[305] Teaching young people always raises the problem that you have to pre-empt the insight which comes with age. You cannot wait till their understanding has matured, and you must transmit knowledge which, in the natural order of things, could be grasped only by those whose reason has been more fully developed and tested. This is the cause of the prejudices of scholastic philosophy, which are more persistent, and often more absurd, than those of ordinary people; and also of the precocious garrulousness of young thinkers, which is blinder than any other form of self-conceit, and less curable than ignorance.

However, this problem cannot be completely overcome. In an age when the state of society is highly developed, a more sophisticated understanding is numbered among the means of personal advancement, and becomes a necessity — even though, by its very nature, it should essentially be reckoned only as an adornment of life, and, so to speak, one of its dispensable embellishments. Yet, even in this area, it is possible to bring public teaching more into line with its nature, even if it cannot be made to conform completely.

The natural progress of human knowledge consists in the understanding:

• first training itself to arrive at clear judgments on the basis of experience;
• then attaining concepts through these judgments;
• then knowing these concepts through reason, in relation to their foundations and consequences;
• and finally knowing them as a coherent whole by means of science.

Teaching must follow exactly the same route. So it is expected that a teacher will educate students first to use their understanding, then to use their reason, and finally to become intellectuals. Most students do not become intellectuals. So the advantage of such a method is that, even if students never reach this final stage, [306] they have profited from their education, which has made them better trained and more intellectually accomplished for a non-university career.

If you reverse the order of this method, then the students pick up a sort of reason before their understanding is fully developed. They wear borrowed scientific knowledge, which is, so to speak, draped over them rather than having grown within them. Consequently, their mental capacity is as undeveloped as it was before, but at the same time it has been seriously corrupted by the delusion of wisdom. This is the reason why you often come across intellectuals (especially academics) who show little understanding, and why universities send more dull wits out into the world than any other state institution.

So the procedural rule is first to mature the understanding and hasten its growth by exercising it in forming judgments about experience, and making it attentive to whatever it can learn by comparing sense perceptions. Students must not make a dramatic leap from these judgments or concepts to higher and more recondite ones, but must attain them by the natural and well-trodden path of humbler concepts, which gradually lead them further. But all this must be proportionate to the level of understanding which the preceding exercise must necessarily have brought about in the students, and not to the level of understanding which the teacher observes (or thinks he observes) in himself, and which he even falsely assumes to be present in his students. In short, students should not learn thoughts — they should learn to think; and the teacher should not carry them, but lead them, if he wants them to be destined to make progress by themselves in future.

The special nature of philosophy requires such a method of teaching. But since this is an activity exclusively for adults, it is hardly surprising if difficulties become apparent when you want to accommodate the method to the unpractised abilities of youth. Students come fresh from school, where the method of teaching accustomed them to learning. Now they think they will learn philosophy; but this is impossible, since they must actually learn to philosophise.

I shall explain what I mean more clearly. All the sciences which can be learned (in the strict sense) belong to one of two classes: the historical and the mathematical. To the first belong history as such, together with the description of nature, languages, positive law, etc., etc. Now, all the historical sciences depend on one’s own experience or reports by other people; [307] and all the mathematical ones depend on the obviousness of concepts and the infallibility of proofs. These constitute something that is given in fact, and hence is in stock, and only has to be taken on board, as it were. Therefore in both cases it is possible to learn — in other words, to impress, either on the memory or on the understanding, something which can be presented to us as an already complete discipline.

So in order to learn philosophy too, there would first of all have to be a philosophy actually in existence. You would have to be able to produce a book, and say, ‘Look, here is wisdom and reliable insight; if you learn to understand and comprehend it, and subsequently build on it, then you will be philosophers.’ If I want to explain a historical circumstance, I can appeal to someone like Polybius; or if I want to explain a proposition in the science of quantity, I can appeal to Euclid. But until someone shows me such a book of philosophy which I can appeal to, I am entitled to make the following claim. The trust of the state is being abused if teachers fail to increase the intellectual abilities of the young people in their charge, and educate them to their own more mature insight in future, but instead deceive them with a supposedly already complete philosophy, which was thought up for their benefit by other people. This is the origin of an illusory science, which passes for genuine currency only among particular people in a particular place, but is rejected everywhere else.

The distinctive method of teaching in philosophy is zetetic, as some of the ancient philosophers called it (from the Greek zetein), meaning ‘enquiring’, and it only becomes dogmatic, or ‘definitive’ in various of its branches when people’s reason has already been more practised. Also, the philosophical author used as the primary text for teaching should not be treated as the archetype of judgment, but only as an occasion for making one’s own judgments about him, or even against him. The method of thinking through the text and drawing conclusions from it oneself is essentially what students want to be proficient at. Not only can it be useful for them, but any definite insights acquired at the same time must be treated as incidental consequences, and they only have to plant their fertile roots within themselves in order to enjoy an abundant harvest.

If you compare this with the normal procedure which is so much at variance with it, you can grasp the difference, which would otherwise seem very strange. For example, why is there is no other kind of scholarly guild which has as many masters as philosophy? Many of those who have learned history, jurisprudence, mathematics, and so on, nevertheless decide on their own accord that they have not yet [308] learned enough to teach it to others. On the other hand, why are there so many people who can seriously imagine themselves, in addition to their other business, being perfectly able to pontificate about logic, morality, and the like, should they wish to get involved in such trivialities? The reason is because in the former sciences there is a common standard, whereas in the latter everyone has their own. Similarly, you will clearly see that it is very unnatural for philosophy to be a paid profession, since it contradicts its essential nature if it accommodates itself to the craziness of market forces or the rule of fashion. Only extreme necessity, which has power even over philosophy, can force it to conform to what is generally approved.

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