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How to Play Philosophical Soccer

Essays on technology, psycho­analysis, philosophy, design, ideology & Slavoj Žižek
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Appreciation

July 5, 2014

How to Play Philosophical Soccer

Aristotelian: regardless of the final score, the team that practiced the hardest wins.

Benthamian: each team’s players stand directly in front of the opposing goal, kicking in balls as fast as possible for 90 minutes.

Kantian: a goal is worth zero points, and 1 point is subtracted for each rule violation.

Randian: 1 person on each team. At the start of each game, both players demand that the other acknowledge their inherent superiority and forfeit. The game ends in a draw.

Hobbesian: the referee unifies both sides into a single team under his rule, forming an orderly bureaucracy to coordinate scoring of goals

Rawlsian: before the game begins, the players don’t know which team they are on, but they must decide what the final score will be

Levinasian: the players gaze into each others’ eyes for 90 minutes in a profound encounter with radical alterity.

Lacanian: each team fantasizes that they started the game down by one point, but they unconsciously sabotage their own team whenever they’re about to score

Habermasian: each team tries to persuade the other that their soccer strategy would be more successful; the game is played inside a cafe

Hegelian: each team tries to negate the other in an effort to affirm the certainty of their being, but the winning team discovers they are really the losers because their victory is dependent on the recognition of the defeated team.