Why Thinking Is PainfulRichard Ostrofsky(May, 2003)

The most thought-provoking thing in this thought-provoking age is that we are still not thinking.

- Martin HeideggerMost people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.

– Bertrand Russell

Everybody thinks about what to have for dinner, and many can plan how to find and cook their dinner. We think enough, most of us, to get along in the world: to eat and mate and raise our children. Still, thought in the sense that Russell or Heidegger mean is very rare. Such thought is something more than problem-solving. Rather, it is about what we call philosophical questions - questions of value and category formation and existential choice. There are no right and wrong answers to such questions, though some answers are much better than others. Such questions call for reflection or contemplation more than for schematization and calculation. Thought about them thus has a different character from the thinking that we learn in school and apply on the job

Faced with a question that needs reflection, we take refuge in myth, doctrine and ordained policy - that is to say, in habitual attitudes and formulae. Or we avoid thinking by jumping to a conclusion, or else by shrugging away (or laughing away) the question itself. The strongest and deepest thinkers catch themselves doing such things from time to time. If you've never caught yourself doing them, you probably never learned what thinking means - what it means to wrestle with a question, instead of shooting it on sight.

To promote my bookstore, I have in mind a series of articles aimed at explaining what I think I know about the art of thinking. More cogitation in this city might be good for business. It is true, as Schopenhauer remarked, that "To turn aside from one's own thoughts to read another man's book is the sin against the Holy Ghost." On the other hand, thinking - like every other process - requires some input, some raw material. The raw material

for thinking is found first of all in one's own life and experience, but secondarily in the life and experience of others as conveyed most succinctly and articulately in good writing. I have a fair stock of pre-packaged thought on my shelves, just waiting to supply a missing piece for your own thinking or annoy you into doing some thinking for yourself.

The first step is probably the hardest: to notice, and face the fact that you are confused, conflicted, puzzled or ignorant on some matter. We value sureness in the conduct of our affairs, and do not relinquish it easily.

The prerequisite for thought is doubt, which we experience as a painful emptiness, comparable perhaps to that of a hungry infant. To think seriously, we have to train ourselves to endure that empty feeling: not to satisfy it straight off with the first plausible nourishment we are offered, but to hold out for the best we find - the best that might be given us.

Serious thought entails some degree of vulnerability, some degree of risk - even in the most tolerant society, and even if we keep our thoughts to ourselves. Questioning even the most trivial of received truths exposes the emptiness at the core of life: The fact that the world is meaningful only because and in the ways we give it meaning. Acceptance of uncertainty also puts us at a social disadvantage vis-a-vis those plausible idiots who always have the answer, who always know exactly what should be done. To doubt the conventional wisdom (even in silence) is to accept the identity of madman, outlaw or heretic. Indeed, to speak one's mind can be dangerous, but not to speak is very lonely. We have to get past this dilemma somehow, before we can think seriously.

Finally, we must accept that thought is a solitary undertaking, not one that our social games encourage. It needs quiet and privacy. It needs some leisure time. It is the purest and most autonomous of pleasures, but has to be its own reward.