Abstract

Philosophers acquired their designation in ancient times, in consequence of a becoming modesty. Philosophers love cleverness, acuity, fertility in inventing novel arguments, and ingenuity in finding surprising counter‐examples. The great virtues of clarity, concision, and coherence have immunized the profession against the stylistic barbarity of Continental philosophy, which has had a disastrous effect, especially on academic culture, severely limiting the ability of those with advanced education to contribute to the intellectual needs of our society. Wittgenstein felt that no philosophical problem could be solved but only dissolved, since no such problem is real, philosophy in his view being nonsense through and through. An artist, whose project is painting portraits of art‐world figures as famous works of art, has painted a portrait of the author as a bust of Socrates.