By the time a student is old enough to be thinking about philosophical questions, he is already fully immersed in a world of beliefs and answers. He … - Arthur M. Melzer

Philosophical education requires not merely that one avoid discouraging the reader ... from employing his own mind, but that one positively motivate him to think and, above all, to think authentically and for himself. One must somehow induce in him a new level of awakeness, inner-directedness, and self-ownership. ... The central paradox of philosophical education, whether in writing or in person, is this: how can one transmit to others something that can never genuinely be given from without, but only generated from within? For that is of the essence of philosophy: it can never be done for you. It is our “ownmost” activity: you must do it all for yourself or you haven’t done it at all.

The first danger of reading books is that it allows you skip too many stages, shortcutting the proper intellectual development. Especially harmful is that it prevents the humble confrontation with your own ignorance. Reading makes you prematurely wise. Before you have had a chance to face the questions and live with them a while, you have seen the answers. Books give a false sense of knowledge and sophistication based on borrowed wisdom, on the belief that you know what you have only read. Thus, they rob you of the proper state of mind for true education.

The philosophic life—the radically personal effort to see life whole—can never be genuinely pursued as a collective enterprise of specialists.