Scoundrels

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel

Dr Johnson

There is a rather good remark of Richard Ingrams about this. He says that this is not a fact about patriotism but a fact about scoundrellism. You know what he means, and he's right of course. But no linguist/philosopher i know of has an analysis of `aboutness' that gives a way of making this true. It reminds me a bit of the challenge of making sense of the remark (by Ken Dodd's lawyer at his trial for tax fraud) that
``Some accountants are comedians but no comedians are accountants''

Find a way of formalising that that works! And, while you are about it, explain why the film Amadeus is actually about Salieri not about Mozart.

Click here for last week's bon mot
Click here for next week's bon mot

Return to Thomas Forster's home page