- RENE DESCARTES: “I would play double the rent next month…and I hope you know it is not impossible for me to pay double the rent next month because everything that is external to me is subject to skepticism and as such the only thing that is certain to me is my own rational existence.
- JOHN LOCKE: “I have realized that I would not be able to pay double the rent next month.”
- DAVID HUME: “Does my poor financial condition engender sentimentality in you because all our rational thoughts are subordinate to the strength of our own self-same passions?”
- IMMANUEL KANT: “The concept of rent is nothing but an idealist doctrine. You can’t have knowledge of it if you haven’t experienced it. And since I haven’t paid you the rent this month, you have no knowledge of my rent and therefore, no experience of it either. Which is why you must give me another month to let me pay you.”
- AYN RAND: “Your free will allows you to evict me on the basis of non-payment of rent this month…However DO NOT let Immanuel Kant stay in this place because he is the MOST EVIL tenant in mankind’s history.”
- JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU: “You and I, sir, are nothing but mammals…and mammals should be free from any paternalistic chains of society like rent.”
- SØREN KIERKEGAARD: “Why is a landlord like you so insistent and strict with rent? And why exactly did you choose me as a tenant? Did the burden of choice fill you with dread? Did it fill you with anxiety? Or did it fill you with despair, which is not an emotion but a deeper loss of self? Anyhoo…can I pay next month?”
- MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: “I have come to realize that the rent agreement you have drawn up for us is a classic example of the patriarchal society trying to keep women under a perpetual cycle of subjugation. For this reason and no other financial reason at all, I will not be honoring the agreement this month.”
- JEREMY BENTHAM: “Will paying this month’s rent maximize your overall happiness?”
- JOHN STUART MILL: “Will paying this month’s rent maximize your overall happiness because it follows the principle of a standardized, overarching RULE-BASED UTILITARIANISM which is supremely better than the pathetic hedonistic utilitarianism of the coward tenant before me, Jeremy Bentham?”
- ARISTOTLE: “Can I pay you rent next month? (But only if it acts as a catalyst to my actuality which is the completed state of something that had the potential to be completed.)”
- SOCRATES: “Can I pay you rent next month? (But only if the rent is an accurate representation of a component of the real world depicted through shadows on a cave wall.)”
- NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI: “Can you pay me rent next month?”
- PLUTARCH: “Only God can pay my rent next month.”
- GWF HEGEL: “I can definitely see myself paying you rent next month. And, more importantly, I could really see a guy like me seeing myself paying rent to a guy like you.”
- CONFUCIUS: “The superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his actions. And is lenient with his tenant in rent payment too.”
- MARY ASTELL: “Nothing is more ridiculous than that a man should purchase a vast expense on his house just to obtain a tenant and at the same time, not grant his tenant another month to collect the rent just because she is a woman.”
- SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR: “Throughout the history of house renting, the grand majority of stringent landlords have been men. Thus, we must cast off the blinders of passivity and create a world where tenants are empowered to pay rent a month late, instead of conforming to the restrictive rent contracts of the past.”
Famous Philosophers Ask Their Landlord For An Extension on Their Rent Payment
Divyansh Kulshrestha
Divyansh Kulshrestha is a writer-comedian from India. He's been published in magazines like FlexxMag, BroadwayBeat and EOTB and his work has also featured in fiction magazines. He also runs the Blog of Hell at https://satanblogs.substack.com/