Sadler's Quick Takes Number 12 | Worries About Taking Too Much Time In Reading Philosophers’ Works
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- Опубліковано 7 лип 2024
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This is the twelfth in a new series of shorter videos in which I give a "quick take" on some matter that I consider important to address, for at least some of my viewers, readers, listeners, followers, or students.
This Quick Take addresses a worry or concern that comes up quite often among students, lifelong learners, and other people interested in philosophy, namely that it takes them "too long" to read a work of philosophy, by comparison to other people or some sort of standard measure. The bottom line is that reading philosophical works can't be rushed, and the amount of time that it takes any given person to read and understand a text is the right amount of time for them.
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Had this same worry when I first started reading philosophical texts, and it still comes up now and then. I remind myself of when I read over 100 books in a year, and while I read in quantity I neglected quality. I couldn’t remember much about what I read. My reading was superficial and shallow and unproductive. Then I decided to read Seneca’s Letters slowly and thoughtfully, and his second letter on reading a few books well resonated with me. Now I care more about quality reading and taking my time over how many books. I know it’s a turtle vs hare kind of race; I have my whole life to read these books. Thanks for the video
You're very welcome. I suppose Seneca would also suggest we not give into the shallow reading culture that promotes the idea that one should read a lot and fast
Thanks for the video! I had a slightly similar worry when I took a couple of months working through Kant's Groundwork, and a few months on his Prolegomena before that. I read them slowly, and thoughtfully, and was carefully absorbing them. However, I think it paid off looking back now as I got a great mind map of those works. I can also now see connections between those books and the second critique, which helps me understand the second critique (though I still sometimes struggle in certain places with that work).
You're very welcome!
And to top it all off, misreading these texts can also be productive, e.g. Sartre misreading Being and Time, or Foucault misreading Nietzsche.
Most misreadings are unproductive, so it would be silly to suggest we ought to aim at that
@@GregoryBSadler True. Most of us are not Sartre or Foucault.
Thanks for this! As someone who loves reading but has a learning disability this is really important. In school there's so much pressure to read at a fast pace. When I was in school I thought I just wasn't good at reading. It turns out I just didn't find what we were reading very interesting and I didn't like the pace we were reading at. As an adult I love taking as much time as much time as I need and reading whatever I want however many times I want.
I've also noticed that a lot of people think only certain sections of texts are important when I usually like to read the whole text. For example, I've read the entirety of Said's Orientalism twice, and people sometimes tell me I'm wasting my time by reading the whole book when you can get the gist from just reading the beginning. That kind of reminds me of what you always say about how people only read the Master-Slave Dialectic in the Phenomonolgy... In my opinion, I don't see what anyone benefits from telling people how or what to read.
It's pretty weird that - unless they're experts who spent a lot of time with a work - anyone would think they could possibly be right in advising to just read a part of a work. You wonder who they uncritically accepted that from themselves
my biggest sin for not finishing books is bookhopping. I have read like 5-10% of nearly all of my books, but only read 100% of a few.
There isn’t any general obligation to read a book the entire way through. Sometimes you should, of course, but often it’s really just up to you
@@GregoryBSadler thank you for the response profressor. Though I also take this as an indication that my mind is too scattered... and focus is ever rarer and more useful these days.
Go get more books! Reading and collecting are two different things and you can still read more even if you haven't read most of the books you own.
The book market is dying. Good books, at least (booktok is giving "books" a renaissance but really it's just the book market). Feel free to buy as many books of some substance as you like - they won't be here forever. Books will turn to dust just like you and me and it's worth to spend a few dollars on another copy of Plato just to make sure there are more around in the future.