Kant

There is a scene in the film Superman III in which Lorelei Ambrosia, the blonde bombshell, is secretly reading the Critique of Pure Reason. »But how can he say that pure categories have no objective meaning in transcendental logic? What about synthetic unity?« she squeaks, before hurriedly hiding the book and picking up a trashy magazine as her gangster boss enters. The director's choice of book was perfect: no other single work could be so improbable, and so easily recognizable as such by the audience. You might just take Bertrand Russell on a beach holiday, as I once did; but Kant, never. (Incidentally, although she has not quite mastered the jargon, Lorelei's question is a good one.)

Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant, who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar, who could drink you under the table,
David Hulme could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Heigel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just about as sloshed as Shegal.
There's nothing Nietschze couldn’t teach about the raising of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed!
John Stuart Mill (of his own free will) on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away – half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for a dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart – »I drink therefore I am!«
Yes Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!

There is a very strange sense of »getting somewhere« which you feel while being made to read The Critique of Pure Reason. Even after you forget most of what you have read you are still left feeling like the world has taken-on a new transparency.