This essay explores the paradoxical relationship between evaluation and thought.Rather than treating evaluation as a necessary condition for intellectual growth, it examines how prolonged absence of recognition can dissolve the framework of external judgment itself. When evaluation disappears, comparison, approval, and fear of failure lose their guiding power. In that space, thinking begins to operate on a different axis—one grounded not in correctness or reward, but in internal coherence and necessity. Drawing from personal experience, the essay reflects on freedom of thought, creativity beyond institutional validation, and the quiet conditions under which original ideas may emerge. It suggests that the disappearance of evaluation, though often experienced as loss, can become a prerequisite for genuine intellectual autonomy.
Akihito Sugawara (Mon,) studied this question.