How I Read Philosophy
[This is a draft of a tutorial I’m working on to help my students feel more comfortable reading philosophy. Comments, critiques, and additional tips would be welcome!]
Reading philosophy is still difficult for me, despite having been at it for ten years. But it’s been doable since the beginning, and I believe it is doable for anyone who is capable of attending college. Throughout that time, I’ve learned an important lesson: reading philosophy is unlike reading most other materials.
When reading philosophy, there are two principals things that a reader needs to pay attention to: structure and claims. We are often habituated to read for claims: “what the author is saying.” But philosophy isn’t philosophy without structure. The hallmark of philosophy is not what is being said, but how. Most philosophy essays are in the process of literally building an argument. As the reader, that building must occur in my mind as it occurs in the text. The reader could jump to the main claims, or read a quick review on Wikipedia, and understand what the claim is, but that doesn’t mean the reader understands philosophy. As one is reading, one should always ask one’s self, “Do I clearly understand what was said before, and how this current section is building upon the old?”
This short paper is broken down into a few sections. First, there are what I consider some basic principles for reading philosophy. I cannot even imagine how someone can regularly read and benefit from philosophy without these principles. Second, I describe how I’ve put some of the principles into practice in my personal life. Third, I briefly discuss how one’s reading style sometimes must change depending on the author one is reading. It is as if one must take on entirely different psychologies for Plato’s casual dialogues, Spinoza’s geometrical postulates, Kant’s dry analysis, and Nietzsche’s thunderous aphorisms.
I. Basic Principles
- Reserve time. Reading philosophy will take a lot of time. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you can understand 20 pages of Aristotle with one hour of reading. On my good days, I try to set aside three or four hours at a time for reading.
- Concentrate on reading. Reading philosophy is almost a meditation. Complete concentration is critical. The reader is carefully building a thought-structure in her mind, and while it is being learned, it is delicate. Anything that averts the attention of the reader is like a puff of wind on a castle of cards.
- Practice patience. Patience, especially in regard to reading, is a habit. And as a habit, every time you practice patience, your patience gets better. Don’t let anyone tell you that they sped-read through a philosophy book. Maybe they did: there are a few extraordinary minds out there, but in most cases they’re exaggerating or didn’t understand the text.
- Review. One of the most valuable practices to engage in is the leisurely review. Whenever I’m taking a walk, riding the bus, waiting in line, etc., I try to recall a recent reading project. Can I construct the argument in my mind? Where are the holes? Frequently, when I’m reading in a coffee shop and need a reading break, I close my eyes, lean back, and simply play with the ideas. This seems to solidify the knowledge in my mind, and makes it easier to recall later on.
- Discuss: Whenever possible, find an excuse to discuss what you’ve read. Be prepared for someone to criticize your interpretation of the text. Be humble enough to re-examine your interpretation, but confident enough to stand by your own reasoning. This is as close to a scientific experiment as the art of reading gets. Every time we read, we develop an interpretation of the text. This interpretation is essentially a hypothesis about what the text means. And as we all know, hypotheses must be tested in a laboratory of some kind. But the interpretations of others are also hypotheses, and may be wrong. If you’re in a discussion with someone with much more experience on the subject than yourself, for example, a senior student or a professor, it will be more tempting to abandon your interpretation for theirs. But if you do not understand why their interpretation is better, then adopting their interpretation doesn’t serve you at all. You are seeking understanding, not imitation. And after all, professors can be wrong too. Professors know this, because they spend much of their time arguing that other professors are wrong, and responding to arguments that they are wrong themselves. This is not a bad thing: they do it because it assists in their understanding and the growth of their knowledge.
- Take notes. This takes extra work, and I don’t do it nearly as much as I should. But on some occasions, I will force myself to outline an argument while I’m reading it. The affect on my comprehension and memory is unbelievable.
II. My Own Practices: Everyone is different, and the best way to learn how to read is simply to practice. But my specific practices may be helpful to others in the short or long term.
First, I need a comfortable spot. My two favorite places are my bed, or a hard chair in a coffee shop. The bed is excellent because I can lie prone, comfortable, and completely forget about my body. But occasionally, the softness of the bed makes me lazy, and especially after I’ve read for a few hours. My reading becomes slow and inattentive. At times like this, I will take about a 30 minute walk to a coffee shop (picking something that’s suitably far away to ensure that I get my blood flowing)
Second, I set the timer on my stopwatch. I set it for one hour, at which time it beeps. I started doing this because I’ve noticed one of my biggest distractions is checking the time. This way, I know that I’m not losing track of time. Psychologically, it seems easier to let my mind absorb the reading and leave the world behind for a little while.
Third, sometimes, I use a notecard to guide my reading, scrolling the card down the page so it is easy to tell what line I’m supposed to be on. The physical movement of moving the card also (1) helps me keep a healthy pace, and (2) somehow alerts me to when I haven’t been paying attention. Which brings me to four:
Fourth, do not be afraid to return to an earlier passage again and again and again. If someone ever watched me reading, they might sometimes get the feeling that I am reading a book backwards, such is my habit to return to earlier pages. If I’m reading, and I realize I haven’t understood the previous page, or I realize that my mind has still been reflecting on something I read four paragraphs ago, I return to the last place where I was on solid footing.
III. Different Styles for Different Authors
I have noticed that different authors require different styles of reading. Often, if I apply the wrong style, I will get very little from the text. It is as if each philosophy essay is a padlock of some sort, and the lock-picker needs to use the right tool to get to the treasure inside.
Immanuel Kant is interesting to read. I find that when reading Kant, if I move too slowly, I never understand what is being said or the structure. It’s counter-intuitive, but this most immensely complex and logical philosopher requires an initial aggressive forced march through the text. Once I get a feel for the argument, I can go back and spend more time analyzing the structure.
Nietzsche is another interesting case. He says of himself that he needs to be read slowly. But frankly, that rarely gets me anywhere, especially when I was first starting my Nietzsche readings. Reading Nietzsche is like assembling a puzzle, and first, you need to ignore the pieces that don’t make sense, and hunt for the pieces that do make sense. When you hit upon a piece that seems to make sense, study it, think about it, then set it aside. You won’t know how it fits into the whole, and because of this, you won’t be able to get a complete understanding of the piece itself. But it’s a start. As you go further into Nietzsche, you’ll find more pieces that make some sense. You’ll put those different pieces together, and you’ll start to understand the structure of the whole. Then, the pieces that initially made no sense, will make more sense. Eventually you’ll be in a place where almost everything he writes makes some sense, because it clearly fits into a larger picture clearly.
This is far from a universal rule, but generally, more modern authors pay better attention to clarity and organization. Since Socrates, the logos of the philosophers had been set opposed to rhetoric of the sophists, and this was probably a mistake. The rule becomes especially true with authors like William James and Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 19th/20th century. Their writing is crisp, and it is easy to find the distinct claims in each paragraph and the relevant support. Plato is a brilliant author, but the dialogue format means that claims are often buried or rejected as the dialogue progresses. Many of the 17th century authors, such as Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, strived for organization, and you can see their very blatant but useful structures of organization guiding their work. David Hume in the 18th century recognized the importance of rhetoric in philosophy Hegel, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care about his reader at all. But like I said, this is far from a universal rule. Many contemporary philosophers are worse than just about everything that came before, and the best passages of Plato and Aristotle outshine almost everything that’s written today.
Natural Causes 