Get Your Smart On
Practical tips for establishing a philosophy reading practice and keeping an ideas notebook.
If I were to ask you, do you know how to read? You would probably say, “Oh, yes, of course, I’ve been reading since grade school. I’m a very confident reader!” But the thing is, if it is philosophy that you would like to read, reading philosophy is unlike reading anything else. It’s unlike reading fiction, certainly, but it’s also unlike reading other kinds of non-fiction. The closest analogy that I can think of is actually learning to read a foreign language.
If you have tried to become fluent in a foreign language, you know that initially you’re just getting a general gist of what’s going on in the text. You’re looking up words as you go. or circling words that you don’t know, and you’re doing a lot of the work of reading through translation. But at a certain point, there’s this “aha!” moment where you realize that you’re no longer going to your primary language, that you’re directly accessing the text and that you’re beginning to get a much more nuanced sense of what is going on. With experience, you have begun to recognize more and more vocabulary words. And so there’s this moment where you realize, Oh, I’m now reading in that language, not just translating it in order to understand it.
You might also wake up at some point and realize that you have been dreaming in your new language, and that’s when you really know that you’ve acquired fluency. And that’s where I want to get you at, with philosophy. I want you to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, realizing that you have been dreaming philosophically!
Let’s first talk about how to establish a philosophy reading practice, and I want to talk about three things: first is gaining consistency in your reading practice. The second is focus. And the third thing that I want to introduce today is how to keep an ideas or philosophy notebook.
I think there are at least a couple of ways to establish a consistent reading practice — at least consistent enough to allow you to really develop the “practice” part of philosophy.
If you have a daily routine that you stick by — you get up at around the same time every day and you have a daily morning routine, then you’re off in the world and you do what you do in the world and you come home, and you have an evening routine, and that’s what your life looks like — then I recommend that you identify a period of 15 to 20 minutes a day that you can devote to philosophy, and make that sacred philosophy time that nothing can interfere with. If you can also regularize the space in which you do this, like always sitting in the same place, then even better. Initially setting 15-20 minutes aside is attainable enough, and this time will naturally grow into a longer period of time.
Reading philosophy might be the first thing you do in the morning, after you wake up. It might be what you do right after you eat breakfast. It might be the last thing that you do before you go to bed. It might be what you do during your commute. Whatever the time is, just make sure that you set it aside and that becomes a part of your routine.
Having an already established routine will really help you because all you have to do is integrate your philosophy reading practice into that daily routine. But for some of us, our lives don’t look quite that way. I don’t wake up at the same time every day. I have certain things that I do on a cyclical basis, but they’re not always ordered in the same way. For those of you who have that sort of nomadic-time pattern to life, I would recommend that instead of trying to find a time that will work for you every day, that you set up what I call a trigger. When you do this activity, that will trigger your reading practice. Ideally, a trigger should be something you do once everyday. For example, I use my morning coffee as a trigger to read a Substack post or two. What do you think would serve as a good trigger in your life?
Okay, now let’s talk about focus. Philosophy tends to be or is denser than other types of written work, even other nonfiction works. It really does require a level of focus and concentration that other types of reading may not. It is also a way to build the capacity for focus, a great antidote to our current information overwhelm.
You will need to think about what things have worked for you in the past. Is there a time of day when you are most focused? So for some people, first thing in the morning is when have the strongest kind of focus. For other people, it’s later at night that they can really focus once their day is over and done. So think about that. What about the place? I like to read in a really quiet place and at a desk. Being upright and having a writing surface nearby is important to me. But some people like to read in bed, and some people like to read at a cafe because they like the movement and ambient noise.
Set the scene and create a pleasurable experience for yourself. This is not work, don’t think of it as work but as pleasure! Put on that special piece of clothing, maybe a special hat or shawl, that makes you feel comfy and smart. Try lighting a candle to signal the beginning of study time. Turn on some ambient music, no lyrics is best. Any sort of sensory cue can help you shift into focus mode and stay there.
Finally, I have long used text-to-speech software to listen, in real time, to what I was reading, and this is now easier than ever. Not only does it slow you down, but it will really increase your memory of the text.
After the first few days, when you’ve got your reading juices flowing, consider starting a philosophy ideas notebook.
Basically, a philosophy notebook is a place for you to chronicle what you’ve been reading and to absorb and to keep track of the ideas that have really interested you. This is really where a lot of the joy of reading philosophy comes in. It is where you start a shift from consuming philosophy to doing some of your own thinking. It is the vehicle for intellectual creativity to blossom.
First, let’s talk about the notebook itself. This may be controversial, but do not take notes into your computer, iPad, phone, or anything like that. The physical act of writing your ideas down will build a kind of relationship to your writing that is much more enjoyable than if you type things on a computer. That hand-to-eye coordination you use in the physical act of writing is important.
The notebook itself shouldn’t be anything too precious. So don’t go out and buy a super expensive leather-bound notebook because you don’t want to be afraid to mess up, write stupid things, tear pages out, or cross-out things. Get yourself an inexpensive, regular old composition notebook, or even better, use a notebook that you already have lying around. What’s going to make it special is what you will write in it, a record of your journey through philosophy.
I like blank composition notebooks myself. Some people love using legal pads, or even loose-leaf paper (just have a way to bind or keep them together!) Where you like to read will also determine how portable your notebook system needs to be. Meade makes a little fat notebook that I really, really love because it’s very portable — it fits in practically any jacket pocket. Because the pages are small they fill up quickly, which is very satisfying. I like working at cafes sometimes, and is my go-to for those occasions.
When you’re done with an ideas notebook, what you’ll do is that you’ll sit down with a highlighter or bright pen or pencil, and take a little trip down memory lane. Use that highlighter, or what not, to underline the best ideas and the most interesting ideas that you came across during your time filling up this notebook. This process will help to reinforce your memory and to bring together your thinking across time.
Finally, you are going to want to develop a numbering system for your ideas notebook. I suggest that you number the pages in the top, right hand corner. That way you’ll have a better memory of where things are at because if you look up and see page number 14, you will associate that number with what you were writing about. Also, write down the source page number of what you are reading in front of your comment about it. That has helped me to create a bit of a photographic memory, where if I think of an idea in a certain paragraph, I can associate it with a place in the text and I can usually go right to it. I think that takes a little bit of practice, but you can absolutely build up your spatial sense of the text.
There is more to be said about developing your own system for marking up what you are reading — just the type of thing that I can help you develop during a one-on-one consultation — but this can be very involved so maybe I’ll leave that for another time.
So, what to write about in your ideas notebook. I guess the first thing that I want to say is that I wouldn’t worry too much about getting it right to begin with.
Thinking back to the first time that I picked up Heidegger as an undergraduate — it was this little text called, What Is Metaphysics? I thought it would be a simple book, right? I was really enjoying myself, going through the text and seeing what ideas sparked me. Looking back, I realize that I was bringing a lot to that text. What I was reading wasn’t Heidegger, let’s just put it that way. But I totally dug it anyhow, and I had a great time reading it. So, I would say, especially when you start out, that you don’t need to worry too much about getting it right. I think your first job is really trying to figure out what interests you, what sparks you, what bothers you, what makes you curious, what is really making you think about other things in your life, what kind of connections you’re making.
When you first begin, you bring yourself, all of you, to the text. And then as you begin to read more and to go deeper into the text and to build more of a context for reading philosophy, then you’ll expand and be able to get a sense of different kinds of philosophers and what they’re up to
So, enough about that. What should you take notes on? I’m going to give you a little acronym here, which hopefully will help you to remember how to get started. It is just three points. And the acronym is C.I.A.:
C is for Content,
I is for Intentions
A is for Assumptions
First of all, you’re going to read for the content. So just like you would with a foreign language, right? You have your dictionary out and you might even, say you’re reading Aristotle, have an Aristotle dictionary next to you— they make these kinds of dictionaries for particular philosophers. You can start identifying key concepts and technical terms. If you’re reading Heidegger, it might be “dwelling,” or it might be “dasein.” If you’re reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, it’s going to be “virtue,” right? These are the big concepts that they’re working with. And you’ll see that they’re repeated over and over again. These are terms they’re using in a technical way, usually in a fairly precise way.
Sometimes philosophers will give you an actual definition, and they’ll revise that definition as they build out their idea. So, if a philosopher actually gives you a definition, first of all, celebrate because that is not all that common in philosophy. Jot it down in your notebook so that you can track how the concept is built up, it’s meaning changing across the text.
Sometimes ideas are compared and contrasted to other terms. So for example, in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, there’s a whole discussion about courage and the difference between courage and being brash, right? If someone runs into a house that is on fire in order to rescue someone, we think of that as a pretty courageous act. But if someone runs in to get their favorite teddy bear, that same act is not necessarily thought of as courageous, it’s thought of as impulsive or brash, right? What is the difference? Because the risk that you took to do this is not comparable to the reward. By taking an idea like courage, which is a prime virtue for Aristotle, and testing it against other cases of things that may be courage or may look like courage, but in fact turn out to not be courage, Aristotle is fine tuning his idea of courage
.This is a key way in which philosophers tighten up their definitions and their ideas. So as you begin to pick up on technical and important terms and concepts, you’ll begin to see that this compare contrast mechanism for creating ideas is very, very common in philosophy.
The other thing that you will begin to notice as you pick up on these terms are inconsistencies that any philosopher will have, if they’re dealing with anything important. Inconsistencies that crop up will lead you to underlying assumptions. Given the underlying assumptions of a text, certain inconsistencies are built into those assumptions. If you become puzzled over why a definition of courage in one part of Aristotle’s text seems to contradict a different one that he’s working with in another part of the text, this is somewhere where the text can really open up to you, and you can begin to sense the core assumptions underlying the discussion.
There are the things that the philosopher says. So those are the words, the terms, the concepts, the arguments. And then there are the things that the philosopher is doing with what they are saying. While we are reading for content, we’re reading the text in a fairly local way, assuming it’s a closed system for what it is saying. Once we begin to talk about the intentions or what the philosopher is doing with what they’re saying, we are opening it up to a broader context. We’re reading for what is it that the philosopher is responding to, or who are they responding to when and as they lay out their ideas.
To get that context, you could read the introduction that comes with the book that you’re reading, since part of the job of the introduction is to give you that context so that you don’t come to a philosopher cold, and have some sense of what is at stake. So, that is reading, what I call reading not just for the content, but the intentions. Not just for what the philosopher says, but what the philosopher does.
Okay, now we can talk about assumptions and about going deeper in the text. We’ve read very locally for content, then we’ve read broadly by seeking out the context for the work, and now we’re going to go deeper in the text. In order to get at the assumptions of the text, we will probably need to read a text more than once. You first have to get a sense of the architecture of the text and what are the arguments that are being made before you can get through to the assumptions, but you’ll start to get a sense of that as you start to track concepts and ideas as well.
So, I guess all that I want to say about assumptions at this point is that you should start to think about what the philosopher is assuming that they are able to say X, Y, and Z? We’ll do another blog post about how to go deeper in a philosophy text, how to get at the assumptions, how to get at the inconsistencies a little bit further, and how to start to engage with the secondary literature on certain authors. So I’ll say more about that in a future blog post.
I can imagine many situations in which we just want to pick up a philosophy text and enjoy it for what it evokes in you, and that is great too. I think more people should read in whatever way they choose and please. But if what you want is to develop a deeper understanding of philosophy itself and the history of philosophy, you’re going to want to read things more than once. It’s really in rereading that you begin to get what hangs on the questions that these philosophers are addressing.
Okay. I want to leave you with that. I think I’ve given you enough to think about. Don’t forget C.I.A.: Content, Intentions, and Assumptions, and I’ll see you on the other side of the challenge.
So now I want to issue you a challenge: Will you commit to reading philosophy on a daily basis for two weeks? After two weeks, re-evaluate how that’s gone for you, make any needed adjustments, and then do it for another two-three weeks. At the end of 30 days, you will have integrated philosophy into your life. Absorbing philosophy and digesting ideas to exercise your intellectual creativity can become second nature, and may lead you to wake up in the middle of the night with the realization that you are having philosophical dreams.
Join up with others who are taking up this challenge in our subscriber chat: