Today, I would like to discuss philosophy.
Fortunately, I possess the necessary credentials to speak on behalf of philosophy. As an undergraduate, I majored in political philosophy, which is like philosophy involving pantsuits and special interests. My time in the department transformed me from an open-minded sophomore into an insufferable pedant.
Folks, philosophy has a long and storied history. They say philosophy was invented by the Greeks, which makes it their third innovation besides gyros and dramatic economic collapse.
The so-called founder of Western philosophy is a man named Socrates. Socrates lived during the 5th century BCE and was famous for being a prick. He would walk around town, intercept random pedestrians, and ask them questions about the nature of justice. Socrates was ruthless and relentless; when his interlocutor inevitably gave some route and conventional definition of virtue, Socrates would drill down like a beetle in heat and eviscerate their response with a series of passive-aggressive queries along the lines of “Well, you just said justice was X, but you also said it was Y, so how do we square that?”
Were Socrates alive today, he would undoubtedly be placed on a Neighborhood Watch list. Sane individuals who are working hard to contribute to the betterment of society would tell him to fuck off.
That being said, I feel a strange communion with Socrates. His Wikipedia page states that he “neglected personal hygiene, bathed rarely, walked barefoot, and owned only one ragged coat.”
In short, we are basically brothers in arms.
Socrates had a student named Plato. Plato is famous for having said some wack shit. For instance, Plato argued that in an ideal city all women and children would be the shared property of men in order to prevent the men from getting possessive. He also said that poets should be exiled because they are posers and that philosophers should rule the city, which seems oddly convenient.
Pythagoras, another Greek philosopher, believed that we lost a part of our soul every time we farted. Beans were considered to be legumes of the Devil.
This is not a joke. Clearly, the bar for becoming a philosopher in Ancient Greece was not particularly high.
During the following centuries, thousands of philosophers followed the examples of Socrates, Plato and Pythagoras and said some wack shit of their own.
And it does not seem like we’ve gotten any better at it. Let’s consider contemporary philosophers. After much reflection, the celebrated philosopher Peter Unger recently concluded that he, in fact, does not exist. In an incisive rebuttal, American philosopher Peter van Inwagen argued that he does exist, but that the chair he is sitting on does not.
I do not have a stake in the matter, but if I had to commit myself to a position, it would be that your mother does not exist.
Philosophy is serious business. It deals with big questions: the meaning of life, the meaning of justice, the meaning of meaning itself. But philosophers can’t catch a break. Scientists look down on philosophers because it’s “all in their head” (the idiots don’t know that your head doesn’t exist), and literature majors look down on them because most philosophy papers read like the back of an instruction manual.
But philosophers have a devastating weapon in their arsenal, one that flattens the criticisms of those less trained in the philosophical arts: they are willing to have arguments of inappropriate intensity and duration.
P1: All men are mortal.
P2: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Your biology degree is useless because biology doesn’t exist.
Oh yes, I almost forgot: in 2024, in one of the top journals of the field, the philosopher Ned Markosian argued that a musical performance is just as valuable if it is “rotated sideways.”
Damn. He beat me to the idea.
Here’s a graph that actually appeared in the above-referenced journal. I appreciate it because it helps to clarify what the author is getting at.
In recent years, it appears that most philosophers spend their time on Reddit, Youtube, or New Twitter. You do not need a degree to philosophize, and the Internet serves as a testament to this oversight. Most philosophers are young, white men in their early 20s who can’t understand why their peers are so vapid and shallow. Freudians consider the phenomenon a developmental stage, similar to the oral or anal stages. They have dubbed it the “look-back-at-it-twenty-years-later-and-be-filled-with-regret stage.”
In conclusion.
What is philosophy for? Philosophers say it aims at truth. Internet philosophers say it aims at upvotes. Undergraduate philosophers say it aims at social ostracization.
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who knows? Who cares?
Perhaps if we consider this problem sideways we’ll arrive at some interesting results.