I’ve come up with many philosophical ideas that I’ve later discovered to be unoriginal, but I don’t really read much philosophical literature. What, then, is the message? Is it that my thoughts would be original if I had been born a century earlier? Or does the legacy of past philosophers suffuse society to such an extent that the ideas are easily rediscovered, even by one who has never gone out of the way to study them?

Why must novelty be so hard? Must I study previous works every time I discover an idea to ensure that the idea was not written down? I couldn’t; I have far too many ideas and it would take far too long. Neither can I simply throw ideas away, as one particular lesson that I’ve learned from the scientific community is that people simply cannot estimate the potential value of any idea. Paradoxically, an exhaustive study of the field would additionally seem pointless if I am capable of synthesizing others’ philosophies intellectually; the only distinction lies in knowing that an idea is unoriginal. I’m not sure there’s a particularly good answer, except perhaps to ignore it, write as if all of my ideas are original (thanks Descartes), and let society sift through them later if it chooses (and if it doesn’t, there’s no point in writing them down in the first place because they’ll simply be ignored).