"A toothless prophet is not listened to with the respect that is his due," mumbled Voltaire, who was famous for his gummy grin. On the head of the pessimist Schopenhauer sprouted two ridiculous tufts that made him resemble the poodles he so famously preferred to the company of humans. Heidegger's little square moustache looked better on Hitler. Hegel had the baggy facial skin of a geriatric bloodhound. John Stuart Mill looked like a skull with sideburns, a product no doubt of his utilitarian diet.

"Wait," Girlfriend called out. "Plato was a shag!"

Sure enough, he looked like Cary Grant in a toga.

"But the statues are all fake, made four hundred years after he died. There's no real images of him anywhere."

Then a revelation came to us. Plato was the problem. With his ideals of other-worldy perfection and beauty he turned his eye away from the real world, while pig-faced Socrates and the motley crew of repulsives that followed him, rubbed our noses in reality. Perhaps, we thought, this could be the flaw in our culture: we've been so obsessed with platonic idealised beauty that we've failed to face the immense ugliness behind the skin-deep smiles.

¶ 8:25 AM