Arthur Schopenhauer discussion

Use this thread to discuss "On Thinking For Oneself."

I understand what Schopenhauer means when he says "the safest way of having no thoughts of one's own is to take up a book every moment one has nothing else to do". I get that we should leave some time to digest the ideas we have just read and not pile more thoughts in on top of them. It makes sense.

But then later in the essay he says "Hence a great mind does well to spend its leisure in reading which, as I have said, is a substitute for thought."

I assume he's calling for a happy medium of reading vs thought, but he seems to be a little inconsistent in this essay.

Again, I agree when he says "in the study of [history], all that a man learns never contributes to lessen that which he has still to learn." History is a nice paradox - no matter how much we try to learn from the past, history is continually being created with each passing minute. But immediately after this quote he says "With any real science, a perfection of knowledge is, at any rate, conceivable."

Here I'm in disagreement with him again. As a chemist, I can say that with each new experiment, another small bit of knowledge is uncovered. Just like history, knowledge of chemistry is continually being created.

I think I'll take Schopenhauer's advice and give myself time, or make time, to think about what I have read to a greater degree than I have in the past, but I'm not going to slow down too much.