The program is very user-friendly.
The program is extremely easy to use. had a thing for his cousin which is a no-no even in Denmark
So not to cosplay as an anxious PhD student procrastinating on their dissertation, but honestly, what’s the point of philosophy anyway? Seriously though, why do we care so much about what a bunch of dead people think about a whole host of speculative questions? And in particular, why do we take our ethical cues from a bunch of folks who would get immediately canceled in 2023?
Well, the classic answer is that philosophy is about the teaching of the good life and that by learning from tradition we can get closer to living the good life ourselves, but that still doesn’t really answer the question: who are philosophers to tell us how to live our lives, especially as many of them are, to be generous, Ivory Tower nerds who have been in college since they were 18 and have never worked a real job? Folks for whom all that really matters is securing the most prestigious job so they can have as much time as possible to write about old books and listen to themselves talk and, in some cases, form weird throuples with current students and ex-partners.
And that’s before we even get into the Great great philosophers who are about as wretched a pile of deviants as you could ever hope to meet: we’ve got Nazis, we’ve got fans of slavery, we’ve got murderers, and basically all of them are adulterers to boot. And these guys are supposed to teach ethics to me, a man who’s never been a Nazi, a fan of slavery, or a murderer (and to be clear, in case my wife is watching, an adulterer because, with all this content I gotta make, when would I even have time for that)?
So, what’s the deal? Do philosophers need to be ethical themselves to teach us how to be good people, and if so, which philosophers are actually worth taking ethical advice from? Let’s get into it in this Wisecrack Edition: can we learn ethics from jerks?
Okay, if you’re unfamiliar with the chronicles of badly behaved philosophers, here’s a little buffet of depravity: we got Kant’s lectures on Anthropology, which contain a hierarchy of races, arguably inspiring the tradition of scientific racism. Similarly, David Hume claims that other races were inferior to white people (nobody claimed to be anti-slavery; he helped his patron purchase a plantation). For his part, Aristotle defended slavery as a natural institution and dropped lines like, “A slave is a living possession,” and, “From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” And, for a bonus track, “The male is by nature superior and the female inferior.”
In case you’re just coming in, this is not a video on Andrew Tate; this is on philosophy. So there you go. But if you did come for a video on Andrew Tate, stay because this will be way more helpful.
But wait, there’s more: Martin Heidegger was a literal member of the Nazi party, yes, that Nazi party. When Ludwig Wickenstein was a schoolteacher, he beat a boy until he was unconscious. Jeremy Bentham was an enthusiastic designer of prisons, the panopticon – ever heard of it? That was him. Peter Singer has argued for the consensual banging of animals (so they can send – I feel like they can send as much as animals can ever consent to anything, yeah sure) and his work has been accused of essentially advocating for the genocide of people with disabilities. He says, “As long as As You Pleaser, you can bang a dolphin.” Don’t do that – Wisecrack says, don’t bang animals.
These philosophers are often no better in their personal lives: Louis Altazair murdered his wife, after which he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial and committed to a psychiatric hospital. Schopenhauer stalked young women and pushed an old woman down a flight of stairs (no word on how he treated middle-aged women, but I’m going to guess not great). For his part, Jean-Jacques Rousseau fathered five children by a woman he then eviscerated in his autobiography, and he gave all the children away to an orphanage shortly after their births. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Bouvar had sexual relations with their students (I mean, they were French, but still). And Soren Kierkegaard had a thing for his cousin, which is a no-no, even in Denmark.