“So Sybil’s ancestors used to come along and talk to the hermit whenever they were faced with a philosophical conundrum, yes?”
Willikins looked puzzled. “Good heavens, no, sir, I can’t imagine that any of them would ever dream of doing that. They never had any truck with philosophical conundra.* They were aristocrats, you see? Aristocrats don’t notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It’s not vanity, you understand, it’s built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.
Vimes stared at him in admiration. “How in the hell do you know all this, Willikins?”
“Watched them, sir. In the good old days when her ladyship’s granddad was alive he made certain that the whole staff of Scoone Avenue came down here with the family in the summer. As you know, I’m not much of a scholar and, truth to tell, neither are you, but when you grow up on the street you learn fast because if you don’t learn fast you’re dead!”
They were now walking across an ornamental bridge, over what was probably the trout stream and, Vimes assumed, a tributary of Old Treachery, a name whose origin he had yet to comprehend. Two men and one little boy, walking over a bridge that might be carrying crowds, and carts and horses. The world seemed unbalanced.
“You see, sir,” said Willikins, “being definite is what gave them all this money and land. Sometimes it lost it for them as well, of course. One of Lady Sybil’s great-uncles once lost a villa and two thousand acres of prime farmland by being definite in believing that a cloakroom ticket could beat three aces. He was killed in the duel that followed, but at least he was definitely dead.
* Later on Vimes pondered Willikins’ accurate grasp of the plural noun in the circumstances, but there you were; if someone hung around in houses with lots of books in them, some of it rubbed off just as, come to think of it, it had on Vimes.
Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam, 2013.
February 9, 2016
QotD: Aristocrats
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Fun, but overlooks the point that most philosophers in most societies are also aristocrats. But wait, wouldn’t an aristocratic philosopher be very definite about philosophical conundra?
Comment by Steve Muhlberger — February 9, 2016 @ 12:37
In the same way that, for instance, British aristos didn’t want to sully themselves with filthy lucre, I suspect many/most aristocratic philosophers were their time’s equivalent of the permanent university student … using philosophy as a way of avoiding the traditional aristocratic “career path” choices.
Comment by Nicholas — February 9, 2016 @ 16:44
There is usually more than one aristocratic career path; for instance in the medieval period there were lay (and usually military) aristocrats, and clerical/monastic/scholastic aristocrats. When lay and clerical aristocrats fought each other, they were fighting their brothers, sisters and cousins.
Comment by Steve Muhlberger — February 10, 2016 @ 11:42