Welcome to Overthink.

The podcast where we, two philosophy professors, talk about intellectual fashions and so much more.

I'm your co-host, Dr. David Pena Guzman.

And I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson.

Philosophers, perhaps because they take themselves to be searching for the naked truth,

have historically expressed nothing but disdain for clothing.

Clothes have been seen as trivial and frivolous and artificial, to the point of

calling into question the very intelligence of those who are interested in them. We see this hatred

for garments in Thomas Carlyle's 1836 book Sartor Resartus, which is just an amazing title for a book,

by the way. It means tailor-re-R-Taylored in Latin.

Oh, really?

I didn't even care enough to look into what it means.

Sartus Rassartus.

But in this book, Carlisle, by the way, it's a satirical text.

It's actually a parody of German idealism for those interested.

But he makes fun of the very idea that there could be a philosopher of clothing.

And in the text, he invents a fictional philosopher named Diogenes.

Let me give this a shot.

Teufelsdruck, whose last name translates into devil's shit.

And anyways, he envisions this fictional character, this philosopher of clothes,

who thinks that everything in the world and in reality boils down to one form of clothing or another.

He uses him to mock the very idea that there could be

...