Dude, I found this guru. He blogs the great works of philosophy in language we can understand. He is known as Philosophy Bro, and by that... shall... he be known. Man.

The Tao, Pascal's Wager, Plato's allegory of the cave. He says Hobbes' "Leviathan" bongs down to "Dudes are f*cking d*cks." Bro is on it like me on your mom. That is to say often, and loudly. BRO CALM DOWN I AM TALKING PHILOSOPHY.

More things do their sh*t in heaven and on campus, my good bro, than are dreamt of in your class "Intro to Philosophy." Come read a blog that shall explain all truths, dude. It's like, you're standing on the cliff, scared to leap, but get this, once you jump, that's the only moment you finally know you have wings.

Oh so I interviewed that dude. He explained why he is imparting such wisdom. Go and toke likewise.

So (and the rest of this is for the post), are you a philosophy student? Have you read every book that you're summarizing, in its entirety, or do you sometimes work with summaries?

I'm a philosophy student. I haven't read every book I'm summarizing, but I've read the majority of them that I've done so far. If I haven't read a book, I try to work one level up from the summary I'm producing, so if I'm grouping together a multi-chapter book I'll read a few summaries of each individual chapter and excerpts or important quotes so I get a sense of the philosopher's writing style, method and goal, and go from there.

It's important to me that I'm actually summarizing something, even if it's not the whole book, and not just translating someone else's summary. For answering Mailbag Monday questions, I try to read the actual text relevant to the question and at least one opinion that disagrees with the author.

Have you written anything like this before? Or anything at all? Do you want to reveal your identity to the world, or are you simply Philosophy Bro?

This is my first blog, and my first bro-themed project. I do stand-up comedy recreationally, so I've learned how to sit down with an idea and write and rewrite until I have something funny and meaningful, but I'm still learning to create written humor. C.S. Lewis said that the greatest challenge to writing down Mere Christianity was translating the radio broadcasts into text in a way that properly emphasized the words he'd emphasized vocally; it's different, for sure.

At this point, I'd rather remain Philosophy Bro; I think it's easier that way. It forces me to produce work that stands on its own, which is important to me. I don't want people making assumptions about my work based on who I am, or to approach my summaries in a biased way; someone on Reddit said they were on the verge of suicide when they read my summary of "The Myth of Sisyphus," and that brought them back. I don't know how true that is, but it surprised me because that's not really a philosophy I necessarily endorse.

I try to write each summary, though, as if I'm the author and I fully believe it, and let people evaluate them as if they're evaluating the work itself. I got some concerned e-mails and Tweets when I did Fear and Trembling because it was the opposite of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and people wanted to know if I endorsed one or the other. Since they're so opposite, it's hard not to think one is closer to the truth than the other - almost no one is true neutral on those - but I'm not saying which. I don't want to color anything that way. I'm not in the business right now of evaluating philosophies.

I also want to see how long it takes for this project to get back to me, how long it takes someone I know to recommend Philosophy Bro to me. That'll be a very cool moment.

Are you, or have you ever been, a bro? What's your exposure to bro language?

I'm more of a Barney Stinson style bro than, say, a lacrosse bro; that of course raises questions of what constitutes a 'bro' per se, and I'm not sure that's something easy to articulate. I've taken it to mean broadly someone who dictates his own social norms, whether that be in style or in language or in, ah, "relationships", and who doesn't really care about being judged.

And I think philosophy fits well into that paradigm, because when philosophers write they're usually trying to buck some norm or show why what they think is more right than anyone else, which is how every bro in the world goes about his day. Just being right.

I grew up all over the place, so I was exposed to both diversity and affluence, the crossroads of bro-dom, and I've heard just about every imaginable localized language - I'm also conversant in ebonics and fluent in pretension. I'm picking up Spanglish, too, and I'm getting good. But bros have a universal language, which is of course a product of being right all the time and knowing it. We just get each other.

• link:// Philosophy Bro