Martin Luther - “Who loves not women, wine and song remains a fool his whole life long.“


So far I’m not a fool according to mister Luther because I love women, wine and song. Although I can’t help but think that he thought:

• homosexuality is wrong; if you don’t love women (yes even if you are a lesbian or a heterosexual guy) you are a fool.
• anything but wine is bad; so if you love your beer or milk you are a fool.
• if you hate song; then you were a fool (which I have to agree with him on this one)

However all these things are conjugated with an “and” and in logic for the consequent to be true all of the antecedents must be (simultaneously) true. Therefore if you don’t love women and you don’t love wine and you don’t love song, then you will be a fool. However if you just love one of those antecedents then you’re not a fool. This is because you just made the antecedent false and therefore the consequent must also be false. So you better love either women, wine or song or all of them. So in other words, in order to be a fool for the rest of your life, you have to hate women, wine and song.



Then I started to think a little more and I wondered if it would’ve made a difference if he had said “If he who loves not women, wine and song then he remains a fool his whole life long” (he ≡ she). So I started to write this out in a logical way which is,


Let P be: loves not women, wine and song then,

loves not women, wine and song

≡ loves not (women, wine and song)

≡ loves not women or not wine or not song

and let Q be: a fool his whole life

Then using the most common known truth table known in logic …


(P=T, Q=T) If you don’t love one of those things and you are a fool then you make the statement true.

(P=T, Q=F) If you don’t love one of those things and you aren’t a fool then you make the statement false.

(P=F, Q=T) If you don’t love all of those things and you are a fool then you make the statement true.

(P=F, Q=F) If you don’t love all of those things and you aren’t a fool then you make the statement true.


Therefore in order to make the statement (”If he who loves not women, wine and song then he remains a fool his whole life long”) false, you would have to not love one of those things (women, wine or song) and you can’t be a fool your whole life. I think someone can indeed not love one of those things; however in one point or another it is hard to imagine that same someone hasn’t ever been a fool during their life, ever. If you can tell me that you’ve never been a fool your entire life (which I can disprove you have been a fool at one point, with logic) and that you don’t love one of those things then that statement would be false. Otherwise no matter what, you are a fool.


So either the words of mister Luther are wrong, or the fundamentals of logic is wrong. We know that logic can’t be wrong. So Luther had to be wrong, right? But the man was brilliant, so he must have been loving his wine, loving a women and he must of been loving song when he came up with this statement. Which is when he probably realized he was a fool that he hadn’t loved all 3 at the same time before. I know for a fact that loving women, wine and music is indeed not a foolish thing to do.


I guess logic can really find the truth.

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