A thought experiment : What is a hammer that can’t drive nails?
How about a car that can’t roll?
A chair you can’t sit on?
Enough examples, I think. Now, what’s your answer?
Mine? Ok, here goes. A hammer that can’t drive nails IS NOT A HAMMER. A car that doesn’t roll is NOT A CAR. A chair you can’t sit on is NOT A CHAIR.
Each of these cases demonstrates a violation of existential mandate. These theorized objects lack the very feature that most critically defines what they are. Ergo, they are not those things. Plato discussed this too.
So, that’s all theory, you say. So what, right? Well here are some other examples :
What is Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits if they don’t have Chicken?
What is Burger King without hamburgers?
I think the logic is pretty clear, but just to be explicit, Popeyes CAN’T NOT HAVE CHICKEN. That’s what they DO. It’s what they ARE. Burger King without burgers just isn’t Burger King. It’s part of the NAME. Burger King IS burgers.
I wen’t to BK today and they had no burgers. I’m not sure why the building was even still there. If I ran a law firm, and all the lawyers were gone, I think it’s safe to say my purpose in continuing to run that business would be in serious doubt.
No BURGERS at BURGER KING!
Plato would be disgusted.
9 June 2006 at 4:18 pm
When I was in NYC last week, I wandered into a really neat art gallery in SoHo. They had original Annie Lebowitz prints and an actual Picasso sketch and stuff. They also had these three chairs that you couldn’t sit on. I don’t know who made them. I guess you could sit on them if you crouched down real low…because on the backs of the chairs were mounted paper mache animal heads. One chair wasn’t so much a chair as a chair-shaped alligator trying to eat you. Etc. I don’t know what the hell it was supposed to mean.
9 June 2006 at 7:52 pm
Halt. Halt. You are in violation of existential mandate section number 1256314.63213. Please immediately cease existence in this space-time. Thank you.
On another note, a law firm without other lawyers sounds like a delight at this point, here in the heart of the beast at 9pm on a Friday night.
Additionally: fuck that Burger King. They always fucked up my orders anyway.