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Just me or is philosophy actually a complete shitshow? When I was younger I really wanted to major in philosophy because I thought it was "learning to think real good about abstract stuff", but eventually found out it was "quoting other famous people's stuff at each other"

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I’ve only read a bit but some name-dropping happens because other people have had the same thoughts and arguments hundreds of years ago

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but that's not the point, like the point is to talk with the *other person* about how *they personally* relate to it, doesn't matter if old people hashed it out.

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If old people hashed it out, then you listen to whichever one you think makes sense. Either you don’t understand philosophy well or I’m not understanding your problem with it.

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Why would you listen to them, though? They obviously did a ton of thinking, but I assumed the point of philosophy is for *you* to do all that thinking, independently, and then notice if you happen to agree with them or not. I used to think people read philosophers to assess-

6:18 AM · Oct 18, 2019

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how solid they were and then debate them endlessly and then throw out the philosophers that didn't hold up. Most philosophy-trained people don't seem to actually be approaching texts with a critical, destructive eye.

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