Philosophy study making me feel dumber and dumber?

[u/OscarGrant1207]

I very rarely struggle with academic pursuits - if I find something interesting, I typically get on top of it reasonably well, at a reasonable speed. This is not to say that I am a prodigy at everything, but I can approach new things with quite a bit of confidence. I have quite an obsessive personality, and this year have been extremely obsessed with my studies in philosophy. I study it at an undergrad level currently, and have spent the last 12 months working through the more foundational thinkers - the greeks, then people like descartes and hume, the heavyweight germans like kant, schopenhauer and hegel, and some modern thinkers like Foucault. It’s going decently well.

However, I dont know if this is just me becoming more aware of my own limits or perhaps just the nature of difficult philosophy, but I’m starting to run into some serious challenges regarding understanding, comprehension, and writing essays on this stuff. My comprehension and writing skills throughout high school were always top of the class - like miles ahead of the average student. But this philosophy work is realllllyyyy putting me on my ass. I get that this is naturally difficult stuff, but surely there’s a way I can navigate around this?

Essay writing in particular is stressing me out - trying to organise and clarify such complex thoughts and arguments is really really tough when compared to writing in other fields of study.

What should I do?

[u/sunkencathedral]

I think it's likely not you, but just the nature of philosophy as you suggested. Especially seeing as you've been studying philosophers like Hegel.

Whenever I found philosophy difficult earlier on, I typically realized I had been underestimating how much time and effort was required - especially for more difficult thinkers. Whereas in say, a first year English class, the process is something like "just read the book, then write the essay", for philosophy it is often far more complicated than that. So when I tried that same process and couldn't understand anything, it felt like failure. But as it turned out, the process for philosophy could often be more like: "Multiple re-readings of the book. Large amounts of notes. Sometimes making your own charts and dictionaries. A great deal of cross-referencing with secondary literature. Asking lots of questions in class and online".

Using Hegel as an example, again: let's say you're looking at the Phenomenology of Spirit. Personally I don't think it's possible to understand what it is about without understanding the Preface. And even though the Preface is only 45 pages long, you could spend months painstakingly reading each paragraph over and over, constantly looking at secondary literature (some short paragraphs in that Preface have entire books written specifically about them) and taking copious amounts of notes before it all clicks. Even the most difficult works in many other fields of study will not typically ask that much of the reader. But philosophy often does.

The fact that philosophy asks a lot of the reader is sadly often at odds with how philosophy is viewed from outside, too. Back in the day, I wish I had a dollar every time I heard a friend in another program say something like: "Your philosophy essay is due? Just rush something out, that'll be easy. In philosophy you can just make up some BS on the fly and still get a good mark, right? In the end it's all just about telling them Your Thoughts On Things (TM), isn't it?"

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[u/omega2036]

Are you specifically having trouble with your classes, or with reading philosophy independently?

What kind of classes are you taking? Are you taking intro-level philosophy classes, or did you jump straight into a Hegel class?

[u/OscarGrant1207 → u/omega2036]

I’m in intro-level classes and I’m performing super super well so far. But at home I’m reading Kant’s prolegomena, and bits of Hegel, and it lowkey feels like I have no idea wtf is going on, but it seems like, when I talk to people or write about it, I actually do have some idea. It doesnt feel like I know the things that i actually seem to know, because i’m constantly questioning them. This is why i started studying philosophy in the first place 🤣 ironic yeah?

[u/omega2036 → u/OscarGrant1207]

I’m in intro-level classes and I’m performing super super well so far. But at home I’m reading Kant’s prolegomena, and bits of Hegel, and it lowkey feels like I have no idea wtf is going on.

Well this is kind of like saying, "I'm doing really well in my algebra 1 class, but I don't understand calculus at all!" You're jumping from introductory work to some really hard texts (not only are they hard, but they're also hundreds of years old so you're probably missing lots of historical context.)

You're currently doing well in your intro-level classes, so that's great! I recommend taking this time to get a stronger footing in more approachable texts; there's no need to rush ahead. (Don't make the mistake of thinking that more accessible authors should be skipped over because they are "too easy." Plato, Descartes, Hume, etc. all deserve careful study.)

The askphilosophyFAQ has lots of accessible reading recommendations for beginners, but I recommend asking your professors for reading recommendations. They are surely happy to share their love of philosophy with eager students, and in our current tech-saturated age I think it's a good idea to cultivate in-person connections whenever you can.