The Questions  ·  the practitioner · the four words

What is an observer?

The first real question usually arrives through a song, in a car, at the right age. Almost nobody begins in a book.

One who gathers raw experience and questions it, prior to building any structure from it.

The material stage; not yet a map.

Everyone begins here.

What this settles

Which makes it the most populated stage there is, and it is not close. The entry condition is thirsting — and the thirst is the entry condition for all three words, not just this one.

Not this question

What is a scholar?

Also in this footing, and a different question. That one holds a map somebody else drew. This one has not drawn or held one yet — and that is not a deficiency.

Also asked as

Where this is worked out

foundation

Where the Thinking Went

report

Four Words

Nothing on this page is composed. Every sentence in the answer is drawn from the pieces listed above. Where a claim is compressed, it is compressed from one of them and adds nothing they do not say.

Where this question sits

The four words

Philosophy, the observer, the scholar, the philosopher — what each one is, what each one was, and the single axis that separates them. 6 of the 7 here have been worked through; the rest are on the map and not yet walked.

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