The most depressing thing about studying philosophy is finding out, or realising, that all your breakthrough insights, all those ideas which you thought were great and original, have already been discovered and explored to their very depths, dissected, torn apart, rebutted, unravelled and debunked, and their rebuttals and criticisms argued against, and the counters to criticisms counter-critiqued, and so on, over the course of history by people who lived long before you were even born. There is no role left for you to play, nothing left for you to add, nothing left for you to do, but to wink foolishly and gape at your own shallowness.
The second most depressing thing about studying philosophy is to suddenly realise, to your utter horror, that your world is actually overrun by idiots, that all your life you’ve been surrounded by them - they’re everywhere!, that people who you’ve been sharing this world with don’t have an iota of clue of what they are talking about, the philosophical positions they are unwittingly committing to, and the invisible assumptions they’ve unknowingly become slaves to, and what’s worse - that you’re one of them!
27 September 2016