26-01-2021
“The beginning of thought is in disagreement—not only with others but also with ourselves.” —Eric Hoffer
Before we can truly agree or disagree with a certain argument, we must first understand it. More often than not, however, people express disagreement without understanding the argument with which they profess to disagree.
Such “disagreements” are pseudo-disagreements. Since, as Niklas Luhmann identified, without understanding there is no communication, the pseudo-disagreement is a sign of a breakdown or an absence of communication, despite the surface appearance to the contrary.
In the absence of communication, hence of understanding, the person disagreeing is disagreeing really only with an argument of his own making which is not the original argument made. It is a monologue, a soliloquy, in which one disagrees with oneself.
Such pseudo-disagreements are everywhere. Therefore, by inference, pseudo-agreements must also be everywhere.
What is understanding? Understanding is the successful re-creation of a (complex of) thought.
Agreement is the affirmation that the thought re-created and understood is fundamentally identical with that which one holds with respect to the subject upon which the thought is formulated.
Disagreement is the recognition that the thought re-created and understood is critically different from that which one holds with respect to the subject upon which the thought is formulated.
In disagreement, understanding requires re-creation in the sense different from ‘creating again’ but instead in the sense of ‘creating a-new’. This intellectual act of ‘creating anew’ in thought is what constitutes real thinking.
Thus, real disagreement occasions the generation of real thinking.
In sharing my thoughts and ideas, I seek cogently argued disagreements from people more than agreements.
In developing my thoughts and ideas, I seek creative surprises that may await in the course of thinking which contradict with or differ from my currently held thoughts and ideas.
In reading other thinkers’ intellectual work, I seek ideas and theories that challenge my own thinking which expand at minimum and destroy at maximum my ideas and theories.
What is the question that I am not asking, the asking of which will take me further and higher in the wondrous opening in which and out of which the universe eternally regenerates.
The scientist thinks to know. The philosopher knows to think.
“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.” —John Stuart Mill