(Platonis Apologia Eseis Gyros Socrassholes)
Back in ancient Greece, some guy named Socrates went around town pondering things—and he ended up being charged with blaspheming the local gods and corrupting the local youth
Forced to defend himself, he addressed a crowd of Greeks in what, at the time (keep in mind that this was well before Jacoby v. Myers), was considered the greatest trial in human history.
“A while back,” he began, “I realized that that—unlike other people—I’m wise enough to know that I don’t know shit. I proceeded to tell others that they don’t know shit, either—and by doing so, I gained some followers, and a lot of enemies. And here I am now, on trial because I pissed off some powerful people—including some pyscho named Meletus, who actually has the audacity to accuse me of both atheism and belief in non-sanctioned gods. What people don’t realize is that without guys like me constantly agitating other people, the state would be as lazy as a pot smoker who just won the lottery.”
But after hearing Socrates’s little shpiel, the jury found him guilty by majority vote, and asked him what he thought he deserved as a punishment. “How about you kiss my Greek ass?” was the first reply, followed by a more serious, “I don’t know. How about some sort of fine?” The jury, however, had another idea in mind, and sentenced him to death—to which Socrates replied, “So what? For all I know, death might be better than life.”
And after a dew days on death row, he spent his final hours with some friends, and remarked to them that “Like any true philosopher, I look forward to death—for now my immortal soul will finally be free from my mortal body and its needs. How do I know my soul is immortal? Well, everything comes from its opposite—and thus, if the living die, the dead live. Plus, since we know everything before we are born and then spend our lives remembering some of it, we must have existed before we were born. And the soul is invisible—and all invisible things are also immortal.”
“But,” countered one of his friends, “you’ve always told us that you don’t know shit—and now you’re telling us you know so much shit that you even know all the shit that happens after you die!”
“Never mind that!” replied Socrates. And after feeding them some more bull and taking a bath, he said his last goodbyes and ate some poisonous mushrooms—er, um, drank some poisonous hemlock.
His soul, however, didn’t care much for his logic, and decided to just commit suicide after his body’s death.
Rene Descartes: Discourse on the Cane
David Hume: An Essay Concerning Concluisions...
Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Bull
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Glass is Half Full...
Nietzsche: The Anti Tzschurch & The Nietzschruth
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Eveything is Bull