There’s a chart doing the rounds on social media, ranking philosophers by how punk they are. Hobbes and Heidegger, it says, are “basically a cop”; while for Dionysus the Renegade, Marx and Parmenide, it declares: “They’re not punk, punk is them.” I have no way of knowing how true this is, or whether Žižek belongs so close to Engels, for example. To memorise this list would be beyond useless, like retaining the instructions for a plane you have neither licence for nor any reasonable prospect of flying. Yet, here I am, trying to memorise it;........

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