{"id":1569,"date":"2010-07-26T16:15:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T15:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2010-07-26T16:15:23","modified_gmt":"2010-07-26T15:15:23","slug":"a-philosophers-ethnic-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2010\/07\/26\/a-philosophers-ethnic-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"A philosopher’s ethnic joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was thinking of reading a famous \u2014 in some quarters infamous \u2014 book called La pens\u00e9e 68<\/em> (i.e., ’68 Thought<\/em>), by Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry, a 1988 critique of 60s French intellectuals. So far I’m only a few pages into it, but I thought I would just reproduce the epigraph, which consists of an ethnic joke that Ferry has repeated elsewhere<\/a>. It goes like this:<\/p>\n

A Frenchman, an Englishman and a German were assigned to study the camel.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman went to the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes, spent half an hour there, talked to the keeper, threw bread to the camel, teased it with the tip of his umbrella, and, when he got home, wrote a column, for his newspaper, full of keen and spiritual observations.<\/p>\n

The Englishman, along with his tea-box and comfortable camping supplies, went and set up his tent in the Oriental countries, and after a stay of two or three years, produced a thick volume overflowing with facts, without order or conclusion, but with real documentary value.<\/p>\n

As for the German, full of disdain for the Frenchman’s frivolousness and the Englishman’s absence of general ideas, he closed himself up in his room to write a work of several volumes, entitled: Idea of the camel drawn from the conception of the self<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Un Fran\u00e7ais, un Anglais, un Allemand furent charg\u00e9s d’une \u00e9tude sur le chameau. <\/em><\/p>\n

Le Fran\u00e7ais alla au jardin des Plantes, y passa une demi-heure, interrogea le gardien, jeta du pain au chameau, le taquina avec le bout de son parapluie, et, rentr\u00e9 chez lui, \u00e9crivit, pour son journal, un feuilleton plein d’aper\u00e7us piquants et spirituels.<\/em><\/p>\n

L’Anglais, emportant son panier \u00e0 th\u00e9 et un confortable mat\u00e9riel de campement, alla planter sa tente dans les pays d’Orient, et en rapporta, apr\u00e8s un s\u00e9jour de deux ou trois ans, un gros volume bourr\u00e9 de faits sans ordre ni conclusion, mais d’une r\u00e9elle valeur documentaire.<\/em><\/p>\n

Quant \u00e0 l’Allemand, plein de m\u00e9pris pour la frivolit\u00e9 du Fran\u00e7ais et l’absence d’id\u00e9es g\u00e9n\u00e9rales de l’Anglais, il s’enferma dans sa chambre pour y r\u00e9diger un ouvrage en plusieurs volumes, intitul\u00e9 : <\/em> Id\u00e9e du chameau tir\u00e9 de la conception du moi.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure I find it a extremely funny joke, but academic humor is always worth documenting as a cultural artifact, if nothing else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thinking of reading a famous \u2014 in some quarters infamous \u2014 book called La pens\u00e9e 68 (i.e., ’68 Thought), by Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry, a 1988 critique of 60s French intellectuals. So far I’m only a few pages into it, but I thought I would just reproduce the epigraph, which consists of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[488],"tags":[508,647],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}