Kmflett's Blog

13th October

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that social media has thrown interesting light on an aspect of the relationship between beards and philosophers.

Michael Rosen drew attention to the Latin term barba crescit caput nescit, which Mary Beard helpfully explained means ‘a beard doesn’t make a brain’.

Behind this however are a number of assumptions about beards and philosophers, some of which may have been pogonophobic.

One view is that the Roman ruling class thought the beards of Greek philosophers were too long and this threw doubt on their wisdom.

Its thought, in this context, that the razor for shaving was introduced in the sixth century by Roman King Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 BC) although surviving images suggest that he still maintained a beard

The issue of beards and philosophers was one that also exercised Karl Marx in a much later century.

In his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843) he criticised Hegel for suggesting that a beard informed how some one thought. In the later Heroes of the Exile (1852), he mocked those who retired to grow ‘a beard, without which no prophet can succeed’. The point being again as in the Latin phrase that there is no connection between wearing a beard and producing worthwhile thoughts on things..

Making the link can in itself be pogonophobic