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The Philosophy of a Good Party



Francis Bacon: "This party is lame."
Zera Yacob: "But how do we make a better party?"

Francis Bacon: "Can't we just observe what other parties are like, collect data, and analyze what is or isn't good? I saw a party last week with a keg, maybe we should try that."

Zera Yacob: "We can't just blindly follow the creed of others, Francis Bacon, we have to use our reason to find the universal truth of what a good party is."

Francis Bacon: "So what do we do, Zera Yacob?"
Zera Yacob: "We have to create a party which harmonizes with the universal and absolute reason of God, and the world."
Francis Bacon: "But how do we do that?"

Zera Yacob: "We have to figure out a way to make our party comfortable for everyone, so everyone can relax and have a good time."
Hegel: "Are you serious?! Comfortable? Relaxing? You've misunderstood not only parties, but reason itself."
Zera Yacob: "What do you mean, Hegel?"

Hegel: "Reason is not a pure abstraction that can come immediately to the truth, it is a process of refining our concepts towards an ever building idea."

Hegel: "That's why a good party pushes forward the dialectic, it challenges us on the very concept of a party, makes us examine what a party even is."

Zera Yacob: "What are you saying?"
Hegel: "I'm saying we need to get real freaky with it."
Zera Yacob: "Uh..."
Hegel: "What if we all put on blindfolds, and descended into the basement. At random, half of us would be the 'masters' and half of us would be the 'slaves.' "

Hegel: "Then, through the power struggle of obedience and rebellion, we would come to an even  greater understanding of our own self-consciousness."

Hegel, holding up a ball gag and straps: "Here, put these on, and take some coke."

Zera Yacob: "Okay, first of all...no."

Zera Yacob: "And second of all, I've realized that you are disrupting the harmony of our party, lame though it may be, so you are going to have to leave."

Hegel: "You see, this is great, it is all part of the dialectical process, you've given the antithesis to my thesis."

Hegel: "Now we just have to come to a synthesis of our competing ideas, like...what if you didn't have to wear the ball gag?"
Francis Bacon and Zera Yacob together: "NO!"

Francis Bacon: "Carry on with the lame party?"
Zera Yacob: "Yes please."
It turns out that a good party is mostly just a party without Hegel.
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Francis Bacon was an early 17th century philosopher, best known for being one of the earlier philosophers who believed all knowledge had to be systematically empirical. He believed that through a system something like what we now think of as the "scientific method", we could come to understand the world. He was skeptical about all passed down dogmas which were not empirically tested.

Zera Yacob was also a 17th century philosopher, from Ethiopia. Like Bacon, he was very skeptical of dogmas, and thought all things needed to be considered. However, unlike Bacon, he believed it was human reason that was the primary method of examining the world. Obviously we needed to observe the world too, but he was also skeptical of moral, social, and religious institutions which asked us to believe things only because we were told them. He thought all beliefs should be subject to the examination of human reason and rationality. He believed that the best morality was harmonizing among different people along the ultimate principle of reason.

Hegel believed that reason operated quite differently from earlier philosophers like Yacob, who thought reason was a sort of absolute thing that you could use to come to a truth about a set beliefs. Instead, Hegel found reason or rationality more like a conversation that interrogates a given circumstances and moves towards a better set of ideas, rather than something immediately called the "truth" in the moment. In other words, reason was more like a debate or a courtroom verdict, rather than merely a way of thinking that produces truth.

Francis Bacon was an early 17th century philosopher, best known for being one of the earlier philosophers who believed all knowledge had to be systematically empirical. He believed that through a system something like what we now think of as the "scientific method", we could come to understand the world. He was skeptical about all passed down dogmas which were not empirically tested.

Zera Yacob was also a 17th century philosopher, from Ethiopia. Like Bacon, he was very skeptical of dogmas, and thought all things needed to be considered. However, unlike Bacon, he believed it was human reason that was the primary method of examining the world. Obviously we needed to observe the world too, but he was also skeptical of moral, social, and religious institutions which asked us to believe things only because we were told them. He thought all beliefs should be subject to the examination of human reason and rationality. He believed that the best morality was harmonizing among different people along the ultimate principle of reason.

Hegel believed that reason operated quite differently from earlier philosophers like Yacob, who thought reason was a sort of absolute thing that you could use to come to a truth about a set beliefs. Instead, Hegel found reason or rationality more like a conversation that interrogates a given circumstances and moves towards a better set of ideas, rather than something immediately called the "truth" in the moment. In other words, reason was more like a debate or a courtroom verdict, rather than merely a way of thinking that produces truth.

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