The late Victorian poet and critic, Lionel Johnson, records a telling little anecdote about his friend Bertrand Russell, who had been a classmate of his at Winchester. The story goes that Bertie, despite being a younger son, was permitted to take a role in some portion of the obsequies of his grandfather- the great Whig politician- which solemn occasion, it pleased the monarch, Earl Russell had so faithfully served, to grace by her own august presence.
As is well known, Russell's father was an agnostic- indeed, his Will had stipulated that his children be raised in no religious faith ; a provision the Court of Chancery set aside on the plea of his relict- but Russell was already attracted to Buddhism- indeed, Johnson's father had tried to keep him from corresponding with Russell for fear he be infected with this foreign heresy.
It is not known what effect the appearance of the Fidei Defensatrix- such being the title of England's Queen since Tudor times- on the budding philosopher. What is certain is that gasps of horror met his assertion, delivered in a thin and piping, but all too audible, voice that 'The King is nekkid! Why is the King nekkid?'
'We are not amused' said the Queen. 'We are' Bertie replied, 'we can see your dangly bits!'. 'We don't have dangly bits', the Queen replied, 'We are a woman. OMG, don't tell we you mean our titties! That's fucking lèse-majesté, that is! Disparaging the Queen's droopy, I repeat droopy, not dangly, bits is a capital offence! Off to the Tower with that shitty little toerag!'
'I made no reference to your man-boobs, Majesty,' Bertie chirped up in an emollient tone, 'I meant your cock and balls. You see, you have been hoodwinked by your tailors. You think you are wearing costly garments, but you are actually completely naked. I, a little child, have been able to tell you what none of your courtiers dared. As a reward for my candor, let me serve you, Majesty, as your new Prime Minister.'
'Fuck we!', the Queen exclaimed, 'Is the lad utterly fucked in the head? Can't he see we is an old woman wearing plenty of clothes?'
'Queenie, dear,' Bertie's quick-witted mother wheedled in the accents of her native glens and lochs, 'forgive ma wee bairn. He has become a Buddhist so as to better serve you in your capacity as Empress of India. Thus he sees you not as you are in this birth but as some great Indian Emperor who lived long ago and whose dangly bits were of such prodigious size that he, in order to be the more resplendently clothed in but the shock and awe of majesty, hired tailors who dealt in invisible fabrics. The meaning is, your reign over the Hindus will be similarly celebrated as a Golden Age. Your successors however might have to expose their dangly bits otherwise some half naked faqir, of a type well known in torrid zones, might seduce those heathens from their duty of obedience to your heirs. Tell you what, if you think the fellow is too stupid to be Prime Minister, why not send him to India as Viceroy?'
'We would,' the Queen graciously replied, 'If we were amused. But we aint. We've got the hump something rotten'.
It was for this reason that Russell made his mark not in Politics but in Philosophy. The moral of this story is that unconscious nudity is the adjoint functor of conscious Royalty. Global representability means nakedness if Kingship as a universal has global existence. By Yoneda's lemma a universal king is globally naked with visible dangly bits from every perspective.
Anyway, this is the sort of shite Tambrams appointed Professors of Philosophy at Oxford should be writing. The maths may be wrong and the English may be wrong and the facts may be wrong but, taken all in all, the thing just feels so-ooo right.
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