I love Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of 10 letters addressed to the young Franz Xaver Kappus, who never quite made it as a writer, but who as a consolation prize became one of the most celebrated letter-receivers in the history of poetry.
In 1902, while at the Theresian Military Academy in Austria, Kappus was at a crossroads between a career in the military and one as a writer. So he cold-mailed Rilke, who had attended the same academy, asking for the poet’s advice. Rilke’s replies are generous, suffused with passion for the written word and romance about “looking inward” to find the springs of creativity.
A typical passage (from Letter 1):
You ask if your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you worry when certain editors reject your attempts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all of that. You are looking outward, which, now above all, you should not do. No one can advise and assist you, no one. There is only one way: go into yourself. Seek out the reason that commands you to write; discover if it has stretched out its roots into the deepest parts of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would have to die if it were forbidden you to write.
This above all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of the night: must I write?
Rilke then goes on to say “Do not write love poems,” which I wish someone had told me when I was in high school.
This morning, I received an email out of the blue from a student in high school, who had somehow come across my guide to “Writing Philosophy for Publication.” (Coming soon to Big iff True, by the way.)
This young man asked if I had any advice for how to start doing research in philosophy.
Now, as you have probably deduced, I am not Rainer Maria Rilke, and thankfully I didn’t make the connection to his Letters until after I sent off my reply. (Nobody wants to see me do a Rilke impression.) But I thought the young philosopher’s question was a good one to think about.
I’m sharing my reply in case it might be of interest to any other young philosophers out there—and because I’m curious to hear what answers you would have given.
Email to a Young Philosopher
Dear [Neo-Kappus],
Thanks for your message. Never too early to fall in love with philosophy.
I have three pieces of advice:
Find a question that grabs you. If you’re not dying to know, you’re never going to find out.
Find someone to talk to. Philosophy isn’t just writing and talking: it’s reading and listening. Even the process of figuring out your own thoughts will require you to listen to yourself, locating gaps in your own arguments and deciphering the deeper patterns behind your disparate ideas. In my experience, the only way to learn how to listen is to find someone else you want to listen to, someone who’s also grabbed by the same questions, but who can surprise you with new ideas. Over time, you and your interlocutors will become more than the sum of the individuals.
Go slow—ridiculously so. Jonathan Dancy and Selim Berker are two of my greatest teachers, and you would not believe how slowly they read. Jonathan numbers paragraphs. He reads them like a detective, looking for clues—or maybe it’s more like a conductor poring over a score, separating out each instrument and asking why each note is where it is. The point isn’t just to become fluent with the text. It’s to take the ideas and their presentation ultra-seriously. It’s the only way to avoid hallucinating ideas that you expected to find in the text. The sooner you can read what’s really on the page, the sooner you leave the cave.
I also have one piece of anti-advice: don’t worry about “research.” There will be many chances later to professionalize and produce. If you learn to read what’s really on the page and hear what people—including yourself—are really saying, the rest is easy.
Sincerely yours,
Daniel