more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
The philosopher lives on problems as the human being does on food. An insoluble problem is an indigestible food. What spice is to food, the paradoxical is to problems.
Gist of Idea
Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox
Source
Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 09)
Book Ref
Novalis: 'Philosophical Writings', ed/tr. Stoljar,M.M. [SUNY 1997], p.68
A Reaction
Novalis would presumably have disliked Hegel's dialectic, where the best food seems to be the indigestible.
| 12038 | Translate as 'humans all desire by nature to understand' (not as 'to know') [Aristotle, by Annas] |
| 17949 | Inquiry is the cause of philosophy [Aristotle] |
| 19586 | Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox [Novalis] |
| 7578 | I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere [Kierkegaard] |
| 9254 | In philosophy the truth can only be reached via the ruins of the false [Prichard] |
| 15582 | Perhaps the aim of philosophy is to abolish sham problems [Heidegger] |
| 18704 | Philosophy tries to be rid of certain intellectual puzzles, irrelevant to daily life [Wittgenstein] |
| 21239 | Philosophers are marked by a joint love of evidence and ambiguity [Merleau-Ponty] |
| 22337 | Philosophy must keep returning to the beginning [Murdoch] |
| 13477 | The problems are the monuments of philosophy [Hart,WD] |
| 20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
| 7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |