How To Think for Yourself

Our culture celebrates originality and creativity. We want our students to think for themselves, not blindly follow tradition, authority and received opinion. After all, doesn’t science, art and politics depend on us all coming to our own answers?

I definitely support the idea of coming to your own beliefs about things. But the way we do it isn’t how it is often portrayed. Thinking for oneself means, first, grappling with a lot of thoughts of other people. Creativity depends on copied insights. Originality is built from mastery.

Descartes’ Error

Our confusion about thinking can be traced back to the philosopher Rene Descartes. The Frenchman, while stationed in Dutch-speaking Neuburg an der Donau, decided to withdraw into his room, heated by his stove, so he could think for himself.

From his physical and social isolation, Descartes would work out a new philosophy. He decided to toss aside any of his knowledge that could be faulty. He would work from first principles only on the things he knew from direct experience were undeniably true. This, in turn, led to his formulation, “I think, therefore I am.” Arguing that even if the entire world around him was an illusion, it could not be an illusion that he was, in fact, thinking.