March 21
The beginning of philosophy is the awareness of one's own weakness.
Discourses II.11
Listening mode
The beginning of philosophy is the awareness of one's own weakness.
Some of your weaknesses you know so well that you can introduce them like a trait. You're just impatient, bad at turning things down, too quick to judge. When you say so, people often nod; sometimes they laugh along with you. The sentence sounds honest and yet costs little.
For it has a strange effect: it closes the question. What has been named seems understood, and what seems understood no longer needs anyone to examine it. The weakness becomes part of how you describe yourself, almost a possession.
It is different when it takes you by surprise. You cut someone off, though you had just resolved to listen, and only notice it from their face. In that moment you have no ready-made sentence about yourself. You only know that something in you was faster than your intention, and not why.
That is more uncomfortable than any admission, and it doesn't make much of a story. But here you can ask yourself something whose answer you haven't already brought along.
At the next dinner you may say again that you're just impatient. It's true, after all.
