ABSTRACT
A recent graduate in philosophy from a British university goes to
mainland Europe for a possibly well-earned break. There she meets a
German and a Frenchman and discovers that they too studied philo-
sophy. Keen to engage her in conversation, the two foreigners start to
talk about their favourite philosophers. The names they rattle off sound
familiar: Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Kierkegaard, and
so on. But the graduate is unable to discuss these philosophers with her
new friends. ‘I’ve heard a bit about them,’ she explains (in English),
‘but I’ve never actually studied them’.
