“Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.”
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The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.
If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.
I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.
Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.