I guess it’s time for me to admit something. I’ve outgrown Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. No matter how much I love Cate Blanchette. I love something else. The possible connections between philosophers and music. Because music is the secret of philosophy. More meaning in what Denyce Graves sings than most of what I read or reason. So I’ve made a few tentative stabs at correlating philosophers with music. First up, Nietzche, who wrote his own. Not necessarily good but tactically consistent. Repetition is everything. He thought everything repeated repeatedly, exactly. Sometimes I agree. But I’m not as smart as he was. Nobody is.

I know nobody wants to hear this, but philosophy and music are the same thing. Not crappy lyrics but the music of the spheres. Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart were the greatest of philosophers. They just weren’t speaking in words. Still. There were philosophers who did relentlessly speak in words. What did they sound like? Kant, for example. The really really smart, rational one. Like this.

Music as logic, difficult, complicated, brilliant, unsatisfying, unfulfilling.

One could go back to Plato, who saw shadows in a cave. He had a vision. And a huge question about the shadows he saw. Somebody realized it.

Even the Romans had a philosopher. Marcus Aurelius. He was what is called a stoic. Whatever happens, you accept. I think that’s how it works.

Sure, it hurts. But when it’s time to die, you just die.

Obviously, we’re skipping around. The opposite of Plato was Rousseau, who inspired the Marquis de Sade, unless it was the other way around.

Much (if not much) earlier we get the much smarter than Rousseau Voltaire. Who was more like me.

Which brings us pretty much up to date in philosophy, unless you count the Babe Ruth of philosophy. Christ. Sorry. Didn’t mean to swear.

Well. Sure I do. The Babe is the Babe. Isn’t he?