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Yesterday, I read two essays by Schopenhauer. The first was “On Philosophy and Its Method” and the second, “On Logic and Dialectic”. I like his idea that philosophy is a battlefield, where at any given moment there can be only one philosopher. As he says, “for just as there can be only one queen in a beehive, so can only one philosophy be the order of the day.” If philosophy is all about pursuing wisdom and fighting for her undivided attention, how pitiful all these crowd-pleasers might appear before her. “I do everything for people. I’m obsessed with my customers. I bring philosophy to practical life.” Have you ever asked her if she wants to be exposed to the public? You’re not teaching philosophy by masticating her offspring or explaining the meaning of the greatest books in your pedantic jargon. You’re not doing any service to any philosopher by summarizing his ideas and presenting them in a simplified version to your dumb audience. It’s not going to evoke “the irresistible urge to solve the riddle of existence.”
So in this case the mission is to defeat all philosophasters of the day and revise all the past to figure out who is who on our own. Although thinking with a genuinely great mind strengthens our own, gives it regular exercise and puts it in a right frame, we must be very careful while interpreting someone else’s thoughts, distinguishing them from what’s going on in our own mind.
Now, let’s talk about self-centered learning and meditate on “gnotiseauton”.
Bing's summary:
This text is about the author’s admiration for Schopenhauer’s philosophy and his criticism of those who misuse and misinterpret it. The author also expresses his desire to learn from the great philosophers of the past and to know himself better. The text is about the value of wisdom and the challenge of finding it in a world full of false and superficial thinkers.
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