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Question I am only in my first few years of studying philosophy, yet I have been reading simple introductions, and philosophical novels since I was quite young. When I was younger I often thought I had stumbled upon some "great new theory" or other, only to find out that, not only had it been done before, but done much better than I ever could have. Now that it is the main focus of my academic life, I find myself truly discouraged every time I have what I think might be something new to the world of philosophy, or some original thought. It seems that all there is to discover in philosophy has been picked apart to the bare bones, or that my own thoughts simply could never in my wildest dreams stand up to any critical analysis. I have thought of simply giving up on the subject to start writing novels about my far-fetched ideas. Should I let it go and save myself the discouragement and disappointment? (please don't take this late night e-mail as evidence of my writing skills... I promise with some coffee I could do better :) )

Accepted:
May 20, 2006

Comments

I suspect that many of us suffer from your incoherent-footnote-to-Plato worry from time to time, but let me say two encouraging things.

The first is that although philosophy does often circle back to issues and arguments in its own history, when we consider them anew we consider them in a new context, and this makes room for originality. Of course it helps not to expect too much. You don't have to provide a definitive reply to scepticism about the external world: it's glory enough to push the discussion along in smaller but still productive ways.

The second encouragin thing to say is that originality isn't everything. Even if it turns out that someone else had the idea centuries ago, working things out for yourself has a special intellectual value for you. Philosophy is not a spectator sport.