The Pink Book

Schopenhauer said one should read his book twice. This does not distinguish philosophy essentially from science. Philosophy can be compared to geography. If I had to teach geography without a map, and there was a wrong idea of the geography of a district. If you had to draw a map, you would go hopelessly wrong. The way to put you right would be to give you a map – but if I could only give parts such as a village, it would be enormously difficult to put you right. The difficulty would be to give a synopsis. You know the geography perfectly, but if I asked you to draw a map you would go hopelessly wrong. I am trying to give you a synopsis of a huge country. If I go along a road, I come to a crossroads. I then go one way, and you have to wait till I come back before I can go the other way. This is where Schopenhauer’s repetition comes in. Schopenhauer said one could not understand one bit without knowing the whole. Really one might say one cannot appreciate one bit. No one can remember the whole. One should go over and over again the same connections. As we have go through the same net of roads hundreds of times, it does not matter where I begin.