Once this ridiculous redactor took a slight summer sabbatical from the then-almost daily scribbling schedule of entertaining e-pistles. An esteemed recipient, a holy Reverend Sister of an intrepidly inspired Institute, quizzically queried this twerpy typist regarding the surprising suspension to which one, tongue firmly-in-cheek, readily replied: "Don't worry. I'm always full of fresh ideas!"
Philosophy, or perhaps more accurately, the search for philosophical novelties has been justly labeled the German vice. With relative facility an enlightened enumeration of the more reliably renowned (or infernally infamous) delightful doctors of philosophy engendered in the Teutonic lands could be constructed harmoniously reminiscent of the beloved Biblical lists of "begat". Let's start with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his optimistic Théodicée; followed by Christian Wolff who just about single-handedly made German the international language of scholarly research; then we have the impeccably immortal church steeple gazing Immanuel Kant and his fun and friendly followers: Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Johann Godlier Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; which of course leads to those yucking yahoos, the Young Hegelians: David Friedrich Strauss, Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Carl Nauwerck, Arnold Ruge, Max Stirner, and that dizzyingly dynamic duo Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx; and of course we can't forget those cantankerous Neo-Kantians: Arthur Schopenhauer, Jakob Friedrich Fries, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Friedrich Albert Lange, and Hermann Cohen; and practically in a league all his own, the premature obituary writer Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who lead to, well let's just say that the toothbrush mustache was pretty popular in the days of the Charlie Chaplin silents.
Had he lived, this Friday, the twelfth of April would have been the seventieth birthday of a profoundly personal, influentially important, "philosopher". Settling in the northwest corner of the former Kleindeutschland, being a registered parishioner of the German national parish of Saint Anne's and toiling diligently at the rightly revered restaurant Lüchow's my "Papi" taught me in that silent way that was uniquely his own much wisdom that I distill to this day. His middle name reflected the fact that occurring in the week in which he was born was the beautifully pathetic (in the proper sense of the word) feast of Our Lady of the Seven Dolors in Lent. His absence, in all veracity, haunts me but only inasmuch as it is a catalyst for one to live as a practical Catholic gentleman. All we need do is to peruse the preceding paragraph to see how a previous generation can fortuitously form (or maliciously malform) a succeeding generation.
And I'll drink to that tantalizing thought with a cold can of Rheingold!
Mr. Screwtape
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