Philosophy is an extremely ancient subject, which first flourished amongst the ancient Greeks before they were all destroyed in the great flood that sank Atlantis. Philosophy teaches us many things, the only problem being that nobody is completely sure what they are, or indeed whether it is particularly important that we should know them in the first place.

The term philosophy actually encompasses a vast array of different topics, including the meaning of life, the debate on the existence of God, and the question of just why it is that you can never get the cellophane film off a frozen lasagne in less than seventeen pieces. The upshot of this wide variety of material is that it can take several lifetimes to achieve even a simplistic grasp of the most basic concepts. This explains why philosophy has the highest suicide rate of any subject. Well, that and the fact that it can be as boring as watching a nineteen-hour documentary on the social habits of the common garden slug. In French. With Sanskrit subtitles. And a man sitting next to you, showing you photographs of his collection of fossilised Egyptian verrucas. Some people might disagree with this and claim that philosophy is, in fact, a really interesting subject. These people are extremely dangerous and should be handled with extreme caution. If approached by one on the street, make an excuse (for instance, you could say that you must hurry to the vet’s because your canary has come down with a particularly nasty case of bubonic plague. This excuse obviously works best if you carry a sick canary around with you at all times for emergency purposes) and flee as quickly as possible.

One of the most interesting things that philosophy can teach us is that none of us can ever be entirely sure that we exist or, for that matter, that anyone else exists. As one school of thought has it, the entire universe and everything within it, whether alive or not, are merely imaginative figments of a goat in a field just outside Cambridge. Some thinkers, referred to in the literature as ‘clever dicks’, have pointed out a number of flaws with this theory. Mainly, they say that if the entire universe is a figment of the goat’s imagination, then it stands to reason that neither the field nor Cambridge actually exist either. Furthermore, some would even go so far as to claim that the goat does not exist. This causes problems for proponents of the theory, since it is difficult to comprehend how the entire universe could be an imaginative figment of an imaginative figment. The standard response to this is simply to add another goat into the equation (that is, to say that the original goat, if imaginative, is a figment of another actual goat), and to continue adding goats until whoever is arguing against the theory decides to go up and go home. As a result, this has become known as ‘The Argument of a Thousand Goats’ or, more typically, ‘a load of bollocks’.

Philosophy also concerns itself with the nature of time. Students of the subject are often forced to consider the problems posed by the question of time-travel. The oftused conundrum is to consider whether a person could travel backwards in time and murder his/her parents before their ever met. Should a person accomplish this, they will, of course, erase themselves from existence and therefore would never have been able to go back and kill their parents. Because they wouldn’t have existed in the first place, this means that their parents [I]do[/I] meet, and so the would-be patricidal and matricidal maniac does exist after all. This is repeated [I]ad nauseam[/I]. The worry is that such an action would create a temporal paradox of such terrible magnitude that it would set in motion a cataclysmic series of events that would ultimately lead to a fundamental disruption of the space-time continuum, wiping the entire cosmos from existence with a loud ‘plop’ (or possibly a 'fssst', depending on your views on the fundaments of astrophysics). Philosophers generally agree that this would be a bad thing, particularly if it happened during ‘Match of the Day’.

The area of metaphysics asks fundamental questions about the way we understand and comprehend the world around us. Can we, for instance, ever truly experience anything? Plato, famous dead person, illustrated this by means of a cave, comparing what we see in the world to shadows cast on the wall by flickering firelight. This illustration is, however, a bit dry for modern tastes, so instead we’ll bring in some naked women. Imagine you are fondling a naked woman. You’re rubbing your hands up and down her, getting a feel for her shape and curves, and paying particular attention to the naughty bits. Ask yourself this, though: are you really experiencing the naked woman, or are you merely experiencing your concept of her that has been filtered through your sensory organs, nervous system and brain? This is a terribly important philosophical question, although it probably won’t matter very much to you, especially if the woman has a big pair of knockers.

Another aspect of philosophy concerns the distinction between mind and body, and the possibility of the existence of an eternal soul. Regarding this latter point, philosophers often ask a series of questions: if there is a soul, where is it located?; where does it go when we die?; what does it look like?; and can it lend me a fiver?

Self-Assessment Questions.

1) What is the meaning of life?
[7 Groucho marks]

2) Why?
[3.33 recurring marks]

3) Is this a question?
[1 mark to rule them all]

Question Answers

1) Being nice to people, learning to scuba-dive, helping little old ladies across roads, giving money to charity and attempting to figure out whether it really does make any difference what shape tea-bag you use, since no matter whether it’s square, circular, pyramidal or shaped like Chester A. Arthur, former president of the United States, it doesn’t seem to alter the taste of the tea in any way, shape or form. Any candidate who answers ‘42’ should be given a slap around the face for attempting to be a smart arse.

2) Because otherwise it would be much harder to release the chicken from the hole without fear of endangering the rabbi or the Girl Guide marching band.

3) Is this an answer?