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i get this feeling of being like... constipated and angry at the same time when around people who've gone through any formal philosophy, you can't get through a single idea without them dropping eight different philosophers on you, and im just like YES BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK

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but idk how to engage with it because i haven't read those philosophers because reading those philosophers is a kind of masochism i have not yet ascended to, and so I'm in an awkward position of "I have no idea what you're saying but I know I hate it"

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by this point if i'm at a party and i'm like 'yea but what's it like to feel the sense of thinking' and then someone says 'yeah well nietzsche said-' i just am done, immediately, like my next battle plan is to figure out how to erase philosophers from their mind

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i can't tell if they're doing some weird actually original and good mental jujitsu while using other philosopher's ideas as pawns, or if they are actually completely unoriginal and think that good thinking is just knowing what other good thinkers think. I can't tell.

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As much as I shit on the rationalist community, this is a big part of why I love them - on a whole, they're a level of well-read and nerdy and *don't* pull the philosopher namedropping card. It's glorious.

6:10 AM · Oct 18, 2019

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Hate to be that nitpicky philosophical nerd, but philosophy is doing absolutely fine. Academic philosophy on the other hand is a shitshow.

Agnes Callard

= @agnescallard@zirk.us

@AgnesCallard

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Agnes Callard, Author at The Point Magazine

I confess to doing a bit of namedropping myself sometimes but I do try to speak “normally” here’s some of my writing: thepointmag.com/author/acallar and I’m speaking at UC Berkeley soon LMK if you want details you’re welcome to come.

thepointmag.com

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What if all of our ideas are completely unoriginal but we just pass them off as our own?

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Oh shit i never realized that’s why I like them too

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You can study philo and not name drop. It's considered good practice to be intelligeble. That being said, 70% of philo majors are there for law school. 20% are there to seem smart (name droppers). 10% are there out of wonder. Hang with that 10%.

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In terms of what you wrote about meta-awareness, meditation in philosophy, the felt sense of concepts, & so on, I think you'd enjoy Pierre Hadot's work. He advocates for a similar approach, & suggests this is in fact how philosophy should be understood:

amazon.com

Philosophy as a Way of Life

This book presents a history of spiritual exercises from Socrates to early Christianity, an account of their decline in modern philosophy, and a discussion of the different conceptions of philosophy...

diraclikesmath

@diraclikesmath

Dec 24, 2019

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