INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY | Timeline of Western Philosophy #1

a million years ago neanderthals pondered what is fire thousands of years later toga touting greeks wondered what is the

meaning of life [Applause] after several hundred years man became enlightened

and today we scroll through our phones asking hard-hitting questions like is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable this is the timeline of western

philosophy [Music] hi everyone my name is brad and i will be your philosophical sherpa in this climb of the mount everest

of western philosophy okay tortured analogy aside i will be your host in this timeline series on western philosophy now the question you're probably asking

yourself is hey brad why would you spend every waking hour of your already depressingly small social life making a timeline series on western

philosophy when it seems like the only videos that people really care about on your site are on the possible homosexuality of abraham lincoln or on mozart's extremely weird poop

fetish which are good videos by the way so you know go check them out but basically the big question is why do i care and more importantly why should you care

[Music] i think deep down every philosophy nerd has a sincere faith in the value of

knowledge in the pursuit of wisdom in living a good life ethicist jon stewart not this guy jon stewart mill said it is better to be a human

being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied as we will come to find out it remains to be proven whether or not this is true especially when we explore some of the

less than satisfied thinkers of our history i'm looking at you schopenhauer but for now we can accept it i mean it is coming from this guy who's so smart his ideas are basically popping out of

his head but maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves maybe we should start by asking the first important question what is philosophy definitions could be

pretty boring so to spice things up a bit we'll define this word with a little added flair which brings us to our segment definitions

but with lightsabers at its most basic philosophy is a catch-all for any deep thinking pursuit we can have how should we act

what is the truth why is there anything basically any how or what or why you can ask

finds a home in philosophy the word philosophy comes from the greek root philosophia meaning love of wisdom

okay so that's kind of helpful but what is wisdom at first we probably think of common everyday wisdoms we live by we all have certain ideas or beliefs

that seem right and are codified in our society for instance money is the root of all evil or a bird in the hand is worth two in the bushes

but when you start to actually look at some of these ideas you'll notice there isn't much consistency you can find everyday wisdoms for any outcome even when they contradict each other

for example say you invest your life savings in a friend's business and it becomes a massive success you could say you want to make an omelette you got to break some eggs but

what if it fails you could just as easily say don't put all of your eggs in one basket these one-line wisdoms fail to grasp the complexity of life and thought there is

a whole lot going on and it might require more than chicken or egg analogies to capture it all that's why history's smartest and perhaps most bored thinkers started to

dig away at what it means to be wise our goal is to explore some of the ideas they came up with like metaphysics and epistemology

and ontology but just learning what these big words mean isn't the same as really applying the ideas scientist richard feynman

noticed that knowing the name of something doesn't mean you understand it alright so having just spent the first few minutes of this series talking about

strange people and big words i want to assure you again that the point of this series is not to just mention a bunch of random

people random words and random ideas if your takeaway at the end of this is this dude did this thing or wrote this book on this day

then quite frankly i felt the point of this series is to leave you with some of the neat ideas from the time and to

apply them to today philosopher and mustachioed maverick frederick nietzsche really hit the nail on the head when he recognized how the thoughts of a thinker

seemed to mirror his or her personality and behavior cranky guys seem to lean towards cranky philosophies one of the greatest philosophers of all

time a german named emmanuel kant was said to be so punctual that you could set your watch to his daily walk read his work and you'll see a

connection so it's worthwhile and even fun to poke around at the biographies of some of these quirky individuals throughout history unfortunately despite there being a rich

philosophical tradition in the east the focus of this series will be specifically on western philosophy if this series is successful who knows maybe i'll make a timeline of eastern

philosophy so you know like and subscribe also to be fair the direction of this series leans pretty heavily towards metaphysical questions

questions about the real nature of reality philosophy asks a lot of questions so without each episode running 10 hours long i had to be selective with

some of the topics so far this has just been a list of stuff the show won't do we should start talking about what the show plans to do that being said we've already covered some pretty heady

stuff i know for me when i'm studying philosophy i like to take a break from time to time so that's why we'll cut to our adorable animal intermission

[Music]

so

all right so we've spent a lot of time talking about what the show will not be what about what the show will be it's common for introductions to

philosophy to follow a chronological order and i don't really plan to break from this tradition most of philosophy tends to build on the work before it if you break the chronology you run the

risk of confusing certain terms and ideas a word might evolve over time and era to the point where it practically means the opposite of what it was when it started plus when

you go in chronological order you get to pick up on a certain pattern where virtually every philosopher starts to think all the philosophy before them was a series

of errors and that they alone are the person able to correct these mistakes as you can see we're talking about some pretty modest people here so to serve this in we'll split up

different philosophers into different eras to be honest there's a good deal of overlap here but there's definitely something to be gained from telling a certain story about the history of philosophy

we'll begin with the beginning with a group of greeks and mediterraneans that started asking the big questions they are the key to everything that follows

right after them come the big hitters the names you've probably heard like plato and aristotle these guys are the ones who created the tradition and really set the terms and ideas that

would dominate the thousands of years of thinking which follows we'll then take a step back and a few forward by looking at the religious beliefs and

thinkers that will completely change the terms of philosophy during this time there's a little guy named jesus christ who sort of becomes a big deal so big in fact that his life in the

church that followed him would completely determine the medieval thinkers that came next these philosophers would use christianity as a tool for understanding the universe

after the dark ages comes a burst of light and the reformers and revolutionaries of the protestant and scientific revolutions we'll track how

major changes in religion and knowledge permanently shape philosophy with the world forever changed modern men start producing modern thoughts

we'll explore their beliefs their thoughts and their great hairdos then science and modern philosophy expand with a new type of knowledge of the world

we'll spend most of our time this episode on the british isles taking a stab at some of the empiricist thinkers and don't worry we won't forget to make room for some tea time

trying to solve some of the riddles from their anglo-saxon brethren the continental germans will transcend the thoughts of their day these idealists would contribute the biggest

breakthroughs in philosophy since perhaps the ancient days but some of their thoughts and writings are a little loosey-goosey and not properly structured that's why analytic thinking comes on

the scene trying to solve some of philosophy's riddles with logic and mathematics but not everyone will want philosophy to be about logic and linguistics thinkers

mostly from continental europe will start to rethink what it means to be part of the world things get pretty existential and then finally we'll arrive at where

we are today what does modern philosophy look like and where is it going now that we've reviewed our timeline of philosophy it's time to move on to our favorite segment where we crown

the philosopher king in the episodes to come we will crown a king for each era but for this first episode we will crown a special king who is the philosopher

king for all of western philosophy the first official philosopher king crown goes to the one and only the father of western philosophy itself

the gadfly extraordinaire socrates you've probably heard of socrates i mean

even bill and ted have so crates he's so big there's an entire period of philosophy named for the time which came before him the pre-socratics one of the crazy

things about the thought of socrates is that he never wrote any of it down all that we know now as socrates comes from a small handful of sources there was a contemporary of socrates a

poet named aristophanes that wrote a play called the clouds which blasted socrates at the time poets and philosophers frequently butt heads over which

strategy of thinking was best for understanding the world aristophanes might not have agreed or even liked socrates but the philosopher's pupil plato

certainly did it's through plato's not plato's portrayal of socrates in his work that we have an idea of the man's thought and his personality socrates is famous

for many things but maybe the most lasting is his approach to philosophy he once famously declared the only true wisdom consist in knowing that you know nothing

that's us dude oh yeah it's with this humility that great philosophy can begin like in today's world where we are surrounded by blowhards that are so sure of their

thinking socrates lived in an age of philosophical arrogance his approach known as the socratic method was to tear down the certainty of others

by continuing to raise questions and doubts through this he was able to highlight the emptiness of certain beliefs of his time to see the socratic method in action

let's turn to this episode's movie moment and now for our feature presentation

for this idea we'll draw from pulp fiction the 90s crime classic by quentin tarantino in the film's first act gangsters jewel and vincent puzzle over the fate of their associate anton

who recently developed a speech impediment on account of him being thrown out the window by their mutual boss marcellus wallace why would wallace go so far

well anton was so bold as to give miss wallace a foot massage gave her a foot massage foot massage jules is certain that a

foot massage isn't worthy of being thrown out a window with a foot massage a foot massage is nothing i give my mother a foot but vincent starts to ask him more and more questions to clarify his position

have you ever given a full massage you've given a lot of those now admittedly vincent might be a little too sure of himself to be a perfect stand-in for socrates and

look i've given a million ladies a million foot massages and they all meant something but his approach is very similar would you give a guy a foot massage

this type of reasoning this argumentation through questioning is classic socrates and like the end of most great socratic dialogues we can't hope for certainty we can only

hope to see the weaknesses in our own thinking it's an interesting point come on let's get into character but there were many contemporaries of socrates who

weren't so amused by the philosopher's questioning the local authorities wanted to put an end to the stinky street thinker who often made them look foolish

they arrested him and put him on trial with trumped-up charges like impiety and corrupting the youth socrates was a harsh critic of the

athenian democracy the same system which would vote by majority to sentence him to death at this time many death sentences came with the expectation that the

guilty could exile themselves and flee the city this was almost definitely the expectation for socrates but being a man of integrity socrates

was determined to accept his duty as a citizen and obey the law his last words before downing the hemlock poison were krito we owe a [ __ ] back to

asleep yes pay it and don't forget maybe even more than his thought the attitude of socrates set an

example for philosophers to follow the previously mentioned quote from our boiled and bumped friend jon stewart mill has an extra part concerning socrates and the pig

the full quote reads it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied better to be socrates dissatisfied than a fool

satisfied and if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion it is because they only know their own side of the equation this is ultimately the legacy

of socrates a belief that the examined life is better than the alternative and that's why he's the one true philosopher king that about does it

for this episode next time we'll cover a group of thinkers known as the pre-socratics a group that came even before socrates

these guys are responsible for a lot of cool ideas not least among these was a theory we all learn in first year trigonometry though i'll

do my best next episode to make it a little bit more interesting than just triangles no promises

[Music] you