Month: October 2019

entry 3

a re-formulation:*

When one senses or feels an idea that isn’t quite here yet – in other words when one notices the subliminal presence of a coming idea that is as yet un-finished:

Instead of following the urge to [try to] pull it up into consciousness by force of will, one should patiently wait while it gradually fills itself out and one day pushes itself up [through one’s mind] into consciousness – sprouting up like a perfect young plant – & only then look at it directly, and unleash one’s curiosity on it.

And I think this is an important part of philosophical training: practicing remaining calm when one has an intuition of an unfinished idea instead of reacting by forcing some abstraction process in an attempt to quickly arrive at an explicit thought.

 

 

*Some of my notes are re-formulations of existing notes: just some subtly different formulation or aspect of an already noted idea.

entry 2

some long introductory remarks

  • (on why someone may want to read my writings) Philosophy is very important for the world – and one major part of my overall project is to explain what I understand as ‘philosophy’ and why this thing is important. And over the years it has gradually become clear to me that I have a [- Surprisingly to me -] relatively unique philosophy or perspective on the world. And I know – from my experience – that this perspective is one that can facilitate and organically produce thoughts or ideas that feel colourful, meaningful, useful, relevant, enjoyable, bright, vivid, mind-opening, fresh, etc… And maybe I can communicate some parts of my philosophy, maybe leading to a reader at some moment also feeling something positive.
  • (on why writing this may more directly be useful to me) At the same time, I am open to the possibility that an idea I have is in some way trivial – in particular that someone else has already had the same idea and expressed it better… or that the idea is already well known and well understood – just under a different name – and that I just haven’t made the connection for whatever reason. Here it’s obviously of great value to me to get outside feedback…
  • (on understanding my writing and commenting) When I write notes for myself, I of course just use whichever terms and syntax seem most comprehensible and useful to me at the time.  Preliminarily, I’ve decided to maintain this practice for notes I make public instead of trying to estimate which terms will or won’t be familiar to readers or of trying to assume some standard terminology and syntax of some particular contemporary tradition. To make this work, I want readers to just comment whenever a word/phrase/term or some way I [syntactically] use and arrange words or other symbols or whatever isn’t completely clear.
  • (on things that I write that seem or are trivial) Whilst some things I write will indeed turn out to be trivial, others will only seem trivial –  And therefore I ask of you to try to not let the first impression of triviality make you disengage! In a way, one main aim I have for my ideas is to be as obvious as possible whilst in fact being nontrivial – more specifically, non-trivial relative to the ideas, theories, ideologies etc that are already familiar to the reader. Sometimes, if something is very obvious, one has to take a step back in order to see that it was never really understood until now. Maybe one thing is explicitly known whilst some of its consequences are only implicitly or intuitively known or felt – and thus if one reads an explicit statement of those consequences, it may feel familiar and obvious, suggestive of triviality or uselessness, while in fact the explicit statement constitutes a new step forward in understanding.
  • (on how the set of these entries may differ from my personal notes) I may write notes here that I wouldn’t write as personal notes due to not being new to me and therefore not being necessary/helpful to my own understanding of my writing.
  • (on putting philosophy in writing) I’m starting this in awareness of some of downsides* of using writing as the tool for expressing and sharing philosophy – aware that writing, especially rational writing and permanent writing, is regarded too highly over other possible means of expressing philosophy, e.g. poetry, music, art, dance, etc… that forcing ideas into particular language elements has various questionable consequences, as does the making-permanent and making-easily-readable/reachable of an idea. At the same time, since we do historically have writing and rational abstract thought – and existing philosophy and ideology is influenced by this history – a huge part of philosophy must engage with writing in order to be effective.

 

*a topic that I have only recently become aware of and want to learn much more about.

entry 1

Welcome, dear future reader!

Until now I have kept my notes to my notebook. From now on I want to start something more open: Whenever I write a new note, I will consider making a new entry here on my website. When I make a new entry I will tweet it from @stephens_blog – so you can just follow that account on twitter.

The notes may be in English or German, I expect mostly English. They will be more or less extensive, formal, speculative, clear, grammatically/syntactically correct, etc. – I don’t have any conscious rules for my notes, and the way I write them develops and changes.

And I expect the way I want to write this blog and use this site will gradually develope and go through shifts – and some entries will be regarding this process.

I expect many of the earlier entries will be about the blog itself – discussing what kind of notes make sense to share, or expressing ideas I have regarding why anyone would actually want to read this, or discussing technical questions of writing here and of making a website.

Lastly, I hope you find something here that you enjoy reading or thinking about!

-christopher