Monday, April 04, 2005

As Hegel once observed, I need to buy more peaches. I want somebody to tell me why Vaclav Havel is supposed to be profound. I mean, I know. He sometimes uses a trick that some European pseudo-intellectuals use, which is to invoke the name of Hegel, hoping that his shadow may cast some profundity on your empty and vapid words. Notice how profound this sentence sounds, for example, when you throw in Hegel's name:
"Fellow citizens. Tomato, cucumber, Hegel, onions, and peaches." You get the drift. Havel, especially when he has nothing to say, does that. Or he would say something bland and vapid, and then add Hegel's name. As in: "and remember that this year, we had rain, and many of us went to the dentist, and as Hegel once observed in the Phenomenology, tooth ache hurts." You think that I am kidding. OK. Let Havel speak for himself: "It cannot be helped, but Hegel - in Popper's opinion a philosophical rogue - was probably right in one thing: reality is ambiguous."