How does one think like a philosopher? I’ve posed this question to more than a few of my podcast guests. Most recently to the writer and philosopher Julian Baggini (author of the new book How to Think Like a Philosopher) for an upcoming episode of In Search of Wisdom.
As discussed in The Art of Being Where You Are, our attention is our most valuable resource. Epictetus stressed to his students, “You become what you give your attention to. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.”
Another figure that urged us to think deeply about attention was the French philosopher Simone Weil. In his book, The Socrates Express, Eric Weiner (another previous podcast guest) writes that Weil demands we pay attention.
Weiner puts it this way,
Attention matters. More than anything else, it shapes our lives. ‘For the moment, what we attend to is reality,’ said the American philosopher William James. Something only exists for us if we attend to it. This is not a metaphor. It is a fact. As many studies reveal, we do not see that to which we don’t pay attention. The quality of our attention determines the quality of our lives. You are what you choose to pay attention to and, crucially, how you pay attention.
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Perennial Meditations to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
