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I hear you, but also understand that probably the most intense, most satisfying reading experience I ever had was as a child having found my mother's Critique of Pure Reason in the garage among so many dusty books - I was maybe 10 years old? - and trying to decipher that text painfully, without any context, as a 10 year old brain, sentence by sentence, almost word by word. I have no idea how far I got into it, but I was at it for months. I suspect I didn't learn very much about Kant's critique but it bestowed on me in the most powerful way a love for the hieroglyphics of Philosophy's over-specialized language, and led to to reading unending volumes throughout my young adulthood years up into my 30s and even 40s. That absolute incoherence, and my belief that special meaning was there, in those words gave me something that empowered my mind more than any cribnotes on Kant ever could. To this day it's a very special memory.

Yeah I came off really whiney sorry about that. I think part of the reason is that things get lost in the text and also because I agree with the deeper value of learning something and struggling with something over time. Though it feels like there is moments in which it's incredibly beneficial to have someone whether it's a peer or a teacher give you practical feedback within something. Which again I don't think you really disagree with either lol just hard to bounce ideas around sometimes without getting lost within the medium - forum posts that we are separated by time zones. Thanks for the book post it reminds me of trying to read Hume as a high schooler and having no clue what the fuck anything meant but attempting to learn by brute force.

This is really interesting, thanks for sharing. I guess also the perspective of not expecting to know anything (like a child) can allow one to get rid of assumptions and open our minds to understand things we didn't expect. Also very impressive considering how complex Foucault is and how different German is compared to English.