Habitual perception filters through others’ prior thoughts and must be stripped away.

Evidence

There is a part of everything that remains unexplored, for we have fallen into the habit of remembering, whenever we use our eyes, what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at. Even the slightest thing contains a little that is unknown. We must find it. To describe a blazing fire or a tree in a plain, we must remain before that fire or that tree until they no longer resemble for us any other tree or any other fire. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 342

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Husserl’s injunction to return ‘to the things themselves’ and to later passages in this book distinguishing phenomenology from received-theory approaches. — connects to: Recognizing thoughts as just thoughts reduces their power. — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 295; Repeated exposure to others’ judgments inevitably shapes a person’s character; Stranger objectivity is freedom from perceptual and normative bias — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 395 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Objectivity is freedom from commitment-biased perception #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 9594
• Repeated exposure to others’ judgments inevitably shapes a person’s character #expands (0.80)
• Recognizing thoughts as just thoughts reduces their power. #expands (0.72) — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 295
• Stranger objectivity is freedom from perceptual and normative bias #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 395