Whoever asks what a person is poses one of the deepest questions there are. But how does one approach such a question? By what method? What distinguishes serious thinking about the essence of the human being from mere opinion and speculation?
This chapter is about the way one thinks philosophically. It asks: What is the difference between an opinion and knowledge? And what must one do so as not to stop at opinions, but to arrive at genuine insights about reality?
The answer is at once simple and demanding: one must look carefully. Not with a microscope, but with the mind. One must turn to the things as they really are — and muster the patience to describe them as they show themselves.
Sections
- No Fear of the Big Questions
- Philosophy Is Not a Matter of Opinion
- Setting Prejudices Aside
- Back to the Things Themselves
- What It Means to Bring the Things Themselves to Intuition
- What “Careful Looking” Means — Three Examples
- Different Kinds of Experience
- The Difference Between Opinion and Knowledge
- What Knowledge Really Is — and What Happens in It
- Archphenomena — the Spiritually Ultimate
- What Makes Things What They Are
- Why Some Truths Are Necessary
- Two Kinds of Necessary Truths
- Reality Exists Independently of Our Thinking
- What Distinguishes Philosophy from the Natural Sciences
- Why This Method for the Question of Personhood
- Summary