Historically speaking, there is so much foolishness in Lebanese political and popular cultures. This is a culture in which crackpots, like the gifted poet Sa`id `Aql, and "mawkishly sentimental" writers (as Amin Rihani described the writings of Jubran Khalil Jubran who I intensely admired as a child), and mediocre "musicians" like Mansur Rahbani are treated as "philosphers." I have never encountered a culture in which the word "philospher" is more loosly and meaninglessly bandied around as if labels would give profundity where it does not exist. Today, in the right-wing and Hariri press, the silly statement of Samir Ja`ja` (which had the sophistication of elementary school-level compositions) was described as "philosophical." Why should that be surprising? The above mentioned Mansur Rahbani had a play on Socrates that had as much relationship to Socrates as much as Miss Congeniality 2 was related to Nietzsche.