why on earth should architecture's role be "protecting real people"?

the silent hollow death has nothing to do with the mannerisms of some egghead architects that the real people wouldnt recognize if rem crept up and bit them in the ass.

I read deconstructivst philosophy occassionally when i suffer from insomnia.

nice read. could it be in views section?

Jacques Derrrida is dead and Andy warhol is into his 16th minute .

now pls can we proceed to our pink coloured corinthian columns on prada facades.

oh, you're a terrorist? for a minute i thought you said theorist...to the freakin things themselves. wheres the beach?

har har meta.

Do you not understand or are you just being pithy?

Did I really just read that gibberish? Was this post written 15 years ago? DECONSTRUCTIVISM HAS BEEN DEAD FOR MANY YEARS NOW! The egghead practitioners of it still rule some of the Ivy League campuses for now, but they are beginning to look as sorry as Stanley Tigerman and Robert Venturi!

OOOOOOOOOH, COOOOOL! LOOK WHAT MY COMPUTER CAN DO!!!!!

We are still in deconstructivism man. Zaha is deconstructivism. So is Rem. So is Herzog and Chipperfield and Greg Lynn and Nox and everyone else. Its alittle wordy, but are we really that lost?

frankly i'm tired of all the nomenclature.

just be yourself.

Sorry. I forgot its not cool to actually think anymore. Next time I'll dumb it all down and slap some sexy graphics on it.

well, I dare say a lot of it isn't really deconstructivism-but just style and fashion. Far from the NY 5...

Where's the beach?

Under the pavement.

ahah nice one 765

Whew…the tone on some of these threads…just downright bitter- first the Yale Blows thread and now this. Oe, since you seem so err…righteous- sort of a caustic proselytizer- perhaps you would be willing to back your assertion up to us non-thinking unintelligent folks? Are there some readings or manifestos that you might point to that would suggest the aforementioned architects would and should be considered deconstructivists? Perhaps with the exception of Tschumi, I think that you would be hard pressed. (and yes, I realize that Wigley threw in Rem and Zaha- but come-on). Perhaps, “Deconstructivism” is your convenient moniker for the state of contemporary architecture? If that is the case it is a theory that has been widely discredited in academia for at least the past 10 years (even though it has left many academics scratching their heads trying to fill the void) . Text based “critical” autonomous architectural production, what little there was of it, is really thing of the past. Even Derrida, arguably the chief theorist, towards the end of his life tried to distance himself from the word “Deconstructivism”.

Curiously, that which you decry as being dead in the water, “PO-MO”, I would argue still frames the age that we are living in and best sums up your argument, some of which I have some sympathy towards- architecture of the “high” has lost its social relevance, and its ability to be anything more than a fashion statement- a vapid capitalist enterprise. True, but then again, what do you give a culture that looks at Vegas as a Pollyanna? “sleekness, moodiness and untamed graces” – an architecture of pleasure- all pleasure and no pain. Besides, it’s about time that architects get to have some fun in this game. Lighten up “man”.

I believe being yourself requires a great deal of thinking.

exactly...although j may have been attempting a rhetorical hit below the belt... i am not from the position of being for or against decon
(as most deconstructivist would urge you to be), i am against the branding of a doctrine, and diluting the intentions of those who choose to draw from those ideals. yes be critical, but dimissing deconstrictivism (and all that you consider to be deconstuctivist) as baseless sexy allure i think limits the open-endedness of your own "architectural discovery".

btw, j, i went to gt for undegrad as well. do i know you? feel free to email me if you want to maintain your anonymity.

i was seduced by decon many years ago.....it was interesting for awhile until i realized that it was just the bastard child of post-modernism and couldn't really sustain itself as anything more a than a cute little cartoon.....notice how even the decon fathers (tschumi, libeskind, hadid, etc) have moved onto much more modernist ideas

Sorry for the jabs, I kinda wanted to see an actual discussion about this rather than just getting picked on for my [bad] writing.


meta,

I think your reaction to deconstruction is fine, Im glad we are mostly on the same page. Most of my understanding comes from of gramatology and essays on differance and post-structuralism. The way I understood it, to be as simple as I can be, is that the whole structure of human language and thought is based on pre-assumed positives, presence over absence, similar over different, logic over instinct, etc, and that these logocentrisms have no ultimate basis, and deny us the ability to think beyond them. The ultimate goal is to cut to the quick of reality and operate purely as lived process, but to get there, we must first deconstruct our preconceptions. I am being overly acute, but I think this is what relates most clearly to the architectural response.


I would define deconstructivism as an architecture who's primary intellectual basis lies in deconstruction, yes, derrida, tschumi, eisenman, vidler, etc. I agree early on alot of architects took this quite literally, even libeskind now has a very literal expression. Now I think we are being somewhat more true to the concepts, differance, disjunction, an utter lack of faith in preconceived notions of archetype and goodness, architecture as a process of design rather than an end product, etc. Deconstructivism to me is any architecture whos primary focus, and primary strengths, lay in the deliberate abuse and conflict of pure spaces and geometries. This is usually characterized by an utter absence or at the very least intentional destruction of iconography and symbolics. Program is characteristically decentralized, de-rationalized, or at least intentionally masked or juxtaposed. Zaha, Gehry, and Libeskind use it formally and spatially, Koolhass, mvrdv, and foa use it programmatically, lynn and nox use it as their design process, but the root is the same. The effect on the user and on the designer I think is quite in its spirit, that the experience of moving through a building is allowed privileged over the 'objective' rationality of its conception, and that the process of design and manipulation takes precedence over an objectively 'pure' end result.

Am I being naive? Does deconstruction have a "point"? It is a process, no? You say you think architecture cannot show forth the deconstruction but I am hard pressed to think of a medium better! Art and music are forever locked in small categories of life, writing is impossible without resting on an irremovable bedrock of signification. Yes, I think we carry out the deconstruction in our manipulations of signification and material and presence, but we do so also in our manipulations of program and use, and in the process of design.


If architecture has missed the ultimate point, I think that is because we just havent gotten there yet. Which is maybe what I was getting at in my first post. Ive run into an increasing number of young architects and artists who are trying to rethink life itself, and trying to operate with it as their primary medium, rather than just carrying out formal exercises in a deconstrutivist spirit. I think this should be our real goal as architects. It seems to me that once weve reached that point, the deconstruction is complete, and the genre comes to an end.

I dont take this as a joke, I take this deadly serious. Everytime you go into a wal-mart and the malaise is almost paralyzing. Positivism is strangling us, and to do nothing to free people from it makes our jobs utterly apathetic and meaningless.

i second oe, deconstructivism was no joke. among other things was an overzealous attempt to commodify a movement, and it turned into academic masturbation before it got of the ground.

metamechanic, are you refering to 'twisting the seperatix'? i studied under kipnis just as he was getting over the whole academic theorizing thing and he had us study that work as it was, simply as an intellectual indulgence. his 'folding in architecture' is a great read and a relevant piece, however.

Sorry for the jabs, I kinda wanted to see an actual discussion about this rather than just getting picked on for my [bad] writing. Im sort of glad Im taken as 'caustic' and 'passionate' rather than rational, I actually take that as a great compliment ha ha.


I think your reaction to deconstruction is fine, Im glad we are mostly on the same page. Most of my understanding comes from of gramatology and essays on differance and post-structuralism. The way I understood it, to be as simple as I can be, is that the whole structure of human language and thought is based on pre-assumed positives, presence over absence, similar over different, logic over instinct, etc, and that these logocentrisms have no ultimate basis, and deny us the ability to think beyond them. The ultimate goal is to cut to the quick of reality and operate purely as lived process, but to get there, we must first deconstruct our preconceptions. I am being overly acute, but I think this is what relates most clearly to the architectural response.


I would define deconstructivism as an architecture who's primary intellectual basis lies in deconstruction, yes, derrida, tschumi, eisenman, vidler, etc. I agree early on alot of architects took this quite literally, even libeskind now has a very literal expression. Now I think we are being somewhat more true to the concepts, differance, disjunction, an utter lack of faith in preconceived notions of archetype and goodness, architecture as a process of design rather than an end product, etc. Deconstructivism to me is any architecture whos primary focus, and primary strengths, lay in the deliberate abuse and conflict of pure spaces and geometries. This is usually characterized by an utter absence or at the very least intentional destruction of iconography and symbolics. Program is characteristically decentralized, de-rationalized, or at least intentionally masked or juxtaposed. Zaha, Gehry, and Libeskind use it formally and spatially, Koolhass, mvrdv, and foa use it programmatically, lynn and nox use it as their design process, but the root is the same. The effect on the user and on the designer I think is quite in its spirit, that the experience of moving through a building is allowed privileged over the 'objective' rationality of its conception, and that the process of design and manipulation takes precedence over an objectively 'pure' end result.

Am I being naive? Does deconstruction have a "point"? It is a process, no? You say you think architecture cannot show forth the deconstruction but I am hard pressed to think of a medium better! Art and music are forever locked in small categories of life, writing is impossible without resting on an irremovable bedrock of signification. Yes, I think we carry out the deconstruction in our manipulations of signification and material and presence, but we do so also in our manipulations of program and use, and in the process of design.


If architecture has missed the ultimate point, I think that is because we just havent gotten there yet. Which is maybe what I was getting at in my first post. Ive run into an increasing number of young architects and artists who are trying to rethink life itself, and trying to operate with it as their primary medium, rather than just carrying out formal exercises in a deconstrutivist spirit. I think this should be our real goal as architects. It seems to me that once weve reached that point, the deconstruction is complete, and the genre comes to an end.

?? that was wierd.

great chapter in thomas fisher's book 'in the scheme of things' about architectural 'fictions', by which he means the stories we tell ourselves and the metaphors we use to trigger response in ourselves and move a project forward. i consider deconstructivist architecture (especially where linked to philosophy/criticism's deconstruction) to be one of these useful metaphors or fictions.

deconstruction a one thing in our box of tools is neither good nor bad. the architectural result that arises from use of deconstruction as the generative fiction is either good or bad on its own, separate from the source material.

oops. deconstruction AS one thing...

ummm.....since the Late Jacques Derrida contended that language was inevitably ambiguous, in all fairness we should make blank posts.

which also makes me wonder if the theory of deconstruction in language would also be effective for eastern asian languages like Chinese and Japanese whose scripts are pictorials ?

or egyptian heiroglyphics or runic symbols ?
hmmm

is there ambiguity in someone putting his/her finger to lips saying " shhhh" to someone else ..could that be construed as a universal language?

hmmm.

We can be all of those things and still act with the necessary diginity for all architecture to be sustainable. I think if there was ever an oath (hypocritics) it would to remember our responsibility to future generations by reducing the damages our fore bearers and politicians have created within our environment.

Can i get change from those 2 cents?

achitechnophilia, in some weird senses the current embrace of sustainability and alternative forms of understanding what it means to construct are outgrowths of the same deconstructivist logics. although everyone always talks about derrida and the french philosopher brigade in terms of laying the ground work for deconstructivism, i might like to think of texts like "the other path" by hernando de soto as a more architectonic exploration of deconstructive logic. has deconstruction left?...yes as a style. but as a conceptual system it has fully permeated academia at all levels..what are the formal resultants of a deconstructive logic? that is an interesting question. i feel like right now that is still being formulated, or maybe it is what it really should be. not a holistic positivist cure-all image of optimised formal solutions, but the performative experimentation with existing logics to deal with the unresolvable or unknown...the moments where the very logic of the system that we dwell within breaks down before our eyes and we have to find a pidgin language to describe what we see.

here here futureboy, my sentiments exactly. That said much of the deconstrcuctivist theorum proported by Derridian texts were left open ended, so as you've said it has evolved from a style and more as an optic or critical apparatus of which to view the practice of architecture, more that just affecting academia. This optic I fear has not permeated much of the doctrines/ or practioners of sustainability.

oe, i see what your getting at with the distinction between litteral deconstructivism (already a historical style) and what your are suggesting is a current practice of 'programatic' deconstruction, oma, mvrdv...etc. i had understood that these architects were generally engaged in a critical evalutation of 'program' of which one possible outcome is the deconstructive process, but not necessarily the only answer, or even the process itself.

are you suggesting that critical re-evalutation always a deconstructive process? or is the current process by which architecture develops essentialy based on a 'deconstruction' (formal and procedural) of past and current conditions, spatial conventions, socio-politic-economic states?

i dont think this is necessarily true, and probably leads to a circular argument, because if the re-evaluation of anything, wether it be concept, program, wall or doorhandle is a deconstruction of that thing, then progress, invention, re-invention are deconstructive, then everything is.

steve ward i think is correct, in that deconstructivism is a litteral or metaphorical process by which architecture is concieved, but i would hesitate to suggest that the work of the current architects you list isdecon because they challenge program or spatial experience.

some of course may be, or at least were in the not to distant past, im just arguing against decon as a general principal.

Hmm. It is possible in some glimmers it is becoming something different. Something about Seattle library feels too oiled in its logic to be properly deconstructivist in conception, maybe jprs influence? Im not sure, its difficult to put something so recent in historical focus. But I would argue the program's arrangement is still in the deconstructivist mindset (rather than some other mode of re-evaluation) in that its qualities are demonstrated by deliberate juxtaposition, that the 'magic' happens in the conflict between elements rather than properly within them. Even so I think the subtle shift can only be found in a small number of works in the last few years.


As far as the sustainables go.. I dont know. Ive been in a prickish place lately, and for some reason I find myself quite enjoying environmental abuse, something about dams and beach detritus and industrial wastelands give me such an emotional charge in their honesty. We dont give a fuck about the environment. Every building constitutes a violent abuse of the natural world, whether in the clearing of the site, the pit mines and clear-cutting and armies of automatons that made its materials possible, the fuel it takes to deliver all that crap to the site and complete the construction, to wrap ourselves up in this cushy little eco-friendly envelope and tell ourselves everything is ok seems disingenuous. Id rather immerse people emotionally in the conflict, make them feel the abuse, and the sacrifice. Theres no reason we need to heat a whole house all the time. we should heat only the spaces we are using when we are using them. Other than that, we should put on a mother fucking sweater.


'But that's me, I could be wrong, maybe it's a terrible tragedy.'

call lemmy caution quick!!!

Just deviating slightly from the topic , I'd like to add that the philosophy of "deconstruction" is no more a recent topic or one that was "created" or formulated by Derrida or Warhol ( all due respect to them )

----------------------

The first known deconstructive debate was held by the Buddhist Philosopher Nagasena with an Indian King Milinda millenia ago.

Its well documented in Mahayana Buddhist literature, Nagasena, through a form of Socratic dialogue, leads the King to agree that the meaning of the word chariot does not derive from nor inhere in the wheel, nor in the axle, nor in the platform, nor in any of the multitude of components into which a chariot can be deconstructed. By this means he is able to demonstrate to his own and the king's satisfaction that the word chariot, and so, by implication, all other denoting words and phrases, does not correspond to an entity in the real world but is merely "a denotation, an appellation, a description, an expression, a name"

from

http://www.amidatrust.com/article_vasubandhu.html


see also

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/The%20Questions%20of%20King%20Milinda.htm

I am with j, too:

"it's all been a joke, all the ideas relating deconstruction to architecture were in jest - an inside joke played on the world by a handful of architects."

That's how I feel about it. A huge joke that's kept (keeping) a large number of people fulling employed and ensuring more folks (like me) pay big bucks to go listen to their bs teachings.


It's funny, really, when you read all this stuff, like Tschumi's juxtaposing program, then go into the real world and realize that it's being done all over the place, but instead of bs driving it is logic, studies, and money. That one made me laugh too.


Thanks for the morning smile!

is the concept of a deconstructive logic truly paradoxical. any systemic analysis constitues a logical system. sorry to harp on this metamechanic, but i personally feel that to fully place oneself (or an approach to the profession) outside of systemic analysis is a very problematic situation. I've worked under the "intuitive" designer on several occasions and it is the most frustrating and non-productive process that can be imagined...exactly because it is inherently about a form of systemic logic...just one that the perpetrator either does not want to admit to themself or to others. even the most intuitive sketches by Coop Himmelb(l)au still are determined by a structural logic that then informs the reconstitution of program and form. to state that anything is outside of logic is to propose an inability to move forward in any informed manner.

trace, ironic that you think its a joke, given your moniker.

nevermore: "I'd like to add that the philosophy of "deconstruction" is no more a recent topic or one that was "created" or formulated by Derrida or Warhol ( all due respect to them)"

Somewhat true (I once considered writing a masters thesis relating The Diamond Sutra to Derrida's decon -- then I came to my senses and went to architecture school instead -- Did I come to my senses? Somebody kill me.). However, “Decon” in architecture was a direct derivative of Derrida's philosophy, and thus carries with it this specificity.

Why do all my literary academic friends say "deconstruction," while my architecture friends say "deconstructivism? Because "deconstruction" is a mode of critique, rooted in philosophy and appropriated by EVERYBODY. It is a semiotic critique (read: an intellectual act) with very clear political implications (There are few of the so-called post-structuralists who did not have strong affiliations with Marxism, at least at the outset of their careers).

Characteristically, however, the architecture world managed to take this intellectual act and strip it of its political implications and reduce it to a formal exercise resulting in a style, an "ism." (this was the 80s, though it happened again with Deleuze in the 90s -- Reinhold Martin mentions it here).

So now, here we are in this thread discussing deconstruction in a very generalized sense as anything that sort of resembles what was a very specific manner of thinking. Specific and radical. Derrida was labeled an "intellectual terrorist."

I think that a real critique of the continuing threads of deconstructivism (Lars Spuybroek would be very troubled by your assessment of Nox, by the way) needs to be very specific, as well. The trend in the 90s that embraced Gilles Deleuze was, in part, and continues to be a reaction against the semiotic trappings of pomo and deconstructivism that reduced architecture to “text,” as well as social constructivist theories.

Lumping a lot of specific, disparate ways of thinking and designing under one umbrella against which to rail, so that we may move on to the next big umbrella (I actually think we are several umbrellas beyond decon, incidentally), is not very useful (though it seems to be the way the architecture world operates).

This is too scattered and long …

futureboy: "to fully place oneself (or an approach to the profession) outside of systemic analysis is a very problematic situation."

Derrida himself: "But all these destructive discourses and all their analogues are trapped in a sort of circle. This circle is unique. It describes the form of the relationship between the history of metaphysics and the destruction of the history of metaphysics. There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to attack metaphysics. We have no language-no syntax and no lexicon-which is alien to this history; we cannot utter a single destructive proposition which has not already slipped into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest."(This essay, the one most often offered in survey books and courses, is Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. It's actually pretty good.)

exactly public.
and on your point of deconstruction vs. deconstructivism...that is definitely an interesting point of ambiguity perpetrated in architecture via the mark wigley exhibition of name: Deconstructivist Architecture.
This merged and made ambiguous the formal reconstitution of Constructivism as an apolitical formal positivism (as evident in the work of Tschumi or Hadid) and the attempts to reconceptualize the process of architecture based on Derridean forms of critique (as evident in the works of say Eisenman). hence the issue of deconstructivism as a style and deconstruction as a system of critique and what i would term "deconstructed or deconstructive logic"

Decon was largely, imo, and I admit that I quickly grew tired of reading too much without examples or tests, a marketing movement. What was the name of that exhibit that started it all?

Here is is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructivism
I am happy they said 'some architects...were influenced by' instead of assuming everyone really cares

So yeah, I love Eisenman and Hadid and Coop. They were all hugely influential in my work. But it's the architecture that inspires(d) me, not the theory. If it can't be tested or is not tested, it's just words. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes inspirational, but largely of no consequence to the world at large (or even our profession, with the exception of a few with them rose colored glasses on).

The Public - so you know where my name came from, eh? not that it's isn't obvious to many, but most, I assume, just think of trace paper.

okay, sorry about that. my misconception.
and i do understand publics posts...maybe my words are getting slightly misconstrued here as well. in my use of wording...the devising of a system for approach allows the difference to be negotiated at that point were the systemic logic falls apart, but implicitly derives its legitimacy by the surrounding system.
and on your point of philosophy i guess this is personally a bit of an issue that i'm constantly grappling with...and i know it is always the achilles heel of architecture. i want to utilize philosophy to aid in developing an approach that is coherent, yet true philosophy is in direct opposition to this act. i guess thats why i attempted to reframe the discussions earlier on in terms of a negotiated situation such as that which de soto describes and proposes which allows a potential movement beyond that situation and rereading of the system itself.

1. I agree I am being quite liberal with the deconstructivist umbrella, and generalities are always problematic. Yes, maybe spruybroek too is sliding into something new and different, but the whole process of moving back and forth from the analog to the digital, the very idea of <create primitive -> modify> that defines cg architecture seems very decon to me. I think one can also find a lot of Tschumi in his thinking about use and program.


2. I also wanted to clarify that I wasnt blanketly attacking deconstruction as a mode of working, mostly I was attacking the mediums it has become so absorbed in. I think they are wonderful exercises, and have brought us a long way, but that the 'fashion' of it has worn thin on me, and we should move into more tangible realms.


3. In terms of the whole intuitive debate, I honestly have no idea. I guess that is the greatest difficulty in deconstruction, it exposes the ultimate baselessness of every thing we say and every intention we have. The word "logic" begins to fail as a term. The distinction between action and intention becomes unclear. Obviously, as liberating as it is, it is a very dangerous place to work from. But in the end, wouldnt we rather be at least aware of these contradictions? Rather than remain blindly absorbed in them?

perception of 'deconstructive architecture' being naive is naive. it was a time back then and , like any other 'movement', only partly deliberate, a term that had relevance in its way then and now has a difference relevance now. discrediting it would be tantamount to descrediting your childhood memories, mocking the younger you for living in a world that had different, even if tangential, meanings to the one you live in now. it is absurd, measuring sticks differ.

equally that means one shouldn't be using the same language in the same way. to call zaha, tschumi , gehry...etc a decon architect would now be if not implausible then flaccid, lacking description.

with all due respect to oe's articulate, passionate and (i suspect) knowingly whimsical declaration upstairs, if there is anything coherent or clear from this post, it is that an elaborate study of the different trajectories of deconstructive thinking applied to architecture (and that includes but is not equal to deconstructivism) would be interesting.by that, i mean an intelligent study of the culture as well as the buildings...not yet another monograph. and not a simplistic pro vs con.

this conversation needs...

Causes of death of philosophers :

Abelard: Nun
Adorno: Bad frankfurter
Albert: Undermind
Anaxagoras: Burned up
Anaximander: Infinite causes
Anaximenes: Evaporated
Anscombe: By intention
Anselm: Disease than which no deadlier can be conceived
Aquinas: First causes
Aristotle: Excessive moderation
Armstrong: Indisposed
Arrow: Voted out
Audi: Durch Technik
Augustine: Hippo
Austin: Executionary act
Ayer: Unverifiable
Bacon, F: Hit by idol in market place
Bacon, J: De trope
Barwise: Bad situation
Belnap: Became irrelevant
Benacerraf: Number was up
Bennett: Taking the consequences
Bentham: Fell off his stilts
Bergson: Elan mortel
Berkeley: Divine neglect
Blackburn: Quasi-life
Block: Trouble with bodily function
Bradley: Absolutely everything
Bratman: As planned
Bruce Le Catt: Curiosity
Burge: Something like arthritis
Buridan: Asinine starvation
Burke: Sublimated
Calvin: Boredom
Campbell, K: Epiphenomenal causes
Camus: The plague
Cantor: Set aside
Carnap: Left the material mode
Cartwright, Nancy: Incapacitated
Cartwright, Richard: Satisfied a negative existential
Cassirer: Symbolic causes
Chisholm: Lost his foundations
Chomsky: Degenerative transformation
Church: Recursive causes
Churchland(s): Eliminated
Coady: No telling
Cohen, G: Missed the marks
Collingwood: Entered history
Comte: Went negative
Copernicus: Revolution
Cournot: Became too improbable
Craig, E: Work of God
Crane: Lost his representations
Cresswell: Outmoded
Dancy: No particular reason
Danto: Artfully transfigured
Darwin: Unfit
Davidson: Radically different schematosis
Dawkins: Suicidal genes
Democritus: Atomised
Dennett: Lost consciousness

Derrida: Deconstructed

Descartes: Stopped thinking
Devitt: Naturalised causes
Devlin: Fell off Clapham omnibus
Dewey: Became part of the environment
Dingler: Unsuccessful experiments
Diodorus: Mastered by the argument
Diogenes: Exposure
Dretske: No indications
Dreyfus: Computerised
Dudman: Conditional causes
Dummett: Unverifiable causes
Duns Scotus: Being univocal to an accident
Dupre: Disorder
Durkheim: Suicide
Dworkin: Lost his rights
Earman: Inextendible world-line
Einstein: Diced with God
Eliot: Eructation of unhealthy souls
Emmet: Passage of nature
Empedocles: Cosmic cycle accident
Epicurus: Nothing to worry about
Feigl: Nomological dangler
Feyerabend: Everything went
Fichte: Non-ego takeover
Field: Weight of numbers
Fine: Shook up
Flew: Met the great equaliser
Fodor: Fell off Granny's knee
Follesdal: Noematheosis
Foot: Ungrounded
Foucault: Disempowered
Frankfurt: Revised his will
Frege: Fell under a concept
Freud: Slipped
Gadamer: Lost horizons
Galen: Lost his sense of humours
Galileo: Stopped moving
Gasset, Ortego y: Circumstancial
Geach: Reference failure
Gentzen: Cut turned septic
Gettier: Fatal counter-example
Gewirth: Dialectical necessity
Glymour: Tripped over his own boostraps
Godel: Became incomplete
Goldman: Unknown internal causes
Goodman: Gruesome bleen infection
Gorgias: Annihilated
Grice: Non-natural
Grosseteste: Encephalitis
Grunbaum: Psyched out
Gupta: Became unstable
Habermas: A discourse condition
Hare: Wrong prescription
Haugeland: Entered excluded zone
Heal: Dissimulation
Hegel: Gave up the Geist
Heidegger: Timeless causes
Heisenberg: Uncertain causes
Hempel: Explained away
Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice
Hilbert: Informal causes
Hinckfuss: Fit of morality
Hintikka: Lost his normal forms
Hobbes: Nasty causes
Hofstadter: Holistic trap
Honderich: Misunderstood causes
Horwich: Deflated
Hume: Unknown causes
Husserl: Phenomenally bad luck
Jackson: Saw red
James, W: The will to leave
Jaspers: Essence exhausted
Jeffrey: Indecision
Johnson, S: Kicked the bucket
Kamp: Ran out of time
Kant: Found the means to his own end
Kaplan: This and that
Katz: Decomposed
Keynes: Entered the long run
Kierkegaard: Sick to death
Kim: Supervened on nothing
Kitcher: Vaulting
Korsgaard: Kant tell
Koslow: Structural failure
Kripke: Went rigid
Kuhn: Paradigm lost
Kyburg: Low frequency
Lacan: Lack
Lakatos: Degenerated
La Mettrie: Machination
Langer: Ran out of new keys
Laplace: Prior arrangement
Leibniz: Monadnucleosis
Lesniewski: De-parted
Levi: Contracted corpus
Levina: Merged with others
Levi-Strauss: Cooked
Lewis, C I: No more givens
Lewis, D: Joined his counterparts
Lipton: Unexplained
Locke: No idea
Lovejoy: Being unchained
Lloyd: loss of bodily humours
Lucretius: Bumped off
Luther: Diet of worms
Lyotard: Post post-modernism
Mach: Unsensational causes
Machiavelli: Intriguing causes
MacIntyre: After-virtue infection
Mackie: An inus condition
Maimonides: Lost his guide
Malcolm: Undreamed of causes
Malebranche: Occasional causes
Marcuse: Became multi-dimensional
Martin, C B: Lockejaw
Marx: Material causes
Matravers: Art attack
Maxwell: Demonic possession
McCall: Branch fell off
McCulloch: Went out of his head
McDowell: Left the space of reasons
McGinn: Case closed
McTaggart: Untimely causes
Meinong: Lack of subsistence
Mellor: By chance
Merleau-Ponty: Perceptions blacked out
Mill: Depsychologised
Millikan: Devolved
Montague: Disfunction
Moore: By his own hand, obviously
Nagel, Ernest: Reduction
Nagel, Tom: Going nowhere
Nerlich: Spaced out
Neurath: Lost at sea
Newcomb: Too boxed
Newton: Kicked the bucket
Nietzsche: Overpowered himself
Noonan: Unidentified assailant
Nozick: Lost track
O'Shaughnessy: Lost the will
Ockham: Accident with razor
Oddie: Flew too close to the truth
Paley: By design
Papineau: Supernaturalised
Paracelsus: Stabbed
Parfit: Mistaken identity
Parmenides: No two ways
Pascal: The wagers of sin
Passmore: 100 years of philosophy
Pavlov: Reflexed
Peacocke: Discontent
Peirce: Abducted
Penrose: Became computable
Perry: Lost himself
Pettit: Stopped responding
Pherecydes: Lice
Piaget: Undeveloped causes
Place: Brained
Plantinga: Of necessity
Plato: Caved in
Pollock: Defeated
Popper: Falsified
Price: Backward causes
Priest: Became more dead than alive
Prior: Past it
Protagoras: Eaten by fish
Putnam: Fell in the twater
Pyrrho: Scepticemia
Pythagoras: Squared on the hypotenuse
Quine: Semantic ascent
Rand, Ayn: Objectified ego
Ramsey: Made redundant
Rawls: Unveiled
Redhead: Robust causes
Reichenbach: Common causes
Rescher: Incoherence
Rorty: No foundations
Rousseau: Contract job
Russell: Vicious circle
Ryle: Gave up the ghost
Salmon: Fishy causal process
Sartre: Nothing doing
Saussure: Parole revoked
Scheler: Became objectively valued
Schlesinger: Became hypertensed
Schlick: Collapsed protocol
Schopenhauer: Involuntary causes
Searle: Chinese food
Sellars: Slipped on slope
Sextus Empiricus: Doubtful causes
Sheffer: Stroke
Shoemaker: Loss of identity
Simons: Departed
Singer: Liberated
Skinner, B F: Bad behaviour
Slote: Had enough
Smart: Dematerialised
Smiley: Multiple conclusions
Smith, A: Invisible hand
Smith, P: Unanalysed
Socrates: Consumption
Sorabji: Four causes
Sperber: Became irrelevant
Spinoza: Substance abuse
Stalnaker: Inquiry pending
Strawson: Unidentified
Sylvan: Lost in jungle
Tanner: Gotterdammerung
Tarski: 'Death'
Taylor: Renounced agency
Taylor, Tre: Excessive Orgasmic Bliss
Thales: Drowned
Tuomela: Group decision
Turing: Solved the halting problem
Unger: Never knew
Van Fraassen: Empirical inadequacy
Vico: Recycled
Von Wright: By obligation
Walton: Make-believe
Warburton: Went back to basics
Weber: Overwork
Wheeler: Manifold causes
Whitehead: Procession
Wiggins: Substantial change
Williams: Bored with immortality
Winch: Witchcraft
Wisdom: Other minds
Wittgenstein: Became the late Wittgenstein
Wolf: Sanctified
Wright: Minimal causes
Zeno: Run over by a tortoise
Spengler - Declined
Yockey - Imperialised
Pythagoras: Squared on the hypotenuse
Dostoyevsky: Doubled

Derrida smoked a pipe ..



I gotta get me a pipe ....

supernova...you must be specific...

words are ambiguous
(Remember..?)