Schopenhauer On Reading

“... just as a man who always rides ultimately forgets how to walk. But such is the case with very many scholars; they have read themselves stupid...”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Reading Schopenhauer was fascinating. His take on books and thoughtful reading changed the way I consume ideas. As I went deep into his ideas on reading, I realized that sharing his ideas was essential. For that, I have chosen the passages that are most useful, reflected on those, and elaborated if necessary.

On Ignorance

Ignorance degrades a man only when it is found in company with wealth. A poor man is subdued by his poverty and distress; with him his work takes the place of knowledge and occupies his thoughts. On the other hand, the wealthy who are ignorant live merely for their pleasures and are like animals, as can be seen every day…

Arthur Schopenhauer

Consider yourself wealthy. You are as wealthy as the wealthiest men Schopenhauer mentions in his writings.

Schopenhauer lived during the 1800s. Technology was primitive, resources were limited, and making a living was the main priority. People had a justification for their ignorance - lack of knowledge. But since then, the world has gotten much better. Look at these charts compiled by VOX.

23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better

Most of us have significantly better lives than people in the 1800s. So, for most of us, ignorance - lack of knowledge - is degrading.

Reading is one way to get past ignorance. However, there is a kind of reading that does more harm than good - Passive Reading.

On Reading Passively

When we read, someone else thinks for us; we repeat merely his mental process. It is like the pupil who, when learning to write, goes over with his pen the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly, when we read, the work of thinking is for the most part taken away from us. Hence the noticeable relief when from preoccupation with our thoughts we pass to reading. But while we are reading our mind is really only the playground of other people’s ideas; and when these finally depart, what remains? The result is that, whoever reads very much and almost the entire day but at intervals amuses himself with thoughtless pastime, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who always rides ultimately forgets how to walk.

Reading is not always passive. I think Schopenhauer is correct when he says “When we read, someone else thinks for us; we repeat merely his mental process”. But, I disagree when he says ”the work of thinking is for the most part taken away from us”.

I believe that the end goal of reading is understanding. If we are reading an unfamiliar topic, we have to think to understand it. Such a topic demands effort from us and therefore can’t be read passively. It demands active reading.

The problem of passive reading arises when a topic is familiar - something that you already understand to some extent. The reading now seems easy as it demands minimal to no effort. This sends us to a zone where we are just reading passively - in an accepting manner, without active response or resistance. I think Schopenhauer warns us about passive reading - the undemanding, easy, and effortless kind of reading.

On Reading Actively

… many scholars; they have read themselves stupid. For constant reading, which is at once resumed at every free moment, is even more paralysing to the mind than is manual work; for with the latter we can give free play to our own thoughts. Just as a spring finally loses its elasticity through the constant pressure of a foreign body, so does the mind through the continual pressure of other people’s ideas...For the more we read, the fewer the traces that are left behind in the mind by what has been read. It becomes like a blackboard whereon many things have been written over one another. Hence we never come to ruminate; but only through this do we assimilate what we have read, just as food nourishes us not by being eaten but by being digested. On the other hand, if we are for ever reading without afterwards thinking further about what we have read, this does not take root and for the most part is lost ...

In addition to all this, is the fact that thoughts reduced to paper are generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is true that we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we must use our own eyes.

How to read actively? I think Schopenhauer tries to answer this question here. I will try to do the same and summarise my process of active reading as briefly as I can:

Active reading makes you think - synthesize thoughts and assimilate ideas. If we invert this statement, that means thinking throughout the reading process is essential to think. Any reading process has three stages: pre-reading, reading, and post-reading. To extract complete value from reading, you must do some form of thinking at all stages. Here I describe thinking at each stage one by one.

But first, childish questions about learning, thinking, and memory. Go back and imagine yourself as a 12-year-old self, asking these questions and reliving your childhood.

Why do we read?

We read to learn.

What is learning?

Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge.

But what is knowledge?

Knowledge is an awareness of or familiarity with various concepts.

What are concepts?

A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

If we read to learn concepts, then why don’t we just memorize a dictionary?

Because your brain does not understand information like that.

How does my brain understand information?

Your brain understands information in the form of meaningful clusters called chunks.

Chunks?

Chunks are groups of related concepts in which your brain can find some meaning.

I don’t understand, can you give me an example?

Okay. A chunk can be in the form of an article, a chapter, a research paper, a video etc. Any group of concepts that make sense together. Therefore, all great knowledge is usually written or presented in the form of chunks. Your brain understands them, processes them and stores them.

How does it do that?

It breaks down chunks into concepts, organises the concepts into categories and then uses them when a new situation arrives.

So wait. We combine concepts and give them meaning so that the brain understands them. Then the brain then breaks them all down again into concepts to store them. Isn’t that inefficient?

Yes, it is. But that is how the brain functions. It is very similar to the body - we can’t process and use nutrients directly. Nutrients make food, we consume food, and our bodies extract nutrients out of it.

What about supplements? Don’t we just eat multivitamins?

Yes, we do.

So, Can’t there be concept pills that our brain can directly process?

Yes, that can be done. Not with a pill but something like a USB cable that can directly change concepts in our brain. But there is a problem - the brain is like the genie from Aladdin. We understand what it can do, but we know very little about how it does what it does. So changing something we don’t understand is not a good idea - just like that remote control you opened and changed.

Oh. I see. So, is there no hope of a cable?

Yes there is. A very smart man named Elon Musk is trying to build one. It is called neuralink. Go home and read about it.

But, How….

… Enough for now. Let's move on.

I could have handed you a list of all these terms. But, as we know now, the brain does not work like that. This whole conversation was an example of a chunk of knowledge.

Thinking Before Reading

Consider that you are going to read an independent chunk of knowledge - an article, a chapter, a paper, etc. At this stage of thinking, you should think about a chunk as a whole. You must be clear about:

Its Purpose: Why are you reading it?
Its Presence: Is this chunk, or the concepts in it, present in my knowledge base?
Its Position: If not, where does this chunk fit into my knowledge base?

Thinking During Reading

Thinking at this stage is done to achieve two goals: Engagement and Analysis. You can do that in the following ways:

Engagement: By annotating and taking notes as you read.
Analysis: First, break down the chunk into concepts - the main ideas the author is talking about. Then, identify the central claim that the author is making using these ideas. Understand the central claim. What are the assumptions? What are the conclusions? What are the implications of the conclusions?

Thinking Post Reading

Thinking after reading is of two types: short-term thinking and long-term thinking.

Short-term thinking

It is thinking you do immediately after reading. The purpose of short term thinking is to encode the concepts in your brain. Encoding is the process of increasing permanence of a concept.

Human minds are efficient. This efficiency is driven by our ability to forget irrelevant knowledge. Concepts that are not important are removed to make way for new concepts. That means, if you don’t explicitly show the importance of a concept to your mind, it will forget the concept. The purpose of encoding is explicitly telling your mind what not to forget.

You can achieve this purpose by adding retrievable mental cues to the concepts to your mind. With mental cues, you can retrieve stored knowledge at a later stage of reading or application.

You can add mental cues about a concept of knowledge in two ways. First, by elaborating on what you have read - thinking about the concept from different perspectives, finding how it connects to your life, adding additional layers of meaning to it. Second, by reflecting on what you have read - pausing and asking questions about the concept.

Long-term thinking

It is the thinking that you do after you have allowed the knowledge to age for a bit. There are two reasons for doing long-term thinking. First, to revisit the memory cues created during short-term thinking to strengthen the cues. Second, to connect new ideas that you have assimilated since last reading to restructure your knowledge.

How to do long-term thinking? There are three steps for doing it. The first two steps for long-term thinking are the same as that for short term thinking - elaboration and reflection. Only in this case you elaborate and reflect on how the knowledge has changed in your mind since the last reading.

There is an additional third step to long-term thinking called creation. This means adding your own perspective to the knowledge so that you can apply it in your own life. You take a stand on the assumptions, conclusions and implication of the knowledge that you believe to be true. You can also decide on what new knowledge, if discovered, will change your stand.

Long-term thinking is an iterative process. In the beginning, that is for the first couple of long term thinking sessions, you must be deliberate in scheduling. That means that you create some system to schedule your long term thinking sessions. After a while, if you are consistent with your general reading, you will see the same concepts pop up everywhere and thinking about the world in terms of these concepts will become an automatic process.

Conclusion

The principle is to think while you read, assimilate the knowledge, nourish the mind with what you have understood, and revisit this understanding constantly. You can use different rules or processes as long as you stick to the principle. It will give you the best chance to NOT read yourself stupid.

Warning

I must warn you about two things.

What I have described here is just a map of my process; it barely scratches the surface. Each stage has a lot of depth, nuances, and pitfalls. So, don’t follow it rigidly or blindly.
This is not a universal process. My aim here was to give you something to think about and then discover your own way.

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