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ON THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY Before the presentation itself, I would like to put forth a few general remarks about listening to philosophy lectures. There is nothing more common regarding philosophy lectures than to hear complaints about their unintelligibility . When this occurs, a certain injustice is done to some teachers to the extent that the blame is placed on his individual inability to express himself distinctly, or that he lacks the gift of clear analysis, whereas the blame properly lies in the subject itself. For where the subject is in itself unintelligible and muddled, the highest art of oratory would still be incapable of making it intelligible.Thus, if one would first strive for intelligibility in the subject itself, then that of the lecture would emerge of itself.What Goethe says is thus valid here as well: Understanding and good sense Express themselves with little art.4 What is true is hardly of the type that it allows itself to be found only with unnatural efforts or articulated in unnatural words and formulas. Most people spoil their first foray into philosophy through the unnatural excitement that they regard as the correct disposition with which to approach it. Some have dealt with philosophy in the same way as people who have long grown used to living only with their equals and when they [19] associate with someone above them, or should appear before one of the so-called great ones of this earth, behave clumsily, awkwardly, and unnaturally. Indeed, in philosophy one believes such behavior belongs to the subject so much so that one ultimately judges the degree of scholarly expertise according to the degree of the perverse distortions and contortions into which a philosophy deteriorates. On the contrary , however, one should remain convinced that anything that allows itself to be articulated only in a garbled and eccentric manner cannot, for that very reason , be what is true and right. What is true is easy, says an ancient; but it does not come to us without effort, for indeed to find what is simple and easy is most difficult, and for this very reason it is difficult to understand many 101 102 Grounding of Positive Philosophy thinkers precisely because they have not found this simplicity. Most imagine that what is true must be difficult in order to be true, but when what is true is found it always has something of the luck of Columbus about it. A consummate work of art, a painting by Raphael, looks as if it had effortlessly created itself, and everyone thinks that it could not possibly be any other way, but only the artist knows how much he was forced to discard in order to reach this point of lucid clarity and intelligibility. The difference between the mere dilettante and the genuine artist consists precisely in the fact that the former remains stuck in the mere preliminaries of art and science without ever getting to the heart of the matter, whereas the latter goes beyond this to freedom and creates a free art. You must summon courage to do philosophy. In philosophy it is not about an opinion that would be imposed on the human spirit like a burden or a heavy yoke; its burden must be easy, its yoke light.5 Plato does not crucify himself as some philosophers of late have done. Rather, one can say of Plato what has been said of Orpheus: through the mere tones of his music he moved mountains and tamed the wildest monstrosities in philosophy. Thus, one must first strive for objective intelligibility, for clarity in the subject; for,to be sure,subjective intelligibility permits of very different degrees, and if what is true can only be [20] what is in itself intelligible, conversely, it does not follow that what is intelligible—just because it is intelligible—is the truth. For what is common and everyday is of course intelligible to all, whereas in philosophy there is a clarity that brings the novice and especially the better minds to despair. For example, I know of a student to whom a well-meaning teacher, when he thought it time that the student should also engage in philosophy , put in his hands a leading book of then-popular philosophy, Feder’s Logic and Metaphysics.6 This book filled the student with the deepest distress because he believed that he did not understand it, for what he did understand of it seemed too trivial to him to be considered...

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