Contingent value is always rooted in instrinsic value. If contingent value closes in a self-referential circle, or if it terminates nowhere, the value is empty.
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The chain of “in-order-to” must eventually terminate at a point where the answer to “why?” is unanswerable.
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If you’re compelled to ask “why?” in order to determine the value of something, the value of what you are questioning is contingent.
But if you ask “why?” of something you already experience as valuable, whether on principle or by habit, that borders on blasphemy.
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Sometimes we dig deeper for shallow reasons.
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A typically deceptively simple maxim from Heraclitus: “Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find truth, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.”
When reading philosophy, having your expectations fulfilled means philosophy failed to occur.
Are you saying that its my failing when i read philosophy and they say what i thought they would say?
I am treating philosophy as a transformative event. That event does not occur when you see your own ideas reflected in another person’s articulation. It happens when someone else’s articulation leads you to think something impossible and unthinkable prior to having read it.
The part of this idea most relevant to you — the part where we might disagree — is whether it is more admirable to have already had an insight, or to have acquired a new one. I tend to be more proud of the latter.