What is the correct stance for studying philosophy?
You study philosophy the way a physicist studies a system that includes themselves. Not to improve it. Not to redeem it. But to see how it actually works, even if the result is disappointing, flattening, or emotionally unrewarding. You allow understanding to undermine your motives, not justify them. You let concepts erode your self-image. You do not ask, “Will this make me free?” You ask, “Is this true, even if it costs me?”
Freedom then appears only as a side effect and never as a possession. It appears as decreased inner friction, reduced narrative urgency, less need to defend, correct, or justify yourself. Not bliss. Not detachment as a virtue. Just fewer compulsions.
This is why Spinoza didn’t seem to care about much. It wasn’t asceticism. It was that nothing needed him anymore not God, not society, not his own ego.
Freedom is not achieved by adding insight. It arrives when insight makes your attachments indefensible.
