Readers may find this site of fictitious job and journal rejection letters to Great Philosophers letters amusing.
By and large, the letters are not quite as funny as this fake rejection of Plato's Euthyphro, this fake rejection of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or the last two paragraphs of this real review of Rawls' A Theory of Justice. However, I did find this fake PFO letter from Oxford to A.J. Ayer hysterical, particularly the following passage:
I do realise how disappointing this will be, though I am not particularly sorry not to have better news about your application here. Furthermore, I will not patronisingly remind you that competition for places at Oxford is extremely strong. I should nevertheless point out that you may not invoke a conception of justice or morality in forming an argument for appealing our decision. Such ideas are now considered literally meaningless by the admissions office.
I hope, however, that you will be comforted over Christmas by the fact that any disappointment you may feel is nothing more than mere emotion. You should not, therefore, spend time in trying to reason through or come to terms with our decision since this exercise would inevitably be devoid of analytically verifiable content.
I've written before how these sorts of fictitious reviews seem to me uncomfortably close to reality. How well would Great Works fare if they were sent to contemporary philosophy journals or book reviewers? Not too well, I expect -- and not just because the works themselves are anachronistic, but because of how narrow and conservative disciplinary standards have become (for more on this, see here). Anyway, some funny stuff - and food for thought!
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