Phi-los-o-phy as an aca-d-e-m-ic sub-ject is reg-u-lar-ly maligned in pop-u-lar dis-course. Phi-los-o-phy majors get told that their stud-ies are use-less. Phi-los-o-phy pro-fes-sors find their bud-gets cut, their cours-es scru-ti-nized, and their char-ac-ter gross-ly impeached in pro-pa-gan-dis-tic reli-gious fea-ture films. It’s enough to make one despair over the turgid air of anti-intel-lec-tu-al-ism that sti-fles con-ver-sa-tion.
But before we start pin-ing for bygone gold-en ages of rig-or-ous crit-i-cal thought, let us remem-ber that philoso-phers have been a thorn in the side of the pow-er-ful since the incep-tion of West-ern phi-los-o-phy. After all, Socrates, the ancient Greek whose name we asso-ciate with philosophy’s most basic max-ims and meth-ods, was sup-pos-ed-ly put to death for the crime of which today’s pro-fes-so-rate so often stand accused: cor-rupt-ing the youth.
We most-ly know of Socrates’ life and death through the writ-ten dia-logues of his star pupil, Pla-to, whom Alain de Bot-ton calls in the first video above, “the world’s first true, and per-haps great-est, philoso-pher.” De Bot-ton quick-ly explains in his ani-mat-ed School of Life intro-duc-tion that the core of Plato’s phi-los-o-phy con-sti-tutes a “spe-cial kind of ther-a-py” geared toward Eudai-mo-nia, or human ful-fill-ment and well-being. From Pla-to, De Bot-ton’s series of quick takes on famous philoso-phers con-tin-ues, mov-ing through the Enlight-en-ment and the 19th and 20th cen-turies.
Key to Plato’s thought is the crit-i-cal exam-i-na-tion of Doxa, or the con-ven-tion-al val-ues and “pop-u-lar opin-ions” that reveal them-selves as “rid-dled with errors, prej-u-dice, and super-sti-tion.” Plato’s most famous illus-tra-tion of the pro-found state of igno-rance in which most of us live goes by the name “The Alle-go-ry of the Cave,” and receives a retelling with com-men-tary by De Bot-ton just above. The para-ble doesn’t only illus-trate the util-i-ty of phi-los-o-phy, as De Bot-ton says; it also serves as a vivid intro-duc-tion to Plato’s the-o-ry of the Forms—an ide-al realm of which our phe-nom-e-nal real-i-ty is only a debased copy.
The dual-ism between the real and the ide-al long gov-erned philo-soph-i-cal thought, though many com-pet-ing schools like the Sto-ics expressed a healthy degree of skep-ti-cism. But we might say that it wasn’t until Immanuel Kant, whom you can learn about above, that Pla-to real-ly met his match. Along with his famous eth-i-cal dic-tum of the “cat-e-gor-i-cal imper-a-tive,” Kant also posit-ed two dis-tinct realms—the noume-nal and the phe-nom-e-nal. And yet, unlike Pla-to, Kant did not believe we can make any asser-tions about the prop-er-ties or exis-tence of the ide-al. What-ev-er lies out-side the cave, we can-not access it through our faulty sens-es.
These cen-tral ques-tions about the nature of knowl-edge and mind not only make phi-los-o-phy an imma-nent-ly fas-ci-nat-ing discipline—they also make it an increas-ing-ly nec-es-sary endeav-or, as we move fur-ther into the realm of con-struct-ing arti-fi-cial minds. Soft-ware engi-neers and video game devel-op-ers are tasked with philo-soph-i-cal prob-lems relat-ed to con-scious-ness, iden-ti-ty, and the pos-si-bil-i-ty of eth-i-cal free choice. And at the cut-ting edge of cog-ni-tive sci-ence—where evo-lu-tion-ary biol-o-gy and quan-tum mechan-ics rub elbows—we may find that Pla-to and Kant both intu-it-ed some of the most basic prob-lems of con-scious-ness: what we take for real-i-ty may be noth-ing of the kind, and we may have no way of gen-uine-ly know-ing what the world is like out-side our sens-es.
As 17th cen-tu-ry French philoso-pher and math-e-mati-cian Rene Descartes feared, but found impos-si-ble to believe, our per-cep-tion of the world may in fact be a decep-tive, if use-ful, illu-sion. Learn more about Descartes above, and see De Botton’s full School of Life phi-los-o-phy series at the top of the post. Or watch the series on Youtube.
There are 35 videos in total, which let you become acquaint-ed with, and per-haps cor-rupt-ed by, a range of thinkers who ques-tion ortho-doxy and com-mon sense, includ-ing Aris-to-tle, Epi-cu-rus, Georg Wil-helm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Niet-zsche, Michel Fou-cault, Arthur Schopen-hauer, Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Baruch Spin-oza. Watch all of the videos in the playlist right below.
Relat-ed Con-tent:
Free Online Phi-los-o-phy Cours-es (140+ Free Cours-es)
6 Polit-i-cal The-o-rists Intro-duced in Ani-mat-ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More
An Ani-mat-ed Intro-duc-tion to Goethe, Germany’s “Renais-sance Man”
Alain de Bot-ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques-tions in Art as Ther-a-py
Josh Jones is a writer and musi-cian based in Durham, NC. Fol-low him at @jdmagness
