Philosophers

What does it mean to be a philosopher?
It means to see the world with eyes untainted by time, to see without restrictions of society and convention. To keep one’s eyes and mind open to everything around, to analyze carefully, easily, plainly.

Austin:
“It’s not things, it’s philosophers that are simple. You will have heard it said, I expect, that oversimplification is the occupational disease of philosophers, and in a way one might agree with that. But for a sneaking suspicion that it’s their occupation”

How many words is a philosopher allowed before his work is rendered non-simple?

“I remember once when I had been talking… that somebody afterwards said: ‘You know, I haven’t the slightest idea what he means, unless it could be that he simply means what he says.’ Well, that is what I should like to mean.” That is what I should like to mean.

(Austin, John L. “Performative Utterances”)