"Elementary," he replied.
I received not one, but two light books on philosophy this Christmas. Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar… seeks to teach the rudiments of philosophy through borscht-belt jokes. “Why is an elephant large, grey, and wrinkled? Because if it were small, white, and round, it would be an aspirin.”—a rather silly expression of essentialism. The Pig that Wants to be Eaten tries to do the same with old chestnuts: is it moral to eat a pig that has been bred to enjoy being slaughtered and eaten? When you wake up, how do you know you aren’t just dreaming you’ve woken up?
My wife and my sister-in-law’s fiancée bought them, and I’m pretty sure they did so independently. I’m not really sure why, except that I’m “the smart one” in the family—not actually the smartest, mind you, but smart, and definitely the most cerebral. And philosophy is for smart people, right?
Well, no, not really. The more I know about philosophy, the more certain I become that 95% of it—as measured by subject—is pretty easy, straightforward stuff. As the books above show, the basic concepts are simple enough that anyone can grasp them. If anyone can manage the basic rules of reasoning, like how to form a syllogism, they can work out reasonable answers, too.
Take this quick home test. All cats are mammals. Socrates is a cat. Therefore…?
All cats are mammals. Socrates is a mammal. Therefore…?
If you answered “Socrates is a mammal” for the first question, and “Therefore nothing” for the second, congratulations! You are now prepared to master 95% of what makes philosophy worthwhile. Philosophy has a reputation for being the province of brainiacs because 95% of it—as measured by volume of print—is highly abstruse navel-gazing, a painstaking attempt to prove the blindingly obvious through volumes of finicky definition.
That doesn’t mean that philosophy isn’t worth studying. Not at all! If everyone mastered some basic philosophy, they’d be able to recognize a lot of the sloppy thinking we’re exposed to on a daily basis: advertisers who argue that you should buy a CrudCo widget because lots of other people bought CrudCo widgets, religious hucksters who argue that you can earn a place in a nebulous heaven after you die if only you send the televangelist some very real money here and now, politicians who argue that criticizing the president is tantamount to treason. The ability to distinguish truth from lie, or from groundless assertion, is a vital skill in a world filled with lies and groundless assertions, in big ways and in little ones. And anyone can handle most of it, if only they try, with an honest willingness to follow the questions philosophy raises wherever they lead, whether or not the answers are palatable.