When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil...

>When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else's thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one's own thoughts. Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person's thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.

How does Veeky Forums respond to unhappy German man?

More can of the same can be found here:
ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chapter5.html

duh?

>Men of learning are those who have done their reading in the pages of a book. Thinkers and men of genius are those who have gone straight to the book of Nature; it is they who have enlightened the world and carried humanity further on its way. If a man’s thoughts are to have truth and life in them, they must, after all, be his own fundamental thoughts; for these are the only ones that he can fully and wholly understand. To read another’s thoughts is like taking the leavings of a meal to which we have not been invited, or putting on the clothes which some unknown visitor has laid aside. The thought we read is related to the thought which springs up in ourselves, as the fossil-impress of some prehistoric plant to a plant as it buds forth in spring-time.

>Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one’s own. It means putting the mind into leading-strings. The multitude of books serves only to show how many false paths there are, and how widely astray a man may wander if he follows any of them. But he who is guided by his genius, he who thinks for himself, who thinks spontaneously and exactly, possesses the only compass by which he can steer aright. A man should read only when his own thoughts stagnate at their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring away one’s own original thoughts is sin against the Holy Spirit. It is like running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants or gaze at a landscape in copperplate.

Good reading habits and proper annotation/note-taking solves most of those problems. Instead of reading what somebody thinks, you're thinking about what somebody else thinks, often with your own flavors too. The best part of taking good notes is that your thoughts don't have to be remembered, so when you have a particularly good chain of thoughts, they will automatically be saved for posterity in their full glory.

>When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process

This is qualitatively false. Although semantic information is delivered from the writer to the reader, as is the purpose of communication, that information does not monopolize the reader's thought or exclude him from thinking additional thoughts; case in point, the fact that I immediately thought this upon reading the quoted statement. Consider also the fact that the reader may not always comprehend the semantic content of what he is reading.

This claim makes no sense if you actually investigate it for about 5 seconds.

>This claim makes no sense if you actually investigate it for about 5 seconds.
Maybe in the moment, no. But in the long-run? Oftentimes yes. You're not going to remember every wonderful tangent you went off on while or shortly after reading unless you write it down. You're far more likely to repeat and emulate the general idea behind what you've read, though. What does the normal person do to make the thoughts "their own" in anything but the most trivial sense of using their brain to interpret the basic semantics of the text?

Good insight, but I have no fear because I take my time reading books, forming thoughts of my own for each sentence that of which is read. Just like everything else, moderation is key.

But your thought was only relating to what he said. You didn't think of anything new, it was merely an involution of thoughts on that particular sentence. You would have to put the book down and ponder a bit to come up with something that expands your own mental faculties, and makes content for others to read about. (other than an analyses)

Though I understand that you're making a point that you can still think on your own while reading.

Everything in the world was made, and is, because of and through work. The ideology, method, style, formula, particular values, correct spelling, etc is irrelevant. Armies, empires, nation states, houses, businesses, all were made by work. the reason we have thumbs and can read is because of the work of our ancestors. Reading is nothing more than work as well. why would it matter what idea we have in our mind, or wether we came up with it or not. it still improves our mental acuity. wether or not i capitalized, spell check, review my post, or give a flying fuck in the least cannot diminish the thousands of miles ive walked, the miles further ive run, every pushup, every pull up, every book i read, every person ive listened to, nothing can take that away. its all just hard work. now we can create, but the process of creation is work. what does it matter what we specifically create, or wether its something that hasnt been done before. it changes absolutely nothing. the work is still just work. so yah, im not going to sit around and worry about trying to create something unique, im just going to work hard and read a whole fucking bunch of interesting and enjoyable shit so that i may develop my mind and body into wonderful places to live, and to attain a work capacity of mind and body that will serve me well in this world of toil. yee yee

This has more to do with the intellectual discipline of the individual -- i.e., their ability to read critically instead of merely parroting what they have read -- and represents no innate quality of reading that cannot be ascribed to learning in general (the input of new semantic content to cognition).

See my above response -- this is true of all events where new semantic content is encountered, and it is the responsibility of the learner/reader to reason critically and independently. To avoid this completely would mean to attempt to divine all progress of human science and philosophy independently.

>This has more to do with the intellectual discipline of the individual -- i.e., their ability to read critically instead of merely parroting what they have read -- and represents no innate quality of reading that cannot be ascribed to learning in general (the input of new semantic content to cognition).
Sure. But it also points out that reading, on its own, does nothing to stimulate original thinking in the reader. It's up to the reader to do something with what they've read. I imagine most people don't, which is especially worrisome because reading is typically seen as an intellectual activity, making it harder for those who are less self-aware to correct poor habits. Schopenhauer's criticism stands.

This is all true. Schopenhauer is right. Of course if you disagree with the author or have more points in agreement to add then you are thinking, but pseudo intellectuals on lit see all authors as God so we can assume they don't do this.

>Schopenhauer's criticism stands

His criticism is specifically that reading is stultifying to thought. Even if we take this claim in a less formal-analytic way, it is just patently untrue: exposure to new information and ideas is stimulating to thought.

I understand your more abstract point that devotion to what is found in books may produce close-mindedness, but this does not seem to be the case for the subjects of Schop's argument -- "most people", the ones who allegedly do not "do something with what they have read", are not reading tirelessly and constantly.

I suppose in the end I am less pessimistic about modern intellectuals. Maybe that is a bit naive. But people only achieve truly great things by understanding what has come before them, and proposing an original (and better) alternative. The key part of that last sentence is *understanding what has come before them*, i.e. reading.

>nature is superior to art
Why do talentless hacks always fall back on this meme?

>the concept of thinking about what youre reading rather than just copy pasting it into your brain was so beyond schoppenhauer he didnt even consider it
Holy shit, and people read this guy's books?

This. He must have had a learning disability.

I'm going to put this in the most provocative way, not to convince you of my opinion, but unconvince you of yours:

>this is all true
>except for when it's not lmao, but not like that applies to me or anyone else in here haha!

>the mental process itself isn't thinking
>implying a person doing a pirouette isn't doing it because they were forced onto it by another person's choreography
This is some retarded mind-body dichotomy. One should read some cognitive science.
Also
>actually doing the thinking makes you forget how to think
>riding makes you forget how to walk

Thank god I don't even read books.

Oh there's more of us. That's comforting to know

You're in good company on Veeky Forums then, right at home.

Schopenhauer wrote this too:

>It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents. To desire that a man should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten. He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is. As the body assimilates what is homogeneous to it, so will a man retain what interests him; in other words, what coincides with his system of thought or suits his ends. Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.

>Repetitio est mater studiorum. Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one's temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.

>Works are the quintessence of a mind, and are therefore always of by far greater value than conversation, even if it be the conversation of the greatest mind. In every essential a man's works surpass his conversation and leave it far behind. Even the writings of an ordinary man may be instructive, worth reading, and entertaining, for the simple reason that they are the quintessence of that man's mind—that is to say, the writings are the result and fruit of his whole thought and study; while we should be dissatisfied with his conversation. Accordingly, it is possible to read books written by people whose conversation would give us no satisfaction; so that the mind will only by degrees attain high culture by finding entertainment almost entirely in books, and not in men.

The trick is to read good books only, read them a few times, and think about them when you do.

>>this is all true
>>except for when it's not lmao, but not like that applies to me or anyone else in here haha!
But it's true if I don't think critically about a book while I'm reading it or afterwards. It's just a consequence of how minds handle a large amount of information coming in at once. Unless you're super intelligent with the working and long-term memories of a deity, then I imagine you would suffer from the same faults without some sort of annotation or notetaking skills.

There is good work and bad work.

Good work generates new conditions for life, in the large sense of creating new techniques for production, and in the small sense of adding new faculties to the mind.

Bad work is merely the same work again, or a degenerate form of it which yields less of what once was more.

He's right.

An absolute hack. Reading implies thinking, you must think for yourself in order to understand what is being read. Every reader brings their own thought process to bear in the interpretation of a work.

Schopenhauer is a hack.

>Reading implies thinking
Not in any independent, "free" thinking sense.

Moving the goalposts, thinking is thinking.

Do you have any tips for that? I know I could look into it myself but I'm curious.

Lack of charity. There are multiple kinds of thinking. Do you think the person who wrote "The World as Will and Representation" was talking about any plain mental action?

I have a whole document on it but I'm afraid I'll be judged for it because it's a whole routine. It's second nature for me, but it'll look extremely obsessive for other people. Just figure out your own routine. You have a pen, pencil, stickynotes, journal, etc., right?

You gotta be pretty flexible for the mental gymnastics it took to spin your "new & original" theory as good and "repetition" as bad. being right is like being a lady, if you gotta try and prove it, it probably means you're not

Nothing wrong with what he said. He's advocating against reading compulsion, as it should be. Take someone claiming to have read Kant, Hegel and Hume in a matter of weeks and understand everything he/she has read, whereas this is barely enough time (in average) to reflect upon a couple chapters by any of the previous authors. Consider also youtube booksters that consume hundreds of YA books and dramas. Most of these people have already read more than I probably will read in a lifetime, but what insight did it give them?

If you think the best way to consume something is by consuming it excessively, you're bound to not truly enjoy it, be it food, sex, or literature. Those advocating for freedom mistakenly believe they yearn for freedom of excess, when this is actually the greatest prison there is.

especially when the content is open to a lot of expansion and interpretation...

>When we read, another person thinks for us

You conceded that when you read you do indeed think.

I respect Schopenhauer for the antinatalism and suffering, but I don't agree with this, form personal experience. I read so I can escape my own perpetual thoughts that cause mental agony. But, after that, when you make a pause, your thinking power is multiplied. But yeah, probably if you read the whole time, you won't have time to think. However, if you stop at some point, it'll be curious.

Plus, there are references in books of other books, which can refresh your memory and help you recall something.

Furthermore, literary fiction at least is art. Art is allowing a personal perception of things. When I read something, I often find myself interpreting it in some personal and peculiar way, because if I happen to read the analysis it seems to be something utterly different. Some books are even left with open end, open for interpretation.

Honestly, I wish there was a way of stopping your brain, but there isn't yet.

user, thank you for the link. That was one of the best things I've been exposed to since I finished undergrad.

Another person performs the action in our place.

When I order food at a restaurant, the chef cooks the food for me. Have I conceded that I do indeed cook?

I certainly taste, and eat, and likely enjoy - but I do not cook.

Taking your objection to its extreme, we could say that the overall physical fitness of the population has been affected by the lack of physicality involved in work.

In a world of reductionism and enforced consensus Is it really so strange to extend the claim of atrophy to the realm of judgement?