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Sunday, September 13, 2009

Why Philosophy is Stupid

At first, I thought this blog post was from a 4.0 student at our local UWWC.  They claim to be from Texas.  YOU decide.


Curtsy to "The Vented Truth."


So a long time ago in Ancient times a bunch of slackers decided that the only thing they could do that was worth their time was to look around and make everyone second guess their own lifestyles and beliefs. Socrates figured out the most ingenius way to fake intelligence was to run around town asking everyone "Why?" five hundred times like a 5 year old little girl making everyone think they were coming to their own conclusions on life. What's even funnier than that to me is that he never really came up with any real answers to anything. He would run around town asking people questions but would secretly be getting off to the fact that he really didn't know anything and people thought he was brilliant. The man never answered a single (darn) question. Even when the man was on trial for corrupting the youth of the day and becoming a Godless man, the best defense he could come up with was "I know you are, but what am I?" 


Now a days, I'm stuck in a classroom with a closed-minded schmuck of a professor staring at old translations of this guy's life. It begins with a single word like anything I've read, but I've never had to focus on that single word for an hour and fifteen minutes before like I have in this class. My teacher literally stops after every word spoken to discuss what it might mean. Then he gets a stupid grin on his face after the discussion and tells us "Well there is no definitive answer, so you have to figure out what it means for yourself." This wouldn't bother me as much if the man didn't tell some of the students they were flat wrong when they offered a possible answer. This basically confirming my suspicions that my professor has the intelligence of a flaming bag of dog poo. We think way too long and way too hard about these philosophers of the past and their half (witted) ideas with no conclusions. It's a different day, a different age and I say we focus on the personal truth of our own lives, instead of the universal truth human kind. I've got enough to think about in my own life before I can think about the problems of all mankind. My philosophy on philosophy: Philosophy Blows. If you're going to think that hard about something, make yourself useful and go cure something. By the way, I think Socrates was gay. 

4 comments:

Mpeterson said...

Ironically, Socrates was famously not gay.

But a good student would have known that.

Unknown said...

This guy seems to be quite immature. Who would write an essay on how much they hate class while insulting the greatest minds of ancient Greece at the same time anyway? What do they accomplish?

And perhaps he mixed up Socrates with Aristotle, who was in fact gay. That's a stretch though.

Anonymous said...

This student reminds me of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic. He too had a problem with the fact that Socrates never gave straight answers to anything. He yells at Socrates "What nonsense have you two been talking, Socrates? Why do you act like idiots by giving way to one another? If you truly want to know what justice is, don't just ask questions and then refute the answers simply to satisfy your competitiveness or love of honor....Give an answer yourself, and tell us what you say the just is" (Burnet, 336c).
In fact, this student sounds almost exactly like Thrasymachus.

Philosophy is not a subject for those who like answers more along the lines of 2+2=4. I would say that this poor frustrated soul is one of those people who likes straight answers. Therefore, I don't think this essay can count as a clear and logical debate over the usefulness of philosophy.

@Aaron: Well, Socrates was Plato's mentor, and Aristotle was Plato's student, so I can see how you might get them mixed up.

Unknown said...

This is true, but they're lives, focuses, and philosophies were quite different. Each had a unique impact on the world and I find it hard to believe a college student of philosophy would be able to mix the two up. I do like your analogy with Thrasymachus, though, I never even thought of that!