But who is saying that a person just need to be alone in a room with zero stimulus or just go to the mountain hiking with no thoughts in mind? — Manuel
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. — T Clark
Stop reading, arguing, writing, building little intellectual kingdoms out of the sand of your benighted psyches. Just pay attention. To the world and to yourself.
I add to this another of my favored positions - Most of the controversy in philosophy is related to differences in metaphysics and the fact that most philosophers don’t recognize that ways of seeing reality are not right or wrong, they are just more or less useful ways of seeing things in a particular situation. — T Clark
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. — T Clark
I wonder why Kafka thought that. — Janus
Imagination is spurred and provoked.
This idea of cloistered genius demiurging their way to brilliance is just neoliberal entrepreneurial values transposed into philosophy like a virus. Self-aggrandizing laziness arrogated to the status of virtue. — StreetlightX
That seems to me to be a considered position based on personal experience. — Manuel
Sure.
I guess I'm tying myself into knots thinking how can someone have an original uncontaminated idea? These days it's very hard. — Manuel
One of the arguments I've heard for familiarizing yourself with the tradition is that you don't want to waste years coming up with ideas that you could have encountered in hours of reading. — Janus
On the other hand, when you've come to an idea you think is original and then discover someone had said very much the same thing hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, then I suppose that is a sign you may be headed in a good direction. — Manuel
:party:Sending in a proxy to do some work that you did not want done. CIA. — James Riley
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
— T Clark
Of course this is Kafka's original thought not T Clark's. I wonder why Kafka thought that. Was he recommending avoidance of literature? Seeing is one thing; if you want to be good at communicating what you see, then obviously some familiarity with the ways other's have expressed their seeing will no doubt be helpful — Janus
So, I’d like to put forth the hypothesis that I don’t need no stinking Kant, or Hegel, or Schopenhauer, or Kneechee, or any of those guys. I have expressed my skepticism about western philosophy many times before on the forum. Rather than being defensive about it, I have decided to raise laziness to the level of sanctified philosophical principle. Stop reading, arguing, writing, building little intellectual kingdoms out of the sand of your benighted psyches. Just pay attention. To the world and to yourself. — T Clark
Just pay attention. To the world and to yourself. — T Clark
The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other — T Clark
It does seem that way. Philosophy to some just means debate.That might seem strange because, going by this forum, people seem to think philosophy is almost entirely a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with someone else, or with some statement, or with some argument. — Srap Tasmaner
shut up, sit still, think. — Bitter Crank
I find most philosophical writing to be pretty tedious, both in its content and its style. Most of it doesn't make any difference! — Bitter Crank
I can only recommend someone depending on what topic you're interested in. If most figures aren't connecting with you, I don't see the problem. — Manuel
we are never absolved from doing our own thinking if we don't wish to remain igorant. Nobody loves a regurgitator or an insistent mediocrity. — Janus
So the great philosophers are like insistent poets, quite often fucking annoying; but if you are in the right mood to brook the insistence, and flow with them where they want you to flow; something may come of it. — Janus
Tell us, though, when ignorance was ever an indication that a job would be well done. — tim wood
What do you think the philosophers that made contributions to science? Pierre-Simon Laplace, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Isaac Newton (just to name a few). Back then great thinkers that were empirical minded were called "natural philosophers". Currently (unfortunately?) "natural philosophy" has been largely replaced by "science". — Wheatley
I suspect someone will come on here and blast away at the lack of discipline and seriousness this approach displays. And how important subjects require hard work to understand properly. But I sympathise and have not privileged academic philosophy in my life. Nevertheless, I have often been curious to get a better sense of what I may have missed. Why I'm here. — Tom Storm
no one makes any serious decisions in their life - who to live with, what house to buy, where to work, where to shop, who to vote for, etc - based on the problem of induction, whether math is discovered or invented, or if physicalism is false, etc. — Tom Storm
This didn't work 65 years ago when my mother told me in church and it won't work now. — T Clark
Yes, but listening to others discuss ideas, especially professional philosophers, I feel like I'm missing something. I'm trying to get a handle on that. — T Clark
I think my "body of work," if I may laughingly call it that, shows I am not afraid to do my own thinking, for better or worse. — T Clark
The more interesting part is learning to think differently. Sometimes that's trying out different terms and categories, a specific change like that; sometimes it's seeing an entirely different sort of approach to an issue or a problem. — Srap Tasmaner
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