All across the world, subscribers to the infamous Playboy magazine shed a tear as founder Hugh Hefner passed into legend. The godfather of the sexual revolution has finally gone to the afterlife to claim his 72 virgins for his saint-like work of making pornography popular. Men and women are left wondering who will take his mantle as the chief degenerate and ideological leader to America’s favorite pastime: pornography.

These folks can rest easy knowing that even though Hefner is gone, his philosophy lives on.

Let’s just take a moment to give kudos to Hefner for making his name synonymous with pornography and sex. Everything joking aside, it takes special effort to become the man known for making masturbation mainstream. 

On a philosophical level, Hefner was no René Descartes, but he surely pretended to be. Hefner produced a volume of articles in his magazine titled “The Playboy Philosophy,” in which he lays out his credo and rationale for his endeavors.

Famed conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. deconstructed Hefner’s ideas: “Mr. Hefner insists — and many agree, including professors and ministers and sociologists. It is a movement of sorts, and its bible is an apparently endless series, published monthly by Mr. Hefner, entitled “The Playboy Philosophy,” the key insight of which is that “a man’s morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience.”  

“The trouble with Hefner’s law is that society is composed of nothing more than a great number of individuals, and if each man’s morality is defined merely to suit himself, then everyone will endure the consequences of the individual’s autonomously defined ethics,” Buckley said.

Buckley’s counter exposes the massive flaw in “The Playboy Philosophy” — what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander. If society cannot regulate themselves to a certain set of agreed upon morals, the consequence will be a morally lawless society.

The agenda behind “The Playboy Philosophy” can be broken down more simply: Hefner wants people to live like him. Some people might think having Hefner’s life or living his lifestyle would be pretty swell, but consider for a moment how taxing it must be to be consumed with pornography and sex for decades on end.

At some point, having a life revolved around these things has to be unhealthy. How detrimental it was to Hefner’s own psyche, the world will never know. And it is noble of him to live according to his personal philosophy for so long. However, the Playboy philosophy demands more than admiration. It encourages and facilitates participation. The sad part is this participation can be discreetly mailed to your house for a small monthly fee.

To share in Hefner’s world, his philosophy dictates we must live our lives to please ourselves and ourselves only. This hedonistic approach to life isn’t exactly an original idea by Hefner. However, he became the poster boy for it during the sexual revolutions of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

The most detrimental thing Hefner did was live an incredibly long, public life, with ”public” being the key term.

For decades we saw images and videos of Hefner smugly grinning from his trademark robe while surrounded by beautiful, busty women — women whom he made a fortune off of by objectifying them as vessels for pleasure. This went on for 50 plus years and only served to falsely solidify Hefner’s philosophy as attainable and sustainable.

The passing of Hefner has brought us no closer to being rid of the philosophy he embodied. His was a philosophy grounded in degeneration and perverseness, which was once reserved for the most fringe parts of society, has now been cemented into our culture even further by his passing.

If at all possible, the playboy philosophy has to die with Hefner. Hefner built an empire on personal philosophy and tried to, with some success, sell it to the public. But, as Buckley noted in 1966, this philosophy is only practical for the hedonistic individual and not society as a whole. A truth still relevant 51-years later.

Though Hefner has become a household name, let’s remember him for what he truly was: a hedonistic, perverse nymphomaniac who would see young boys all across the world be the same.

It is strange anyone would mourn the passing of such a fringe character, yet here we are in 2017, and men and even women are mourning him as an icon. A man who most reasonable parents would never let near their child.

Let’s banish Hefner’s memory and ideas back to the farthest corners of society with the weirdos he belonged with and remember him only as the inspiration behind the most overused, unoriginal Halloween costume.

Jacob Maranto is 21-year-old mass communication senior from Plaquemine, Louisiana.