Here begins our new beginning.
We prepare now to undertake anew the study of philosophy. A study spanning millenia.
Although we are no stranger to the history of this movement, the movement of human understanding, of human thought, or - just perhaps - of thought itself - concurrent with the greater movement of which it is the reflex and expression, perhaps sometimes the distorted or dissimulating veil, the result or symptom, the contravening tide, the scattered points of rupture...although for ten years we have tried, haphazardly, to learn the names and figures, perhaps with a certain vanity of intention, and familiarize ourself with this great epic - but distractedly, unevenly, lazily, with a restlessness that betrayed our lack of discipline, and a self-interestedness that made us fall flat on our face...although there is nothing to guarantee that this time should be any different, still, we announce now our intention to commence afresh, with greater reverence, greater seriousness, determination, curiosity, greater humility and yet greater ambition, greater love, greater fear, greater trembling, greater peril, greater ardor, greater yearning, and intent. In hopes that by announcing this we will thereby hold ourself to a sort of promise, a vow, an oath.
To learn again, the whole thing. Moving forwards in time from the beginnings in Greece. Moving backwards in time from the University-born thinkers of the present.
Our interest is not a general and unbiased one. We take up the study from the Marxist perspective, with Marxist intention. To learn the history of thought for the sake of understanding the course of humanity's attempts to understand itself and its position. We take up this sweeping study of the philosophical canon with intention of gaining fluency in the realm of the abstract, the rational. To be able to handle the material of the questions that in later centuries become more labyrinthine, more like equations. By acquiring an understanding of the logical weight and properties of different elements of thought, learning the language of logic, its several grammars and the torsions that occur depending on inflexion of a given point or clause.
Hopefully, in time we will learn to think and write. Hopefully something within us will be transformed, and we will become equipped to transform in our turn.
We thus mark our intention. Now the task is to begin.
