The Story of Habermas's Chair

The extraordinary professor was a professor without a chair. Until two years later when he left the chair that he was without, preferring to be seated. There was a chair prepared elsewhere, left vacant by someone else, someone who had wronged him; someone who, as he saw it, had tried to to sit on him. Comeuppance came. He now had the other man's chair. The chair was procured, as these things often are, not by circumstance but by the enemy's friend.

Philosophically, he was content. Sociologically, he was a victor. He was seated. But time unseated him, and he left the chair, preferring now to stand and direct further South. And there he remained, chairless, institutional rather than universal. Until his masterwork completed, he took against standing, preferring to direct from a seated position. And so he returned to the chair he had left, the only chair that had ever been his, the chair of his enemy: the chair he left vacant ten years before. He remained in that chair for ten more years, until he walked, in order, finally, to sit things out.

But there was to be no rest. For eternity permanently visiting, he is now condemned to crouch.