This comic is a parody of Monty Python's "The Life of Brian".
René Descartes is one of the greatest philosophers of all time, and in many ways he kicked off "modern philosophy". After Descartes, there was a big split in philosophy on the problem of how you acquire knowledge. People like Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza were rationalists, believing that you gain knowledge primarily, or only, through the powers of reason. People like Hume, Locke, and Berkeley were the empiricists, believing that knowledge comes from our senses. Francis Bacon isn't generally important in the major arguments, but was one of the very early advocates of empiricism, and the "scientific method", just before Descartes came on the scene and the big debate between the two camps really took off. Obviously, this is a crude overview, and each philosopher had their own detailed opinions on how we gain knowledge of the world. The debate pretty much ended after Immanuel Kant solved philosophy.
While many of the Empiricists were accused of Atheism, and some of them, like David Hume, may have actually been Atheists, Francis Bacon wrote against atheism and saw no conflict between Science and Religion. An empirical investigation of Science, for Bacon, was an investigation of God's works.
You can read more about it on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
René Descartes is one of the greatest philosophers of all time, and in many ways he kicked off "modern philosophy". After Descartes, there was a big split in philosophy on the problem of how you acquire knowledge. People like Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza were rationalists, believing that you gain knowledge primarily, or only, through the powers of reason. People like Hume, Locke, and Berkeley were the empiricists, believing that knowledge comes from our senses. Francis Bacon isn't generally important in the major arguments, but was one of the very early advocates of empiricism, and the "scientific method", just before Descartes came on the scene and the big debate between the two camps really took off. Obviously, this is a crude overview, and each philosopher had their own detailed opinions on how we gain knowledge of the world. The debate pretty much ended after Immanuel Kant solved philosophy.
While many of the Empiricists were accused of Atheism, and some of them, like David Hume, may have actually been Atheists, Francis Bacon wrote against atheism and saw no conflict between Science and Religion. An empirical investigation of Science, for Bacon, was an investigation of God's works.
You can read more about it on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Oh no, this is a tragedy! He died before I got to explain private languages!
Wittgenstein wrote much of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the trenches in World War I, where he fought on the German side. The argument that he is giving is his argument that you cannot have negative knowledge of what exists, because in order to do so you would have to have complete knowledge of what does exist, and a further piece of knowledge that you had all the knowledge there was to be had, which is impossible. He famously refused to say that he know for certain that a Hippo was not in the room, in an argument with Bertrand Russell.
"And how do you plead to the charge of obscurantism?"
"The theory of a 'plea' is organized, understood, and experienced prior to any conscious intention as a theory of language. Before we constructed signs we have a presupposed theory of both implicit thought, grasped as pure presentness, and explicit language, grasped as an obliteration of all signs and structures of thought. These two modes must come together in an infinite manifold in order for any 'plea' to be made."
"God damnit Derrida, come on."
"The theory of a 'plea' is organized, understood, and experienced prior to any conscious intention as a theory of language. Before we constructed signs we have a presupposed theory of both implicit thought, grasped as pure presentness, and explicit language, grasped as an obliteration of all signs and structures of thought. These two modes must come together in an infinite manifold in order for any 'plea' to be made."
"God damnit Derrida, come on."
Camus: "Wait, so if the meaning of life is arbitrary, maybe it can just be seducing as many girls as possible?"
Sartre: "It isn't that arbitrary."
Sartre: "It isn't that arbitrary."
It's like that show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", but instead of a gang of nihilistic, uneducated narcissists it is a gang of nihilistic, educated narcissists.
"Wait a minute...what if there is some kind of evil demon who is deceiving me into thinking God is necessarily good? Oh yeah, that's right, God wouldn't let that happen because he is necessarily good."