tome that nobody ever reads any more, namely ‘A Theory of Justice’ by somebody called John Rawls, who most people have never even heard of”.
You have to be a complete nerd to get that, and also really quite sad to think it’s funny.
I think it’s funny.
