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What is an Independent Thinker?

What is an Independent Thinker?

What is an independent thinker? Put differently: from what does the self-liberated thinker become independent? What new kind of relationship can the independent thinker have with that from which s/he has become liberated—a relationship that, presumably, was not possible to the extent that s/he remained a dependent, un-free thinker? Is such self-liberation a ‘once and for all’ achievement, or is self-liberation an ongoing activity—like the progressive attainment of wisdom or the establishment, growth, governance, and renewal of a city?

What are the principal obstacles and deterrents to independent thinking, imagining, feeling, choice, and action? Are these obstacles chiefly located outside or inside the thinker who craves freedom and independence? And, insofar as the obstacles are inside the would-be independent thinker, do these pertain more to the intellect and formal education, or do they have more to do with the will or spirit of the thinker—in other words, with what we might call ‘moral’ virtues? To what extent does becoming an independent thinker depend on opportunity—and to what extent must the thinker create his/her opportunities when they are not forthcoming from the environment? Does one need to be ‘thrashed’ by a prison guard before s/he is motivated to seek freedom or is it sufficient simply to be seized by wonder—the sudden recognition that ‘things are not at all what they seem’?

How much of the thinker’s self-liberation is destructive/de-constructive and how much is constructive/creative? Certainly, more than a little of each will be necessary if his/her understanding is to undergo constant renewal and periodic rehabilitation. What are the basic materials with which the independent thinker works? Are these materials, themselves, newly forged or can they be old and familiar, but employed/deployed in new and unfamiliar ways?

Have I, then, answered my question, ‘What is an independent thinker’? Of course not. That would not only be presumptuous, but it would necessarily be questionable, biased, and insufficient.

Have I offered some possible pathways to a clearer understanding of what’s entailed in the question? I hope so! 

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