One needs to work through a text slowly, pondering, comparing, re-reading, reconstructing and evaluating the arguments, raising objections, imagining possible replies and all of this while animated by a burning need to get to the bottom of some pressing existential question. You must bring to your reading questions if you expect study to be profitable.
If one fails to enter into the dialectic of the problems and issues one will come away with little more than a vague literary impression. But real study is hard work demanding aptitude, time, peace, and quiet, a commodity in short supply in these hyperkinetic and cacaphonous times. Back in the day, Arthur Schopenhauer was much exercised by "the infernal cracking of whips" as he he complained in his classic "On Noise." What would he say today? Could he survive in the contemporary crapstorm of cacaphony?
So turn off that cell phone before I smash it to pieces!
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