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 that reading philosophy is unlike reading anything else. It's unlike reading fiction, and it's also unlike reading even other kinds of non-fiction works. 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 after you get past the grammar and you learn some basic vocabulary, you begin to read a text, say that it's a story, a piece of fiction.
At first, as you're reading, you might even have a dictionary by your side, right? And you are going along, you know that you're getting a general gist of what's going on in the text. And 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.
You begin 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 so that's where we want to get you at with philosophy is I want you to wake up maybe in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, realizing that you have been dreaming philosophically.
Now we can talk about how to actually establish a philosophy reading practice. And I want to talk about three things. The first is addressing the issue of consistency and how to establish it. The second is focus. And the third thing that I want to introduce today is how to keep a philosophy notebook or log.
1. How To Establish Consistency
So let's talk about consistency first. And I'm going to put “consistency” in scare quotes. I think there are at least a couple of ways to establish a reading practice that is consistency based. Or, consistent enough to allow you to really develop the practice part of philosophy.
If you have a daily routine that you stick by. So you get up at around the same time every day and you have a daily morning routine. 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.
This might be the first thing in the morning when 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.
Now 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. I have certain things that I do on a cyclical basis that have to be done regularly, but they're not ordered in the same way every day.
So for those of you who have that sort of a 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 instead a trigger, what I call a trigger…. When you do this activity, that will trigger your 15 to 20 minutes reading practice.
So let me give you an example. For me, it's the third time that I check Twitter because this is something that I do every day. I'm always on Twitter. So the third time that I do it in that day, that means the next thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to read 15 to 20 minutes of philosophy. And actually I read a little bit longer than that, but that's my trigger.
2. How To Achieve Focus
Okay, I hope that was helpful. Let's talk now about focus. One of the things that makes reading philosophy different from reading other types of materials, be it fiction or nonfiction, is that philosophy tends to be or is denser than other types of even nonfiction. It's theoretical work. And so It really does require a level of focus and concentration that other types of reading may not.
You do need to think a little bit about what things have worked for you in the past to help you to focus on something when you have something that you really need to focus on? And also you might think about what time of day you are most focused. So for some people, that is the first thing in the morning that they 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. And also think about practices that you can use to increase your focus. For example, for me, I like to read in a really quiet place and I like to read at a desk because that's the kind of practice that I have established over the years.
Having, been a student and gone to grad school, I learned, to read in that way. Some people like to read in bed. Some people like to read at a cafe, because they find that the movement, the coming and the going, maybe a little bit of music overhead that kind of movement around them really helps them to zone into what they're doing and into their text.
Now I want to make a little side note here about music. Music is a fabulous thing to help you to focus when you're reading but I would recommend that if you're going to listen to some music while you're reading, that it be instrumental music. That is, that it doesn't have words or linguistic content, at least not in your primary language or in a language that you know, trying to take in two different types of linguistic cues at the same time can scramble your brain. So use instrumental music if you're going to use music. The flip side of that, of course, is that if you listen to the same thing or the words as you are reading them, that can really help you to increase your focus.
So here's a little trick that I've learned. Listen to the audio book of the very same text and translation that you're reading and follow along with the audio book. That will not only slow you down, but it will really increase your focus and your memory of the text. If you have text to speech, and every Mac comes with this included, and I believe PC also has this option you can enable text to speech, and that way you just pull up your text, if it's on your computer, you can also do this on your iPad or your phone. And you can actually have the computer read in its computerized voice.
You get used to it after a while, believe me. As you're reading along, this really helps you. I would really recommend, especially if you're just getting started, to do this and try it on and see if that really helps you to focus.
3. Starting A Philosophy Notebook
The third thing that I want to mention is that it's really helpful when you get started, especially after the first few days where you've just got your reading juices flowing, consider starting a philosophy 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, is where you start to not just consume philosophy, but you also start to produce some of your own thinking. And this is where intellectual creativity can really blossom.
We'll dive into more specific strategies for engaging with philosophy texts, including how to start and keep a philosophy notebook, in an upcoming post. Subscribe for free to receive notifications when it's published.
The Challenge
So now I want to issue you a challenge and that challenge is that you consistently read philosophy on a daily basis for two weeks. Just two weeks. And after two weeks, re evaluate how that's gone for you, make some adjustments if you need to, and then do it for another two weeks, because it takes 30 days to really establish a practice.
So at the end of 30 days, you will have integrated that into your daily routine. And it will become second nature for you to really absorb philosophy and to begin to digest that and to exercise your intellectual creativity, which is what will then lead you to wake up in the middle of the night and have philosophical dreams and thoughts.
Do let me know how it goes below! Happy to offer encouragement, advice, or to otherwise lend an ear.
Establishing A Philosophy Reading Practice