Philosophers often concentrate on subjects like epistemology and the meaning of life. However, some also examine less typical topics such as buildings, food, and newspapers. Hegel viewed newspaper reading as a form of morning prayer. He was briefly an editor of a newspaper. Wittgenstein suggested that education leads to reading newspapers. In contrast, Nietzsche criticized the newspapers as instruments of the regime, indicating a cynical perspective on their value and intended influence on readers.
Someone once said that Europe is characterized by the newspaper. It stands to reason then that this outlet of daily news was often mentioned by philosophers. Just so, "The newspaper reading of the early morning is a kind of realistic morning prayer" confided Hegel (1770-1831) to one of his notebooks. That famously abstract thinker knew what was he was talking about: rarely for a philosopher, he was briefly the editor of a newspaper himself - in his case, the Bamberger Zeitung.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) never held such a position, but even for him, it was as if all education pointed towards this newspaper reading ritual: "A person... has learned to read his native language. Later he reads... newspapers".
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