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The Philosopher's Shirt

All my friends are dead

Spend enough time with Seneca, Hume and Nietzsche and your closest intellectual companions have all been dead for at least a century. It is a real social problem.

A joke that lands harder the deeper your reading list goes. The full range here — tees, women's tees, sweatshirts and hoodies, all printed to order as you buy them. Excellent company. Terrible availability.

Questions about this design

What does the All my friends are dead design show?
Six cartoon portraits of famous philosophers, each with crossed-out eyes and a lolling tongue, under the line All my friends are dead. The joke is one every keen reader knows – spend your evenings with books and your closest companions turn out to have died a century or two ago.
Which philosophers are on the All my friends are dead shirt?
The faces include Hegel, Bertrand Russell with his pipe, Arthur Schopenhauer with his famous tufts of hair, Jean-Paul Sartre in his heavy glasses and Friedrich Nietzsche with his moustache, joined by a curly-bearded thinker from antiquity. All of them are, regrettably, very dead.
How did Nietzsche die?
Nietzsche collapsed mentally in Turin in January 1889 and never recovered; he spent his last eleven years in the care of his mother and then his sister. He died in Weimar on 25 August 1900, aged 55, after pneumonia and a further stroke. The cause of his breakdown is still debated – the old syphilis diagnosis is now widely doubted.
How did Hegel die?
Hegel died in Berlin on 14 November 1831, aged 61, during the cholera epidemic that had reached the city. Cholera was the official diagnosis, though some historians think a chronic stomach illness is the likelier cause. He was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery, as he had wished, next to Fichte.
How did Schopenhauer die?
Arthur Schopenhauer died peacefully in Frankfurt am Main on 21 September 1860, aged 72, of respiratory and heart failure; his housekeeper found him sitting on his sofa. Late fame had finally arrived in his last decade, mostly thanks to his essay collection Parerga and Paralipomena (1851).
How did Jean-Paul Sartre die?
Sartre died in Paris on 15 April 1980, aged 74, of pulmonary oedema after years of failing health and near-blindness. Around 50,000 people followed his funeral procession through the city. He is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, where Simone de Beauvoir was later laid beside him.
How old was Bertrand Russell when he died?
He was 97. Russell died of influenza on 2 February 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales. Born in 1872, he lived to see logic, physics and politics transformed, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and campaigned against nuclear weapons into his nineties.
Did Schopenhauer really hate Hegel?
Yes, and loudly. In 1820 Schopenhauer began teaching at the University of Berlin and scheduled his lectures at the same hour as Hegel’s; almost nobody came, and the course soon collapsed. For the rest of his life he called Hegel a charlatan and blamed Hegelian fashion for his own obscurity.
Who said reading good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries?
René Descartes, in Part One of his Discourse on Method (1637) – the reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries, a studied conversation in which they show us only the best of their thoughts. It is the respectable version of the joke on this design.
Is All my friends are dead a good gift for a philosophy student or bookworm?
Yes – it suits anyone who prefers Hegel to small talk, from first-year philosophy students to retired teachers. The design comes as a Unisex Classic T-Shirt, Women’s T-Shirt, Sweatshirt, Premium Hoodie, Mug and Sticker.