Excerpts from Philosophers’ Breakup Letters Throughout History - The New Yorker

By Julia Edelman

June 10, 2015

Friedrich Nietzsche, September, 1882.

For our entire relationship, I was absolutely and irrevocably miserable. I can see now that you used me purely as a means to an end. Don't you know how that makes me feel? It is imperative that you reflect on the meaning of universal law, and stop doing that thing you did with your tongue. I hated that.—Immanuel Kant

What are we even doing anymore? With every passing day, you grow more isolated from your labor. We have not made love in over a month, even after I was cured of that rash, and was so certain that we would celebrate appropriately. I demand justice from this bourgeois hand-job hell they call "relationships."—Karl Marx

Do you remember that day with the ducks? It was cold and rainy and the foreboding sky tried to seal our fate with each gust of wind. We hurried underneath the nearest awning, where we came upon a family of ducks nestled together, and I remember looking at you and thinking, "This can't last long." But what ever does? Listen to me when I say that just as a bee abandons its flower once pollination is complete, you too must move onward, or go under. One day soon you will meet a man, and he will rise like a phoenix from the ashes, and it is my greatest hope that he will not give you syphilis.—Friedrich Nietzsche
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It pains me to admit it, but Socrates was right about you. You are incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself. When was the last time you even came to see me lecture at the Academy? I have been lost in a state of denial for long enough. Now I finally realize that your love is not true. Your beauty is transcendent, yes, but painfully abstract. Leave me to grapple with the material world. Be gone.—Plato

I drink, therefore I am . . . drunk. Ha ha! I thought this would be easier after my sixth glass of wine, but alas, it is still absolutely terrible. Oh, how my world grows smaller when I think of you not in it, and—no, you know what? Let me start over. Philosophy is like a tree, and it has all these branches that extend outward, but you're like a shrub. Cute and small, but not well versed in rationalist thought. Do you get what I'm trying to say?—René Descartes
My dear little girl, I visited the Balzac exhibit the other day and immediately knew what had to be done. I am terribly in love with you, and yet I despise you. Try to understand: I think of you in those small, delicate moments, like when a squirrel hurries across the allée or a homeless man pleasures himself in the bushes of les Tuileries. It might be time that you find someone else who shares your interest in morally evolved threesomes.—Jean-Paul Sartre

J.P., you are an ass.—Simone de Beauvoir

I will proceed to break down our relationship into three stages. Our first stage is defined by aesthetics. I walked down one of my favorite crooked streets in Copenhagen, watched you step out of a carriage, and knew I must have you. The second stage of our existence is an ethical one. While I desired to lay my eyes on your hidden flesh, I recognized that you had recently revealed your body and soul to my good friend Hans, and knew he would be pissed if I tried anything. Our third and final stage is religious. I did not care much for Hans, and so I seduced you. However, we have both committed a tremendous sin, and thus we must end this immoral though titillating tryst immediately. God bless.—Søren Kierkegaard

Say goodbye to my John Cocke!—John Locke

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