cogito ergo sum (i think therefore i am)

[smoothmoniker]

Plato: We know things by virtue of being in the midst of them, and philosophy helps us understand them better.

[fast forward 1500 years]

The Enlightenment philosophers: No, we can only know things if they can be proven rationally from basic and proper knowledge, like 2+2 = 4. We have only a handful of properly basic truths from which to work, and we have to justify everything with that same kind of certainty.

Descartes: No, you only have one - "The one thinking, exists". But it's all good, because from that we can derive everything, including the fact that God has 10 fingers and 10 toes, and lives on the planet Kolob.

Kant: sorry bro, you don't even have that. It's possible that even our rational thought is a construct of the phenomenal on the noumenal. We have rational certainty of nothing.

Descartes: crap.

Derrida: Look at what you all did. You broke the damn thing. Now we have no knowledge of anything true.

Us normal people: Hey, what if we know stuff by being in the midst of it, and philosophy can help us understand it a little better?