'Where should I start?' is the wrong question
A slightly different way of thinking about learning something new.
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One quick way to get a lot of views on the internet – this is especially true on YouTube – is to say that something is for beginners. So many beginners, for every art and every inquiry, are concerned with the question, ‘Where should I start?’
This is understandable enough. Beginners, by definition, do not know very much about whatever it is they are interested in. They are ignorant. That’s fine — at one point, we were all ignorant about everything, and even experts initially had to overcome that ignorance. In a decentralized world where beginners take their education into their own hands, beginners have to find some way to actually begin. So they ask the question: ‘Where should I start?’
This is a fairly basic insight into the psychology of learning. It’s an insight that served me well over on YouTube — if I make a beginner-friendly video, I can guarantee a certain amount of views, and that helps me pay my mortgage. I also do feel like I’m providing a service. I know a fair bit about philosophy, including about how to teach it, so talking about beginner-friendly philosophy books might actually be useful for some people. But I have this suspicion that I’m reinforcing a bad idea. Namely, I’m reinforcing the idea that there is a place where a beginner should start.
Let’s make a simple distinction between linear and non-linear subjects. A subject is linear when there is a clear path one should follow when learning it. Mathematics, at a fairly low level, is linear. You need to learn to count, then to add and subtract, and so on. Eventually, it becomes non-linear. Some ideas are foundational and need to be grasped before you can move on, but the progression path begins to branch more and more. Ideas become more and more independent, and then when you do discover connections they are rather deep and interesting.
Most subjects, however, are non-linear. Aside from the very basic fundamentals, most subjects do not have clear progression paths. Sometimes, you just need to dive in. Philosophy is one of those subjects — and since it is my field, I’ll discuss it here.
Say that you want to read Hegel. That’s a noble goal. Let’s assume that you haven’t read much philosophy in the past. If you want to read Hegel, where should you start?
Unfortunately, most of the advice that you will get will tell you to read other philosophers first. You’ll often be recommended Kant, since he initiates the German Idealism project. But then some will say that you need to read Hume, since Hume awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber. But if you want to read Hume, you might need to understand the concept of innate ideas. So there’s Descartes. But Descartes is reacting to the Scholastics, so now you need to read Suarez, Duns Scotus, Aquinas. But what about all those patristic sources they draw on? The Bible? Aristotle? Plato? The pre-Socratics?
If you follow this line of reasoning, you end up at the very beginning of intellectual history. If you start at the beginning of intellectual history, you likely will never read Hegel. So much for that noble goal.
So here’s a simpler way of thinking about this: if you want to read Hegel, even as a total beginner, read Hegel. Just read his work — sure, maybe try the Encyclopedia Logic before The Phenomenology of Spirit, but don’t feel like you have to read everybody who came before Hegel in order to give Hegel a try. Sure, you will not understand Hegel. Nobody does on their first try, anyway, even if they’ve read Kant. But that’s not really the point here.
At the root of this misunderstanding about learning is the idea that in order to understand some thinker, you need to understand everyone to whom they are responding. You need to master all of their intellectual antecendents. You need to know the full history and context of their age. But as I quickly argued above, this leads to a regress that vitiates the possibility of ever reading anyone aside from the Ancient Greeks (or, in a non-Western context, the earliest Indian or Chinese philosophers).
We need to think about learning in a slightly different way if we’re ever going to make progress.
Instead of thinking about philosophy (again, just an example — fill in your subject of choice) as one long, linear path, think of it as a web. There is no clear center. There are many threads of influence, of interpretation, of reinterpretation. If we think of the great thinkers of history as engaged in a long conversation, we can even posit imaginary threads of response from old thinkers to new ones (e.g., Aristotle correcting Kant, Marx criticizing the critical theorists, Lao Tzu lambasting Plato, etc.).
As a learner, you need to find a spot on the web to get started. It can be nearly any spot. As you explore this particular node, you’ll start to see those connecting threads going off in many directions. Some go forward in time; others go backward. Some have a clear path; others are quite tangled. Maybe you’ll realize the node you chose at the beginning wasn’t the right one for you, and you’ll start over — but you’ll at least have some knowledge and experience you take with you. Maybe as you struggle with Hegel you really will need to go back to Kant, but maybe that’s not the path you need to follow. Your interests and abilities, your teachers and your co-learners, will guide you.
‘Where should I start?’ has a sister question: ‘Where should I go next?’ But just like the first question erroneously presumes a singular answer, so does the second question. The paths will branch, fork, and merge. Sometimes, there is no path. You just need to choose. You just need to go.
So instead of asking, ‘Where should I start?’ I would encourage you to ask a different question: Where do I want to start? Since there is no ideal starting place, and in fact there are very few truly awful starting places, there really is no wrong answer here. And what you will do is start to think of learning about philosophy not as the accumulation of skills or even as items on a to-do list you can check off and then forget but rather as a long journey.
A journey, perhaps, where these texts and philosophers are not destinations or even stops along the way, but rather fellow travelers.
This was great to hear. I'm not currently studying philosophy, but I am on a journey of teaching myself another skill and I often got stuck in the beginning trying to figure out where to start (this is after college). It was only until I asked that question of "Where do I want to start?" did I actually begin to make progress.
I couldn't agree more. This is how I usually approach any new subject- dive in on whatever catches my eye, and then follow my nose from there. I will usually find a path to take based on what seems most interesting, or sometimes it will become clear what concepts I'm struggling to make sense of and therefore need more foundational knowledge about.
Is this the most efficient way to learn? Well, probably not. However, it keeps me interested and engaged. Even if there happens to be a perfect path to learning a subject, it's worthless if you lose the motivation to stay on it.