In the beginning was the word, and the
word was..............
What? I don't know.. Bird?
Omelette? Vajazzle? Who knows? But there
was stuff and some guys in ancient
Greece wanted to know why there was
stuff so they invented philosophy, which
means literally "love of wisdom" or in
some translations "I hate this degree, but
science had loads of numbers in it."
Now, to begin with there were these guys
called the pre-Socratics, and they mostly
sat around pondering stuff like "What is
the nature of the universe?", "What
regulates physical processes?", "Which
slaves should I pork next?" etc.. and that
was fine, but everything really got going
when this guy turned up either called
Socrates, Sokrates or as we shall
henceforth refer to him-
Billy Big Bollocks ™
He mostly wandered around Greece asking
irritating questions, and Athens got
quite pissed about this and sentenced
him to not living. He also never wrote
anything down -
but luckily his student Plato did- and
crafted a fairly whack philosophy that
still shapes our lives today. So let's do
part of it really quickly- "This is a cat,
this is a cat, this is a cat also, they're
all different cats but we still get
they're cats, so there must be a perfect cat
living in some perfect room above us
that all cats are made from"™. He also had
a student called Aristotle- who did
nothing that spectacular -just basically
shaped, you know "Modern Logic"™
Aristotle also argued that what separates humans
from the animal kingdom is our ability
to reason and not much else- an idea you
will find everywhere in the modern age.
"Not bad chaps, and now you're all dead."
However, the Greeks left a legacy behind
that we still feel today,
stuff like: hedonism- which back then
didn't mean being a selfish dick, but
rather just maximizing your own pleasure
and being cheerful. Atomism- which is
where we originally got the idea of
well I mean, look at those little guys, they're
nice aren't they. And then Scepticism- which well~
I'd like to see some bloody proof for
that one if I'm honest :P
Anyway, the Dark Ages came along and fuck all
happened in Europe for about a thousand
years, well I mean it did obviously, we're
just not going to talk about it. And
around the 11th century universities as
we know them popped up in Spain, France,
and England [Represent]. And for the next
few centuries everyone was into this
thing called Scholasticism™ - which was
basically quite God-y, and was all about
trying to marry ancient Greek thought to
Christian thought, with um..
shall we say 'varying results?'
This bloke St. Anselm, came up with the
ontological argument for the proof of
God, which people still use today, and it
goes a little like this- "Imagine a
perfect video game, the idea of a perfect
video game will be even more perfect if
it actually existed which would make it
super duper perfect™, therefore a perfect
video game must exist- So where the fuck
is it Gabe?! About a century later, we
get Ockham's razor- which goes something
like "Why is France a thing? Welllll, either
malevolent aliens came down in the night
yesterday, created France and all of its
peoples™, and altered all of world history,
in a conspiratorial attempt to subvert
the course of pastry forever.. Or
possibility two - Maybe it's just been there
for ages? So.. maybe it's just been there for ages?..
"The simpler explanation is
generally the correct one." The black
death, then kindly wiped out about 40% of
Europeans and everyone got a bit
health-conscious..
Around the 15th, century everyone stopped
getting wankered everyday and switched
to coffee- which maybe contributed to the
Renaissance- which literally means
rebirth™, where we got all nostalgic for
the Greeks and Romans again. Columbus
discovered some shit, da Vinci drew some shit,
Shakespeare wrote some shit.. Things
were really picking up. During the 18th
century the Age of Enlightenment began-
A modern philosophy took shape and if
you've ever heard someone yell at a
philosophy major- "Yeah, but if you work in
Starbucks do you really exist?"™. Well you
can thank a single Frenchman for this,
called Renal Dick Art™ or Renè Descartes.
And one of his big ideas, was very very
briefly- 'Let's assume we doubt everything,
What can we know for certain? Wellll, does
the world exist? -Dunno™. Does my
country exist? -Dunno™. Does Gilbert
Gottfried exist? -Dunno™. Do I exist?
-Dunno™. Am I thinking? -Yes.
Does that mean I exist? -Yes! Is the answer
Gilbert Gottfried? What? no..™ Does it have a
tail? -No, that doesn't even.. What are you
talking about? -ah then even if everything
is a dream, and everyone else is
fictional, at least I know I'm a thing
because I'm thinking- which must mean,
I think, therefore I...
Wait, is it Emma Stone?
NO FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!. (Akinator™)
Meanwhile, over in Britain, John Locke and
David Hume, are cooking up this thing
called Empiricism™- which mostly says, "Look
knowledge comes from the outside world,
not sitting around smoking a fatty, and
having a think, you idiots, there's also some
other stuff going on- Thomas Hobbes who's
also British [Represent™]. Says humans are
nasty by Nature, and we need the 'Social
contract.' Adam Smith, more or less
invented modern economics, and in 1724
Immanuel Kant was born-who we shall
henceforth refer to as
Walter Big Wang™
-And and proceeded to tear philosophy,
A new one™
"Don't be silly" he said, "Rationalism and
empiricism could work together. Everyone
just shut up, read my books, be cool."
By the way, humans have categories™ in
their heads, which define how they
perceive the world, and will never be
able to experience the really-real-world™,
because we're not God. If you want to be
moral, just act in a way that if everyone
did it it will be alright, and finally
#check yourself before you wreck yourself.
#wash your hands after toilet time.
#Mic drop. Tchüss!! [Goodbye] This sparked a whole new
movement in philosophy- called German
idealism. The king of that cartel,
a guy called Hegel, and mostly they all
wanted to know, "what you can know about
objects that we know you can't know
anything about, because.. we can't know
anything...
about them..." ™®©
Over in America, pragmatism is getting
started, which when something like -
All right, Europe. Lovely ideas, but do they work in
practice? If yes, good✓
If not then maybe just...
sssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhshut the fuck up✓
Natural philosophy, which was the study of the natural world,
by then is being called science™. Science,
also now has the scientific-method™. The
basic rules of which are- If you notice
weird shit, think about why it happened,
test your theory, if your theory works✔,
let other people check it, and if it
doesn't, then yeah, well done anyway,
Have a.. a biscuit or something ? Meanwhile
German philosopher and all-around nice
guy Nietzsche, hated everyone including
God, who he killed, and said the
civilization was heading towards
catastrophe, and there's no structure to
the world except what we give it- which
will be important in a moment-
P.S. Nothing means anything, and we're all gonna die :D -Morty Sanchez
And we're into the 20th century, by now
philosophy has official categories
namely: epistemology©- can we know shit?
metaphysics©- how does shit ultimately work?
ethics©- how do we know good shit from bad shit?
Logic©- how do we reason shit?
and aesthetics©- why this shit looks so nice.
And there are loads of new
movements, popping up such as
existentialism©- which said look, you're
free in the world and that might suck,
but just roll with it mate, you can
define yourself™, and people started
asking lots of questions- like how does
sentience work? And other such things as
human rights, and no seriously is it
Gilbert Gottfried? And there's this thing
happening called post-modernism, which
well it's hard to...yeah ok, so there was
modernism right, look at this- modern
isn't it? There are rules and forms and
stuff, but eventually some people got
bored of it and said, "Well, there's no real
narrative to anything, and everything is
interpretation"- except for that statement
for some reason- and stuff like this
happened.. And this.. yeah..mm.. Anyway, yeah..
So.. where are we now,
Well... recently, philosophy has largely
boiled down to moral questions.
Is abortion a right? How should you run a
society? Can we use science to determine
morality? And that's the state of things
today. These days science is hoovering up
lots of big questions that started in
philosophy, like- What is matter made of?
And how do living things work? and stuff.. and
even if you think philosophy has no
purpose anymore,
that's fine, but it did once. There was a
time, when it was the mother of almost
all knowledge, and if you should be so
brave or silly, as to embark on your own
undergraduate adventure in philosophy,
and people wish you all the best with a
future career in telemarketing, just
quietly remember
there is yet work to be done. We still
don't know what we're doing here.
Consciousness is still a mystery
The origin of matter is still a mystery,
SO YOU HEAR THAT, DAD?
With reference to all your bullshit..
DAD.
Well yeah, I might be nearing 30, and fine,
I picked the wrong degree, I get it,
And no, I still don't know what the stock
market is, or when the post comes, or how
to shave my testicles without
inadvertently castrating myself, but by the
power of Grayskull, if someone held us up
at gunpoint, and shouted "You better
extensively explain Aristotle's
position on dogs or you're both fucking
dead!" Let's just say I'd be walking home
a hero that night, so put that in your
pipe and smoke it, DAD! Not so fucking
funny anymore is it, DAD? Who's. Laughing.
NOW. *Dad.*
And then, [coughs] if could maybe just hurry up,
and send me that money for rent
that'd be great [squeaks]
[Music]