On “thinking”

On “thinking”

I would like to write about what I felt when I read the book “NHK Shuppan Gakushu no Kiso – Thinking Classroom: An Introduction to Philosophy for Adults” to understand what it means to think.

In this book, the author discusses about thinking based on Descartes’ book. First of all, the text of Descartes’ “Introduction to Method” is presented as follows

Some minds think that they can understand in a day, by hearing a few words, everything that others have spent twenty years thinking about, and the more intelligent and agile they are, the more prone they are to error, the less capable they are of grasping the truth, and the more absurd they are, on the basis of what they suppose to be my principles. In order not to give them an opportunity to formulate their own philosophy, and to prevent them from blaming me for their errors.

From them, it is easy to confirm the facts, but difficult to live them. I am saying that knowing something in your head and making it flesh and blood are two very different things.

What others have spent 20 years thinking about, we also need to spend 20 years thinking about and seeing. At the very least, we need to be prepared for that. He also said that the important thing is not to “understand quickly” but to “think long”.

One of the ways to learn what others have thought is to read. The primary interpretation of reading is to understand what is written in a book, but reading does not stop there. The former means to read a book and recognize the non-verbal things behind it, and the latter says that reading is to use the visible letters as a door and perceive what is behind them with the “eyes.

When the knowledge in the author’s mind is formalized, including in books and web descriptions, a lot of information is lost and becomes a form. If you just read it, you will simply understand it (quickly), but you will not be able to think about it (for a long time). I guess that’s what it comes down to.

In order to think for a long time, there must be a purpose (directionality). In Descartes’ writings, it is sublimated to “way of life” or “soul”, but I think it can be replaced to “thinking long” about individual subjects (issues) in daily work or life without making it so grandiose.

In addition, I think that the stance of “cold and warm self-knowledge” mentioned in the previous article is important in order to think about things as one’s own.