My own intuition is some people can look at a 'million paintings' and be none the wiser. — Tom Storm
In a similar vein, theorist and writer Stanley Fish has a polemic that in life philosophy doesn't matter. As you go about your business choosing a job or a partner or buying a house or selecting food off a menu, the questions of philosophy don't and can't enter into it. — Tom Storm
I think Fish is wrong here or only thinking of the academic philosophy game. Are you saying that Epictetus, for instance, can't help people with life? Or consider the industry of self-help books, which are ultimately philosophy books, if not well respected. If we go by quantity, it's the helps-with-life philosophy that's far more popular than the clever stuff. — j0e
I can speculate that Vonnegut meant something like: if you care about art and developing your taste, the main thing is to look at lots of paintings. But that doesn't sound as good. What's the alternative? — j0e
I'd say the same thing about philosophy. Any philosophy geek can give a list of their favorite books, but the main thing is to read lots of books — j0e
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind. — Nietzsche
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart. — Nietzsche
think it is much more valuable to learn to read a few books, slowly and carefully. Too often philosophy is tread as if it were merely information, and books treated as trophies or notches in a belt. — Fooloso4
Is it a game? But yes, I think he means serious philosophy. He is not talking about principles like social justice or the virtue of non-judgment. Do we have much evidence that people make many serious decisions in life based on any reading - even pop-psychology? — Tom Storm
But don't you think that some books sometimes make a big difference ? — j0e
To me it's bold indeed to suggest that reading general thoughts about life or how stuff all hangs together would have no effect on serious decisions. — j0e
But philosophical questions such as ethical relativism, theories of truth or the problem of induction make no practical difference to people's daily life. — Tom Storm
I haven't read one and no one I know has ever disclosed reading one (that I can recall). But I understand they sell like the clappers. Any good examples - maybe I've heard of one or two and I have forgotten. — Tom Storm
http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.htmlWhen you are going about any action, remind yourself what nature the action is. If you are going to bathe, picture to yourself the things which usually happen in the bath: some people splash the water, some push, some use abusive language, and others steal. Thus you will more safely go about this action if you say to yourself, "I will now go bathe, and keep my own mind in a state conformable to nature." And in the same manner with regard to every other action. For thus, if any hindrance arises in bathing, you will have it ready to say, "It was not only to bathe that I desired, but to keep my mind in a state conformable to nature; and I will not keep it if I am bothered at things that happen.
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself. — Epictetus
But imagine a fanboy of X who's just stuck in the charisma and perspective of a few thinkers. — j0e
IMV, it's the clash of perspectives that sophisticates the mind. — j0e
In philosophy the race goes to the one who can run slowest—the one who crosses the finish line last. — Wittgenstein
My sentences are all supposed to be read slowly. I really want my copious punctuation marks to slow down the speed of reading. Because I should like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.) — Wittgenstein
It has been my experience that those who rush do a poor job of reading. Their heads are full of ideas but they do not take the time to think through the problems. — Fooloso4
One of the hardest things to do is think and write simply. Strip away the jargon and name dropping and what is laid bare does not amount to much. Of course there are exceptions. — Fooloso4
...surely you are also aware of the anti-intellectualism that seizes on this kind of statement. — j0e
Who's unsimple in the bad way? — j0e
Cut through the jargon and it becomes clear that they have not really understood the author, and cannot defend what they say by giving a detailed analysis of the text that ties together the parts into a coherent whole. — Fooloso4
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/In this way Gadamer can be seen as attempting to retrieve a positive conception of prejudice (German Vorurteil) that goes back to the meaning of the term as literally a pre-judgment (from the Latin prae-judicium) that was lost during the Renaissance. In Truth and Method, Gadamer redeploys the notion of our prior hermeneutical situatedness as it is worked out in more particular fashion in Heidegger’s Being and Time (first published in 1927) in terms of the ‘fore-structures’ of understanding, that is, in terms of the anticipatory structures that allow what is to be interpreted or understood to be grasped in a preliminary fashion. The fact that understanding operates by means of such anticipatory structures means that understanding always involves what Gadamer terms the ‘anticipation of completeness’—it always involves the revisable presupposition that what is to be understood constitutes something that is understandable, that is, something that is constituted as a coherent, and therefore meaningful, whole.
...
Moreover, the indispensable role of prejudgment in understanding connects directly with Gadamer’s rethinking of the traditional concept of hermeneutics as necessarily involving, not merely explication, but also application. In this respect, all interpretation, even of the past, is necessarily ‘prejudgmental’ in the sense that it is always oriented to present concerns and interests, and it is those present concerns and interests that allow us to enter into the dialogue with the matter at issue. Here, of course, there is a further connection with the Aristotelian emphasis on the practical—not only is understanding a matter of the application of something like ‘practical wisdom’, but it is also always determined by the practical context out of which it arises.
The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are involved in a dialogue that encompasses both our own self-understanding and our understanding of the matter at issue. In the dialogue of understanding our prejudices come to the fore, both inasmuch as they play a crucial role in opening up what is to be understood, and inasmuch as they themselves become evident in that process. — SEP
On this forum Heidegger is often dismissed because people are unwilling to do the work to understand him. But this is different from what I was referring to above. — Fooloso4
Something we haven't taken account of is the possibility of creatively misreading thinkers. While in general I think we do want to grasp what they really thought, this is not the only reason to read (we aren't just biographers of their interior.) — j0e
He told me he thought it was a worthy project but one that should wait until I had been interpreting texts for about 25 years. I never did take up that project but continue the practice of interpretation. — Fooloso4
The third is the principle of humility, that the philosopher has something to teach us; that it is not a simply a matter of what they thought but, by attempting to understand what they are thinking they will help us in our thinking. — Fooloso4
That projected gist is continually revised as we bump up against fragments that don't gel with it. — j0e
Another of my teachers, Leo Strauss, although I know him only through his books, said that when you come upon a contradiction take this as an indication that there is something more going on and that you must play an active role in discovering how it is resolved. — Fooloso4
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