Category: Studiousness
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Do I Repeat Myself?
Repetitio est mater studiorum.
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Is Graduate School Really That Bad?
Top of the Stack.
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Reader Asks: What Should I Read?
Nathaniel T. writes, In the new year, I'm committing to some more regular reading habits. What serious books would you recommend to someone outside academia who has about half an hour uninterrupted in the morning to read, three times a week? How about a list that would last that person a year? Here…
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Advice on Study and the Improvement of the Mind
Reader M.L.P. inquires, I was wondering what habits one should acquire to study philosophy profitably. I read philosophy books but I tend to forget most of what I read. I also find it hard to come up with my own ideas. Roughly how many books or articles should one read in a day? Or is…
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The Ability to Write and to Comprehend a Good, Long Sentence . . .
. . . is one mark of an educated mind. You won't learn this in the English Department of Rutgers, however. Example: If you value the life of the mind, the pursuit of truth, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, high culture and its transmission, in short, the classical values of the university as set…
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Machiavelli on the Pleasure of Study
Although he was decidedly of the world and not merely in it, Machiavelli knew how to retreat from its brutality into the serene precincts of the life of the mind and lose himself there, for a time, in conversations with the ancients. I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off…
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My Approach to Study and Writing
A reader inquires, A question. It seems I hit a wall every year or so in my intellectual life which involves uncertainty about what books/essays to read next, what subject matter to systematically pursue, what to reread and review (review is all too important). Now I know everyone is different, but could you share your…
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We Lesser Lights
The great thinkers think for humanity, and the great writers write for humanity. The great teachers are teachers of humanity. Buddha was such a one and so were Jesus and Socrates. We lesser lights think and write to clear our heads, and to appropriate what we have inherited. Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,erwirb…
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Evening and Morning
The quality of the first will affect the quality of the second. An evening of drinking and dancing is no preparation for a morning of thinking and trancing. Related: Suggestions on How to Study
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Misattributed to Socrates
I am a foe of misquotation, misattribution, the retailing of unsourced quotations, the passing off of unchecked second-hand quotations, and sense-altering context suppression. Have I ever done any of these things? Probably. 'Suffering' as I do from cacoethes scribendi, it is a good bet that I have committed one or more of the above. But I…
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On Writing Well: The Example of William James
This from a graduate student in philosophy: I have always been an admirer of your philosophical writing style–both in your published works and on your blog. Have you ever blogged about which writers and books have most influenced your philosophical writing style? Yes, I have some posts on or near this topic. What follows is…
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Write it Down!
If you are blessed by a good thought, do not hesitate to write it down at once. Good thoughts are visitors from Elsewhere and like most visitors they do not like being snubbed or made to wait. Let us say a fine aphorism flashes before your mind. There it is is fully formed. All you…
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Are You a Natural Writer? Take the Gide Test
Here is an interesting passage from André Gide's last work, written shortly before his death in 1951, So Be It or The Chips Are Down, tr. Justin O'Brien, Alfred Knopf, 1959, pp. 145-146, bolding added, italics in original. Brief commentary follows. It is certain that the man who wonders as he takes up his pen:…
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Why Write?
A reader sends me the following quotation from a Richard Mitchell: I have never yet written anything, long or short, that did not surprise me. That is, for me at least, the greatest worth of writing, which is only incidentally a way of telling others what you think. Its first use is for the making…