When a philosopher dies there is one less star in Heaven. Or so we were once told.
Philosophers guard the spyholes in the firmament.
They are supposed to tell us of the Great Beyond. Last Saturday, The Times carried an obituary of one of the most celebrated philosophers of our age, the American Willard Quine . I understood hardly a word of it. Quine's work was not a window on the Great Beyond but an intellectual microscope applied to games he played with others. If ever there were a philosopher's philosopher it was Quine.