Recommended: Philosophy Bro

Philosophy Bro is a great blog that summarises philosophy for the layman (or perhaps the lay-bro). It uses a great voice that’s snarky, sarcastic and full of swearing and yet these are all bonuses in making the material accessible. A hard trick to pull off and yet it does. And the summaries are actually good — as in good enough to be of use to most people in learning more about the history of thought. A few examples:

Philosophy Bro on Descartes’I think therefore I am:

Dammit. Well, that leaves me pretty much with nothing. Is there a single thing I can be sure of? I don’t believe in the world, my body, my senses, even the ideas that I have. … But I do doubt. Maybe I’m on to something here – even if some malicious demon is fooling me, there has to be a me to fool. It doesn’t make sense that I can doubt without existing. I think, therefore – fuck yeah, that’s it! Jackpot, bitches! And if I’m doubting, I’m also reasoning, and imagining and sensing – sure, maybe the shit I’m imagining and sensing is completely fucked three ways to Sunday, but I am imagining it. So I exist, and I’m a thinking being. Fucking sweet.

Philosophy Bro on Hobbes’s Leviathan:

First, we all make a contract to chill the fuck out, together. But what if some asshole is like, “No, I will not chill the fuck out?” How do we handle that? I’m glad you asked. We all pick one bro and give him absolute power. I don’t mean that if he asks nicely, we think about listening; his job isn’t to make sure everyone plays fair, or to tell you that you’re special no matter what anyone says. Fuck that noise. Absolute. Fucking. Power. Maybe it would help if I told you that Hobbes named him after the seven-headed soul-eating serpent-demon that guards the gates of Hell. Simon Says, asshole. He does what the fuck he wants, and he’s kind of a big deal.

But why does one bro need all that power? His job is to make sure everyone stays chilled out, and it’s not an easy job, since we’re all such assholes. Remember that part in Harry Potter 6 when Dumbledore tells Harry, “No matter what I say, don’t stop feeding me this battery acid” or whatever it was? We all say to the ruler, “No matter what we say in the future, don’t let us try to kill each other.” So that when the inner assholes come out, he knows to put his foot down, execute a few dudes, and keep the fucking peace. And believe me – that’s going to happen. You’re going to try to kill someone. It’s inevitable.

Philosophy Bro on Hume’s criticism of miracles:

Sometimes people claim even crazier shit than, “OJ is innocent.” What could possibly be crazier than that? Fucking miracles. Occasionally someone insists that somewhere, for some period of time, the laws of nature stopped working and something absolutely batshit insane happened, like the sun danced in the sky or a bro rose from the dead, and he expects you to take him at his word. “No, seriously, bro, I swear. It fucking happened. I saw it!” as if you don’t have the right to be incredulous at such a fucking outlandish claim. And then he gets pissed off at you for not believing him – “How could you know? You weren’t there! You didn’t see it!” So then you have to put on the patient gloves and kindly explain why he should get the fuck out of your face. “Okay dipshit, look. There’s a ton of shit I haven’t seen. In fact, there’s a ton of shit *no one* has seen, like a man coming back from the dead. So you’ll excuse me if I look for alternate causes when everyone in the world has, for thousands of years, reported with just about 100% accuracy – ‘dead people: still fucking dead’ and then suddenly you claim that maybe a hundred of you saw something different.”

Pure genius.