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Zack Galifianakis looks a lot like Socrates — and other philosopher-celebrity lookalikes

Justin Weinberg/Daily Nous
Zack Beauchamp
Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here.

Like most people, professional philosophers get bored sometimes. Recently, a bunch of bored philosophers got so bored they spent some time trying to match famous philosophers throughout history with their celebrity lookalikes. And some of them are actually freakishly accurate.

Washington University at Saint Louis professor Brian Talbot started the matching game, which expanded quickly to Daily Nous, a great news site covering the philosophy profession. Justin Weinberg, the University of South Carolina professor who runs the site, agreed to let Vox reprint some of the results, which are below. Here, for instance, check out how much Scottish Enlightenment great David Hume resembles comedian John Lovitz:

hume lovitz

(Brian Talbot/Daily Nous)

Dashing libertarian political philosopher Robert Nozick looks like George Clooney:

Nozick clooney

(Eric Hagedorn/Daily Nous)

Young Ayn Rand (who isn’t really a philosopher, but whatever) is a dead ringer for Elizabeth Moss:

rand moss

(anon1/Daily Nous)

If they ever make a movie about French poststructural luminary Michel Foucault, John Malkovich should be at the top of the casting list:

foucault malkovich

(Ben Hale/Daily Nous)

Weirdly, Zach Galifianakis looks like a bust of Socrates:

socrates galifianakis

(Justin Weinberg/Daily Nous)

And it’s pretty hard to tell who here is 20th century British philosopher Bernard Williams and who’s the late Law and Order and Broadway star Jerry Orbach:

orbach williams

(Tamler Summers/Daily Nous)

There’s a lot — I mean, really a lot — more over at Daily Nous. Go check it out.

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