How to read Philosophy?

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I have started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is not an easy read; to speak fairly, philosophy cannot be. It is mostly because we aim to learn everything about the universe in minimum words. I remember the writings of Aurobindo, where pages would go flipped one after the other without a full stop in sight. Reading those lines felt taxing then. In those moments I had felt there was a need to ease philosophy. Just to let philosophy breathe; or somehow innoculate the student with more oxygen so they let philosophy in easy.

One of my cousins posits that if one can't explain something in one or a maximum of two lines, he or she possesses only a vague amount of information about the subject. I had aligned with the same school of thought too only to be shied away when the same action was applied to explain philosophy. I have been a student of Philosophy for some time and have gathered some knowledge about a handful of philosophers. Comprehending philosophy usually came head-on with my fetish for logic. I would waste a lot of time trying to find logic in things happening around me just so the trail of occurrences, for any event, would come logically and organically to me. The same way whenever I wanted to remind myself of them without committing it to my brain. That is why logic and understanding were always much more fun than rote learning. 

But, when philosophy as a subject came into my life, the fact that anyone could assume anything, anyone possess any thought or opinion, and lay it down like an established piece of knowledge wouldn't sit right with me. This continued on for a substantial number of my 'probationary' days. I say so because I had feared, even in the slightest, that philosophy may not have been my 'cup of tea'.  

Alongside, I was not ready to adopt the ancient wisdom as well which was that "philosophy seeps". It does so indeed. The mind of the reader. 

But what made my head turn was the confidence in the words of these highly decorated, respected, and if not, critiqued philosophers. I am not much of a sheep in a herd, but I pay attention to an idea accepted by the masses. It helps inform my course of action. I started looking for the set of mindworks that fit with accepting each idea that a particular philosopher stood right in her capacity. Each mind frame was receptive and appreciative of each philosopher I came across. I was already left with a huge set of disparate thought processes competing to find the meta of the universe, while none was able to be proved or disproved completely.  Bippity-Bopp! I could juggle these philosophers with disparate competing thoughts, processes, and understanding completely. Clearly, understanding Philosophy was not a direct articulation for me but a process of inference in reverse. 

Philosophy makes you rethink your own thoughts; it forces you to give a heeding ear to every competing force, every critique. Every criticism is taken in high spirits. Philosophy may give out a dark, nihilistic approach if one starts to put their mind to it, and extends from a concept known before. I don’t mean to sound negative about philosophy as a subject, it is great. One has to get into the grooves until one realizes that each philosophy has to be seen as a helping guide to jumpstart their thinking process anew. The various philosophers give you ideas to start with. Is it okay to imagine? What can you imagine? What can you imagine even when it is never thought of before? But once thought and realized, that would certainly be met by the molds of society, if it is amoral, or immoral. When it pesters you so much you have to give it a form of expression without hurting any. Virtually, you can view the universe as nearly anything. 

Plato viewed the universe in terms of ideas, Leibnitz as monads; Wittgenstein had linguistic atoms. What do these mean in the regular world where we live, breathe, and perform different actions? ‘Ideas’ may be a tad known, but ‘monads’, and ‘linguistic atoms’ were specially created by these philosophers to put across what got borne in their minds. Something that they thought was different from the proverbial "normal", mundane, regular. These are the values, the ideas (notions) of these philosophers, who are the inventors of these novelties. Since these ideas flow like streams of energy inside the heads of these philosophers, I guess they come out as complex lines. Since these lines have to stay pristine because these were borne out of their sire, any interpretation or re-interpretation would have to come after. The understanding of something so elegant coming out as a result of an elaborate thought process is difficult and needs explanation and enunciation so they can be primed for mass consumption. 

Every line of what these philosophers have said can be expanded into complete literature with allegories, illustrations, examples, fables, and whatnot. If one line of any philosophy is capable of generating a full text, it is justified because philosophy is a projection of the mind of one philosopher about how they perceive the infinite universe. Just imagine the spread of the universe and any philosopher’s mind trying to make sense of it! It is an exceptional feat. But, the justification for the complexity of the philosophers also comes with the responsibility imposed upon the philosopher to let the masses understand what he understood about the universe. Because what he understood was something new, unthought of before. Many philosophers have posited that is possible only under the tutelage of a Guru. If nothing, the idea could be propagated deeper into the density of the population and the masses can have an idea about the possibility of the universe which is different from the prevalent lifestyle of the present civilization. Then, there would be critiques, as many counters to further fine-tune the philosophy. 

It is difficult if the philosophy is not explained by its propagator. "People read their own Bible" can put a damper on the process because intentionally or unintentionally when someone tries to explain what the other person has said, the inherent bias, conceptions, and ideations morph the words along the way. This is inadvertently a windfall gain in the development of the field of philosophy for it leads to the branching of philosophy. Every bit of modification or reform per se in philosophy is a new philosophy. It is evident in the philosophies of Plato-Aristotle, and the various branches of Vedanta philosophy. 

For the welfare of society, it is always better when the philosophy is consumed broadly. The chances of the idea getting lost are significantly reduced. Just have patience! Pay attention to every sentence, and think. All a philosophy expects from you is the ability to be heard and comprehended. 

I don’t know how I arrived at this when I wanted to discuss the romanticism of the idea of ‘soulmates’ by Plato.

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