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Why Do I Write?
Why do I write? When I say write I mean writing philosophy. I could try writing other things, I suppose, but what I have been writing up to now is philosophy. And not only writing it but also putting it online for all to see. What is the purpose of this? […] read more
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Do not argue about what a good life is: live it
You need to think well in order to live well, and coming to understand what it is to think and live well is the proper business of philosophy. The process of philosophy, with all its theories and methods and technical discourse, is necessary to gain this understanding, but it is not the final end of this activity. We should at some point leave it behind. […] read more
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My Last Lecture: Afterword
A commenter asked what made me say that ‘anyone who talks like this doesn’t belong in the modern university’? In that lecture, to explain something about what philosophy is and does, I naturally appealed to the intrinsic value of the discipline. But the measures of value in the modern university are all extrinsic and instrumental. That essential mismatch of what matters is what makes me say that this kind of view doesn’t belong in the modern university. It is out of place and out of time. […] read more
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My Last Lecture
I don’t have many recordings of myself lecturing, but one of the few that I do was captured just before the falling of the first in a line of dominoes that would ultimately lead me to leave academia. I view it now with a degree of nostalgia, because everything after this point would not be the same. In this introductory session, I found myself wanting to explain something essential about philosophy that I think has become increasingly difficult to see. But anyone who talks like this doesn’t belong in the modern university. […] read more
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Romanticism and Livestock Farming
Those who speak positively about livestock farming are often accused of having fallen into an insidious ‘Romanticism’. They view these idyllic pastoral scenes with overly-sentimental eyes, and this clouds their judgement. Is this true? If it were, it might be a problem: it is important to see things clearly – undistorted – and sentimentalism is one of the many distortions of thought that can creep in, like prejudice and other forms of bias. […] read more
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The Livestock Landscape
It is difficult to correct a misperception when it has become established: people tend to see what they believe, and so if they believe wrongly, they will see wrongly. I want to show you some images that I think speak for themselves. They show two different landscapes. One of these landscapes reflects the reality of growing vegetables in contemporary Europe. The other reflects the reality of livestock farming in contemporary Europe. […] read more
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The Environmental Impact of Beef Consumption: The Meaninglessness of the ‘Global Mean’
When statistics for the environmental impact of beef consumption are presented, they tend to be based on the ‘global mean’. This ‘global mean’ is meaningless in the UK. Two of the biggest variables in its calculation are deforestation and intensively growing crops as feed for livestock. But it’s absurd to think that these things are serious problems for beef consumption in the UK. […] read more
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Diogenes the Cynic
Diogenes sees a mouse, happily running about, not looking for money or prestige, and finds a lesson in the mouse’s behaviour: Nature has given us a relatively easy life, but we’ve overlaid it with nonsense. We make life difficult for ourselves by wanting more than our nature needs. Diogenes implores us to realise this, offering us a walking talking living breathing lesson with his own example. […] read more
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Antisthenes: Founder of the Cynic School of Thought
Antisthenes said he would rather go mad than experience pleasure. That is clearly hyperbolic, but it captures the more austere Socratic approach that can be seen in the early days of Cynic philosophy. […] read more
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Mental Health Aspect Blindness
Something I’ve observed in people’s reactions and judgements about mental health is like a kind of colour blindness. It shows itself as an inability to discern a difference between two things that are obviously different. They cannot discern the difference between someone who is lazy and someone who is dangerously depressed, or the difference between someone who is nervous and someone who is struggling with anxiety. And because they can’t discern the difference, they treat one as if it were no different from the other. […] read more
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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