Answers are easy

Before you answer, worry a little: Are you so smart that you see the answer? or are you so stupid that you can’t see the question?

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By the time you have recognized the existence of the problem, identified its nature, and formulated the problem as a question the actual answering of the question is trivial.

The worst problems remain troublesome because the problem’s question has been poorly asked.

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One of my favorite quotes, from Wittgenstein: “A philosophical problem has the form: I don’t know my way about.”

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Knowing one’s way about is being oriented by a clear question.

2 thoughts on “Answers are easy

  1. No man comes to a conclusion on any subject while he is barred from the path to that conclusion by his own refusal to admit he does not know the path.

    It’s the favored song and dance of these sorts to create conflict through argument that difference of opinion is the real obstruction which truly stands between their solution and it’s supposedly productive effect, because this argument creates the very conflict which provides them with shelter from the possibility of an honest search, leading to an honest conclusion.

    This is how it is with the Politician and the philosopher alike. I suspect it is the reason why Nietzsche ended his life.

    The only successful politician is the one who makes himself obsolete, and there is no place for philosophers in a world which is truly philosophically successful since all the questions are answered.

  2. I do not think that Nietzsche was a Nihilist, I think only that he was finished with his job as a philosopher and turned out to be nothing else.

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