Sometimes reading philosophy is an act of pure masochism. Here are two quotes I wrote down a few years ago during my more frustrating struggles with the love of wisdom:
"And even that [what God is in his relationship to a human being] can be said only in a paradox; or more precisely, by using a concept paradoxically; or still more precisely, by means of a paradoxical combination of a nominal concept with an adjective that contradicts the familiar content of the concept."
- Martin Buber, I and Thou (pg. 180 / section 6 of Afterword)
"But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self."
- Soren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death (pg 146 / Paragraph 2 of Section 1A of the First Part)
This is why I'm still slogging through a first-run of Hegel's abridged works after two months. Maybe in another month I'll finish my anthology. Now, the majority of Georg Friedrich isn't as dense as the above two examples, but there are definitely sentences and paragraphs that, after rereading a couple of times, I have absolutely no clue what's trying to be conveyed to me and I have to move on.
Why the self-torture? What lies down the rabbit hole? What happens when you take the red pill? Is Hegel the one to show me?
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