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How to Do Philosophy

paulgraham.com · 4,796 words · saved by 7 readers

September 2007 In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college. I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable was to shock people. College was regarded as job training where I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do. Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a safety pin through your ear, which were other forms of impressive impracticality then just coming into fashion. But I had some more honest motives as well. I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom. All the people majoring in other things would just end up with a bunch of domain knowledge. I would be learning what was really what. I'd tried to read a few philosophy books. Not recent ones; you wouldn't find those in our high school library. But I tried to read Plato and Aristotle. I doubt I believed I understood them, but they sounded like they were talking about something important. I

How to Do Philosophy --> September 2007 In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college. I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable was to shock people. College was regarded as job training where I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do. Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a safety pin through your ear, which were other forms of impressive impracticality then just coming into fashion. But I had some more honest motives as well. I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut

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