I was contacted out of the blue yesterday by a friend who studied physics at my university and with whom I have only intermittently kept in contact. I knew he married and has two lovely children and lives in New York but yesterday we chatted for a while and we discussed briefly modern philosophers and some nineteenth century authors.
It took me back to the time when I was surrounded by young minds better than my own, from all over the world, and no subject was off limits and there was always someone who knew a good deal about something. They told me then that I would never again be surrounded by so much intellectual energy (though they didn’t know my mother!) and in many ways they are right. When you are taught to simply think about existence and analyse the world around you it is a habit you never lose.
So I found myself catching up on Schopenhauer and remembering Ayer and discussing Spinoza in a way I have not done for many years. And I realise that the world of mind is a different place to every-day life. Every day life is a place where we make a dozen assumption to get through the day, but in the world of mind there is often just one assumption made to start one off thinking, and even that is looked down upon.
Far better to assume nothing and see where that leads. Thinking is a thing in itself, after all.