Quora answer: How do I become a better thinker?

Feb 18 2014

Thinking: How do I become a better thinker?

Read lots of books. Think about what is in  those books. Write working papers concerning your opinions on the subjects of the books you have read. Define your problematic. Try different approaches toward it. Formulate good questions. Not the sort of questions we find on Quora, real questions to which you really want the answers. Try out answers until you have exhausted all the possibilities you can think of, and then keep at it until you are at your wits end. Recognize it when you are given the gift of the answer unexpectedly from a direction that you would never have considered feasible. If somehow you are given an answer, then work to explore the new territory it brings with it, and formulate new questions that are more profound if you can. If you cannot then keep reading everything you can get on the subject until you have exhausted the tradition. When you have exhausted the tradition and yourself you are ready for real thinking, which as Heidegger says is related to Thanking. Ultimately as Nietzsche said IT thinks, we do not think, and we do not know what IT is that gives thought. It is a gifting without a giver, nor a receiver as far as  I can tell. As Heidegger says thinking is being in that draft of what he calls Ereignis, happening, appropriation, giving, etc. Get in that draft and stay there as long as you can.

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