One thing I have struggled with is not having the cultural context to interpret or appreciate thinkers further in time and space from my own perspective. Who were they, what did they care about, why were they writing about these topics in particular, who were they writing for, what else was going on at the time, what concepts and metaphors and examples were or weren’t readily accessible as starting points. Things like that. So when I started branching out more in reading philosophy, I also had to start reading more deep history. Which I enjoyed anyway, so I’m probably overlooking other good paths in favor of one I like, but it worked for me.
E.g. I first read Plato, Sun Tzu, and Musashi in middle and high school. I got a lot more out of Plato when I revisited after taking a single classics course in college. I got a lot more out of Sun Tzu after working for a few years with clients who needed to manage groups of people and large companies and coordinate diverse interests in pursuit of their goals. I got more out of Musashi after I started reading the Sequences and thought about what it meant to have a single goal that subsumes or outweighs all others.
One thing I have struggled with is not having the cultural context to interpret or appreciate thinkers further in time and space from my own perspective. Who were they, what did they care about, why were they writing about these topics in particular, who were they writing for, what else was going on at the time, what concepts and metaphors and examples were or weren’t readily accessible as starting points. Things like that. So when I started branching out more in reading philosophy, I also had to start reading more deep history. Which I enjoyed anyway, so I’m probably overlooking other good paths in favor of one I like, but it worked for me.
E.g. I first read Plato, Sun Tzu, and Musashi in middle and high school. I got a lot more out of Plato when I revisited after taking a single classics course in college. I got a lot more out of Sun Tzu after working for a few years with clients who needed to manage groups of people and large companies and coordinate diverse interests in pursuit of their goals. I got more out of Musashi after I started reading the Sequences and thought about what it meant to have a single goal that subsumes or outweighs all others.