A Trespass of Swine

the Porkopolis blog

Considerations of humanity and hogritude, because an insufficiency of pigs is one of the great faults of all that the gods have made manifest to man.

Kierkegaard and the Lüneburg pig

Lüneburg, Germany is the site of a monument to a wild pig of long ago who sacrificed its life and unknowing lead its human hunters to discover the local salt deposits that became a source of great prosperity.

The legend of the Lüneburg salt pig, a Salzsauen or Salzsau in German, accords the wild pig an honored position as the source of the town’s wealth. A portion of the pig’s leg still hangs as a keepsake in a hexagonal glass display case in the town-hall at Lüneburg.

Kierkegaard and pig

I am like a Lüneburg pig. My thinking is a passion. I can root up truffles excellently for other people, even if I get no pleasure out of them myself. I dig the problems out with my nose, but the only thing I can do with them is to throw them back over my head.

 — Søren Kierkegaard, Danish existentialist philosopher writing in Either/Or (1843).


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