I've noticed that much recent intellectual discourse tends towards a nitpicky search for nuance and "exceptions to the rule." This is understandable and even acceptable to some degree given that we live in an era of upheaval characterized by technological obfuscation.

What's out of line is when we turn these self-conscious "nitpicky" tendencies on thinkers of the past. I dismissed thinkers such as Nietzsche or Schopenhauer because they used stereotypes, and I could find "exceptions to the rule" that IMO invalidated these thinkers' work.

I approached philosophy like it was an equation, and if any variable seemed faulty to me then the whole thing could be thrown out as a waste of time. This is a STUPID way to engage with philosophy.

But this was the way I was taught at the particular institute of lower learning I had the privilege of spending great amounts of money on, so we can cut a young Seeker some slack here.

What I didn't realize, and what my teachers either didn't see or didn't mention is that men in the past weren't caught up in this same sort of self-conscious nitpicky-ness.

When Nietzsche speaks of "men" as a whole, or even of (oh no) RACE, there's an unspoken understanding that there are and will be exceptions to the rule, and he's comfortable assuming that anyone that's close to being his peer will recognize this.

He doesn't need to spend 15 footnotes injecting nuance into the conversation (and thereby derailing the whole point he's trying get at). The stupidity of my youthful philosophy was assuming that the great men of the past were blind to the idea of nuance.

In reality, these guys were certainly aware of exceptions to the rule, they just didn't allow themselves to get bogged down in endless qualifications.

And this is where the decline of our intellectual discourse becomes apparent, because 99% of philosophical discussion today is a race to find some sort of "exception to the rule" in your peers' work, or to spot the missed nuance in need of qualification in one's own thought.

The idea that great men could just... talk to each other without defining 18 different terms and agreeing on qualifiers is alien to us.

Healthy discussion doesn't involve these self-conscious tendencies, and the fact that we so rarely see this type of discussion in our age is a clear and present sign of intellectual stagnation.

My advice is that u should avoid talking to ppl that try and bog you down in this type of self-conscious nuance injection. Healthy discussion should be largely free and unfettered by these neurotic tendencies.