Hello everyone, I am new to trying mnemonics as a study of memory itself; I am looking for how others would or have in the past, approached the memorisation of dense philosophical texts which rely on structure, rather than chunks of individual facts.
Any input would be great thanks!
Do you have any examples? I know when I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, it was super dense and took a lot to make points clear. What I found useful was making connections of the ideas to my own life and what I see in the world then using techniques as a trigger for the idea.
Thanks I’ll definitely try this. Some examples are how some of the meditations are seemingly unrelated, yet they are. For instance, his second meditation relies on an inference, that comes about through an argument from scepticism. Many people who are new to Descartes, will think the argument is what is important. But it is actually the inference. But at the same time, the analogies within his first two arguments he used for the first inference, ends up being used later on his meditations, particularly for the 3rd and 6th.
So his overall project is not very structured, in an of themselves as an isolated work, this is okay, but to put it all together, and present his work as an overall project, encounters these nuances.
Oh I see what you mean. Are you planning to use the information or just to learn it for learning sake?
Both.
How do you end up using philosophy in your life? Just be more aware of what you think or do? This is something I always tried to figure out
It really just depends on what you are reading, Descartes isn’t really intended to be used as a practical philosophy, it is used rather for Ontology, Science, and Theology. So it is too theoretical to apply it to your life. But if you really tried I’m sure you could some how, but I wouldn’t know haha… Other philosophies however, are immediately accessible, like as you brought up one of the stoics. Philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Kant have an applicability to them as well. Really what most philosophers have tried to do is change how we think, many of them have succeeded, if you look at the philosophers of history, it is very easy to see the circle of influence they have after their philosophies integrate into society. Some philosophies are immediate nuggets of wisdom, others perhaps are more passive, but can change whole cultures.