The most important part of abstract thinking, at least after you get the hang of it, is to then step back and make it concrete and pull at the threads to see how a theory comes apart. The more layers of abstraction you add to a situation the more opportunities for a tiny, tiny error to grow into a larger problem.

If you follow along carefully with the arguments in most classical philosophy in great detail, you notice this more and more: everything has a logical error or assumption eventually and the author typically does not catch their own error.