idgonemad.net/Summa Philosophia 4 Yew
I mean no offense. Well, some.
Philosophy, in my best estimation, is the love of knowledge and the love of seeking it, then producing exhaustive writings of exhausting and inept metaphors, being refuted by another philosopher's exhausting and inept metaphors, then replying in rebuttal to challengers, ad nauseum. While one of the most noble intellectual pursuits, it is also one of the most masturbatory.
Fortunately for the rest of humanity, academia is filled with people willing to condense a person's entire life's work into its most vital elements. In that vein, I present to you an irreverent, irrelevant summary of the lives and work of a number of key figures in Philosophy.
I give you...
Summa Philosophia: Key Figures in Philosophy, Summarized in 500 Words or Less
Socrates = Straight up gangsta, dat thug drank any drank put in frunna him.
Plato = Overrated heir apparent of Socrates that screwed up Science for more than a thousand years with First Principles and other useless crap.
Aristotle = Reincarnated some time later into Gene Wilder.
Aquinas = Justified Catholic bullshit from a very comfy chair.
Confucius = Had the same PR agent as Jesus and gets all sorts of cool stuff attributed to him.
Augustine = Converted to Christianity early enough that he was one of the religion's editors - he gave you the God you "know" now by stealing heavily from Plato.
Descartes = Brought intellectualism to new highs and degrees of convolution by rationalizing things instead of pulling new crazy shit out of his ass.
Kant = Changed Minds. No, really - he changed them from being viewed as a cup that sorta just fills up with experiences into a filter and interpreter of sensory data. A computer rather than a trashcan.
Kierkegaard = Brought angst to the forefront of philosophy and did ultimately dehumanizing things that lead to quantifying peoples' lives in terms like "The Average Person spends 1/3rd of his Life Asleep" and other damning, mope-infested whinings about escapism and wasting time. Waste of Time? Kierkegaard.
Lao Tzu = The Asian Sensation. Tao De Ching is a quick read with little novel and even useful tidbits. Like a compilation of fortune cookie fortunes, but better.
John Locke = Shared a few basic principles with Kant. The mind is a house furnished with experiences and sensory input.
Karl Marx = History is the record of class conflict, material interests, and the exchange and exploitation involving them. Philosophy should not just interpret the world, but shape it.
Pascal = Somehow made the first mechanical calculator at age 15 in 1642. Beat that, fuckers. Sadly, he abandoned supermathgenius for philosophy, probably shooting all of humanity in the foot in the process, but he at least contributed to scientific investigation.
Spinoza = Ultimately just another dude that desperately needs God to exist in some fashion, but wrote avidly of ethics and against traditional religious views. Interest in his writing persists in modern environmentalists and ecologists.
Hume = Related the mind in terms of perception (impressions), processing and memory (idea). Like a bunch of other dudes. It was inevitable, really, but thanks for getting your papers in on time. ;D
Leibniz = Desperately tried to resolve The Problem of Evil so that God could be both Omnipotent and Benevolent at the same time and totally looked retarded for it. Voltaire totally burned him in Candide for it.
The ultimate lesson of Philosophy that you will never find in these old dead guys' writings is this: You utilize what is useful and discard what is not. No one has the answer and if someone somehow did, no one else would believe it or realize it. Walk your own way and try not to step on other peoples' toes. Wear comfortable shoes. Bring water.
idgonemad.net
Nietzsche = Woot, but mighta had bad thoughts about family members.
Copyright information is found here.