In our quest to find out whether the glass was half empty or half full, we first asked the world’s great philosophers. Here are their responses.

• Leibniz says: This is the fullest of all possible glasses.

• Schopenhauer says: Everything sucks, including the glass.

• Thales says: The glass is completely full because the air in the top half is also water.

• The mereological nihilist says: There is no glass.

• Aristotle says: The glass is actually half empty but possesses the potentiality to be half full.

• Anselm says: In using this vessel as part of thine shitty comedy operation, thou hast offended its unfathomably great honor. (sighs) Looks like we’re gonna have to set you on fire, bud.

• The logical positivist says: Your question is not only extremely annoying but also utterly meaningless.

• The panpsychist says: Why don’t you just ask him, man?

• Plato says: The glass halfway participates in the form of fullness.

• Spinoza says: On God or nature, you brought me back to life just to ask me that?

• The phenomenal conservative says: It seems totally obvious that it’s half full.

• The solipsist says: The glass doesn’t exist and neither do you. Oh, you disagree with that? That’s just what a nonexistent person would say.

• The analytic philosopher says: Okay, let’s unpack this a little … [begins a seven hour monologue discussing the precise usage of the terms involved and their history, making heavy use of symbolic logic and Bayes’ Theorem all the while. His conclusion: “I dunno bro, it’s probably just semantics or something.”]

• The continental philosopher says: Hark upon the serendipitous quintessence with which we must cogitate upon such a query - multitudinous intrepid spirits hath ruminated upon this antique problem passim the eons; for the portion of this individuated subjectivity, think he that the chalice mays perchance be halfway empty - if considered from a certain point of view, but that, in pure disreflective beingness - if perchance such a thing might there be - the query musts finally remain unanswered; or perhaps there is no that such to be gobbledegooked; perchance instead it be that gobbledebooking shall not maintain apace of the clandestine ruminations liken to … [he continues on like this for the next fifteen minutes, liberally using many obscure words and several he just made up (as well as all punctuation marks save periods). One of our interns gets the best sleep of her life. Towards the end he begins shouting in French, throws the glass out the window, and faints]

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Some other people wandered in and wanted to tell us what about the glass. We kind of felt sorry for them, so we wrote down their answers too.

Our intern sighs and asks “Okay, y’all think the glass is half empty?”

• Jordan Peterson responds: [chuckles] I’m terrified that it might be, how’s that? … Y’know, Bucko, you use words like “full” and “empty,” just assuming we know what they mean, but we don’t. Fullness, it’s like, it’s what makes you get out of bed in the morning – I know you aren’t full, I’m bloody well not. None of us are really full. We’re all at least a little empty (that was Nietzsche’s core insight). If the glass isn’t full then it’s like we have no set point in our hierarchy of values! And then, like, how are you gonna do anything at all?

• Christopher Hitchens says: The glass is a totalitarian autocracy – a vitreous North Korea. It is ultimate wickedness and ultimate stupidity.

• R.C. Sproul says: What’s wrong with you people?!?! You just keep standing there, calling this glass half full, but you know perfectly well that it’s half empty. Everyone out there, despite their protestations to the contrary, knows this glass is half full. There are no half - glassers, only full glass - haters and liars. [steps back, looks at our intern very intensely, basks in his own eloquence and moral superiority]

• An Instagram commenter says: The GLASS is the HYPRONIC frequency!! You KEEP trying to MEASURE the GLASS. EAT SHIT AND DIE!! It has AURA INNUMERABLE!!