Do you think "philosophy is p***-easy" is a stupid thing to say?

Ok, so yesterday this guy I know said "philosophy is piss-easy" in a really dismissive way. I usually respect his views and agree to differ with him on most things even though he exasperates me with his sweeping new-age beliefs and racial generalizations, but this comment about philosophy seriously irritated me. Am I justified in saying his comment is stupid, or is what he said perfectly fine?





These are the objections I laid out to him:





1. He is completely missing the point of philsophical enquiry. Saying philosophy is "easy" is really a lazy way of saying "when I read or hear about philosophy I generally have no problem understanding the concepts and debates." This is perfectly acceptable (although I should have tested his knowledge to show up his arrogance). But he is missing the point in claiming all philosophy itself is "easy" because most of the topics that the subject has engaged with over the millenia have never been "resolved". It's not like completing a video game or finishing a jigsaw puzzle. It's like saying "politics is easy". If it were then presumably we would have stopped having wars by now.





2. He reifies the concept of philosophy. In my view philosophy exists insofar as it is produced out of debate between a variety of perspectives. Read a book, and yes, you may easily understand the arguments and tick it off your list - but go off and discuss it with others and you will push against the limits of your own assumptions and understanding. Calling this dynamic interaction of perspectives and meanings "easy" makes no sense. It's as easy as a piece of string is long.





3. If he thinks the philosophy he has read is "piss-easy" then either he has paradigm-shifting mental abilities, or he has a rather superficial understanding of it. People who say things are easy all the time I imagine are often simply lead down the same routes of the mind, they encounter no mental resistance because they are not asking themselves probing questions, in their complacency they rarely examine their own assumptions, things are "easy" or "boring".





4. He implies he already has within him the knowledge he needs to understand philosophy, making him a sort of rationalist, thus positioning him somewhere philosophically. If he had to defend himself against criticisms of his position? This is as easy/difficult as the depth of the criticisms.





5. Which leads me to the next point, the "piss-easy" body of thousands of years of human thought, philosophy, actually provides us with the means to reflexively act back upon the very statements we make by offering doubts and criticisms against them, so we forever elude the certainty that make things "easy".





6. Philosophy engages with the most profound questions that we can ask. To call this "piss-easy" is to grossly overstate the capabilities of one human mind.





7. It's wrong to say "philosophy is piss-easy" until you have comprehensively exhausted every book and discussion on the topic and can make a balanced conclusion about its complexity in relation to your own abilities to comprehend it. And since the topic isn't finite anyway, this is impossible.





8. Sounds harsh, but I think his comment is a function of his own competitive, compensatory need to boost his self-esteem, when in actual fact he's bankrupt, unemployed, and a cuckold. I think Nietschze said somewhere that often beliefs of some philosophers are sublimations of other things, "an involuntary and unconscious auto-biography", and my friend might do good to consider this. On the other hand, maybe I should encourage him. Damn, I'm being harsh...





9. If philosophy is so "easy", why can't he apply its intellectual tools when it come to the obvious weaknessness in his own unquestioned new-age beliefs? Some of these: talking about matter/soul (dualism) then that everything is one, the "Dao" (monism). He used to be an scientist yet believes in blood-types corresponding to personality types which is just an unscientific money-spinner. When I point out these contradictions he says they are different ways of seeing things and he doesn't want to chose one. In my view, if we are talking about things of little relative consequence to our future, say interior decoration, then I have no problem with things like Feng Shui. But once into the world of science and politics his view is a cop-out as if we have two competing claims about the same thing (obviously if two different claims refer to different things they may co-exist) then it makes sense to test both and then preference one, for more is at stake. (Or am I wrong in saying that "truth matters"?)





Are these valid objections, or have I got a bee in my bonnet? After all, it doesn't really matter what he thinks about philosophy, the proof is in|||Yes, your objections have some validity, but that is from your own perspective and those who share it. What you appear to be hung up on is that absorbing all the material surrounding the academic study is difficult, and that many philosophical questions are unanswerable, but the point you are missing is that philosophizing is easy. We all do it naturally. Philosophy, at its heart, is really nothing more than opinion. Some opinions are learned and wise and others are not. Your friend is apparently unconcerned with academic philosophy and is more concerned with the popular form of it, which indeed is "piss easy". To each his own may be a philosophy worth adopting.|||let him believe what he likes... clearly he is an ignorant twatt! if its so easy why doesn't he got to uni and get a doctorate?|||You're dealing with someone who is that sophisticated he resorts to using that sort of term to get his point across and you're worrying whether he has a valid point?|||Now you really are a philosopher! Extrapolating much more out of a phrase than it actually contains. This is the philosophers we know and love, making a mountain out of a molehill. Lighten up mate, it is just a throwaway comment, thats all.