Philosophies

The Discipline of Reading Against Your Own Opinion

Deliberately seeking out texts and teachers you expect to disagree with, and why that discomfort is worth cultivating.

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The Discipline of Reading Against Your Own Opinion

Most reading, left to its own inclinations, drifts toward confirmation: texts that agree with what you already believe, teachers whose conclusions you already find comfortable.

A smaller discipline, practiced deliberately by some serious readers, is the reverse: seeking out a text or teacher you expect to find frustrating, wrong, or uncomfortable, and reading it with the same seriousness you would bring to a text you already trusted.

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