At long last, I finished reading the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2d ed., which was edited by Donald M. Borchert and published by Macmillan Reference USA in 2006. My university bought me the set on 24 April 2007, and I promptly began reading the volumes at the rate of two pages per day. The 10 volumes contain 7,885 pages, which means I read the encyclopedia (including 494 pages of index) over a period of 3,943 days. That's 10.79 years. I had just turned 50 years old when I started, and now I'm two months away from being 61. You might say that I devoted the sixth decade of my life to filling in gaps in my knowledge of my academic discipline. I may be the only human being to have read every word of this massive work.
I wish I could say that the experience was edifying. Some of the entries were superb, as one would expect, but far too many were—to put it bluntly—a waste of time. It's amazing how much of what passes for philosophy is sheer idiocy. The history of philosophy is a history of squandered genius, interest-driven nonsense, crackpot theories, inane squabbling, bullshit, and self-indulgent flights of intellectual fancy. Perhaps this is true of every other academic discipline as well, in which case philosophers need not hang their heads in shame. At any rate, I am grateful to those who came before me, either because they taught me important things or because they showed me how not to read, write, think, argue, and analyze.
My next project is to read everything ever written about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Before I die, I'm going to figure out what happened there on 25 June 1876. Onward and upward!
