A thought of the day

Sexy philosophy

Stanley Burnski recommends we read philosophers, not from Plato but the modern ones. By modern, he does not mean contemporary; he has in mind classics from the Enlightenment era. I agree.

When I was 16, maybe 17, I spoke with a pretty girl next door, whose parents were atheists. My parents were religious, so we disagreed. She suggested I would read what Immanuel Kant wrote about religion. Her parents had a book, and she offered to lend it to me.

I was a vivid reader, swallowing many books fast. But, at first, reading Kant was frustrating because it took me up to an hour to wade through a page. I needed to check the meaning of the words I did not know; I needed to read a sentence three times to figure out what Kant wrote. When I got it and disagreed with it, I put a book aside and tried to figure out where Kant made an error. Then, a few pages further, I found out that writing almost two centuries earlier, Kant predicted my critique and provided the answer. It was a lot of fun.

That experience changed my attitude toward reading. I started noticing that articles and books I had been reading repeated what I had already known. Reading Kant awaked in me a taste for reading challenging texts. Subconsciously, when reading, I looked for something new. I used to joke that philosophy is like sex; as soon as we taste it, we want more.

I would add to Stanley’s advice that we can start reading philosophers, not as a (dull and wearisome) class assignment, but when life situations prompt us to look for a better understanding of something that interests us.

PS. On every occasion I can, I complain that instead of food for thought, Medium editors recommend me junk food for jumbled thoughts. Today they recommended to me the article by Stanley Burnski. Regardless if it was in response to my critique or an accident, please keep it this way.