Ambrose Beirce has given us the very best definition of philosophy that I've ever seen:
Quote:
phi·los·o·phy Pronunciation Key (f-ls-f)
n. pl. phi·los·o·phies
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
I further elaborated upon this point with an example I provided at urbandictionary.com:
Quote:
It was late one night when I was on a road trip with my two friends, Brian and Laura, when we decided to pull over to the side of the road and retire.
"Looks like you'll be sleeping in the car while Laura and I have the tent," Brian said.
"Here's the blanket," he continued, "You'll be fine with this, won't you?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"How is one sure of anything?"
"Or that there is any thing to be sure of," he added.
We both nodded, contemplating the profundity.
Other wonderful definitions of philosophy to be found at urbandictionary include:
Quote:
A bizarre form of mental aerobic exercise in which one strives towards the essentially divine goal of completely forcing oneself up ones own sphincter using only the power of the mind.
Recently a philosophy grad student from Stamford actually managed to bury all of his head, one arm (to the elbow) and a bit of his other shoulder up his own anus. This unusual incident occured when he was teaching Existentialism to young folk and was designed to demonstrate that a)existence is only perception and b)he had a big anus. Unfortunately he choked before he had managed to extricate himself and thus kinda proved himself wrong on both counts.
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The art of self-confusion.
Reductionism, nihilism, and existentialism are nuclear-options in philosophical discussions that exist barely beneath the surface in any contemplation of deeper issues, and they can be released upon a subject at any time and render it meaningless. Therefore, discussion of philosophy itself carries with it an inherent ridiculousness and pointlessness, as well as constant potential for pseudointellectual overanalysis (such as this).
Philosophy? Meh. That's the only course you'll finish knowing LESS than when you started.
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The theoretical ramblings of dead people. Can and has been used to justify anything and everything from communism to nazism. Many of the so-called 'enlightenment' philosophers quoted today were the same ones Hitler read. Can reason from a preposition, but cannot tell weather the preposition is true or not, so its useless. The love of human "reason", which always leads to trouble.
Tim quoted the philosopher to appear smart at the diner party.
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Analagous to stroking one's penis, but done through the activity of thinking. Philosophy comes from the two root words phil, meaning "love", and sophy, meaning "to stroke ones penis incessantly and abstractly while maintaining a pretentious air about you". Combined, we can deduce that this means "to love one's own penis incessantly arrogantly and abstractly." Philosophy is broken down into many disciplines. Some to be considered are: epistemology, metaphysics and ontology.
Epistemology simply asks the question, "how do i know i am a f*****g pretentious moron?" Over the centuries, many a party-goer has asked this question to philosophers only to be answered with high noses and comments about how wonderful the wine and cheese is, when you actually know it was 2 buck chuck and a cracker-barrel.
Next comes metaphysics. Metaphysics is what idiots at parties talk about when they are trying to prove they are better than you. Often times this involves theories of Truth, (with a capital T) and theories about why some philosophy dude will never go to home with that hot girl because he shows up to a party with a Nietzsche book in his pocket like its something she should be impressed by.
Ontology is the theory being. It simply asks the question, "Am i a pretentious moron?" Most philosophers cannot answer this question because they are so full of themselves, they cannot see past their own dissertations that try to explain a chair or a desk or any other inanimate object in the room.
While philosophy majors can most generally be categorized as annoying and useless, we can deduce from this simple syllogism the following:
1. All philosophy majors are pretentious as*holes.
2. Pretentious as*holes will do you favors if you stroke their egos
3. if you stroke a pretentious as*hole's ego, you can get him to do anything
4. you can get a philosophy major to do anything if you stroke his ego a little bit.
So they arent completely useless. For example, you can get a philosophy kid to get you a beer when you need one at a party if you tell him you are interested in his theory (which by the way is never his particular theory) but just him reciting some BS he read. Nonetheless, if you just appease his need to assert intellectual dominance in a social atmosphere, you have a masturbating helper monkey as your new friend.
"Yo, philosophy geek! Get me a beer dude!"
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"And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And beauty stayed his hand. And from that day on, he was as one dead."
18 Nov 2005, 4:02 pm
