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Attend to What Matters: Fear
I had reason to refocus on this idea on a recent trip to the dentist. I haven’t had much dental work in my life, but when I have, I am one of those people for whom the anaesthetic never really works properly the first or second (or sometimes third or fourth) time. I know this, having been taught it by repeated experience, but of course any dentist encountering me for the first time must learn it for themselves.
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Attend to What Matters: Willpower
My earliest pre-philosophical application of the idea was ‘willpower’. As a younger person, caught up in the lust for admiration that is characteristic of some younger people, I was very motivated to be physically fit, strong, and attractive. To this end, I understood the need for diet and exercise. But these are difficult things to do, requiring a degree of discipline and a willingness to subject yourself to suffering.
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Attend to What Matters: Introduction
‘If I attend properly I will have no choices and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at.’ (Iris Murdoch) I believe this to be true; and if it is true, then it is very important. Possibly few ideas in philosophy are more important, since in this idea you will find the ultimate aim and purpose of philosophy, and in that something that points to the finest way that a human being can live.
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One Year On, Part Three: The Hypocrisy of the Ironic Philosopher
This website is nothing but words and I am all talk. And this from someone who says that ethics is best shown by conduct and not by words; that philosophy ought to be shown and said, in such a way that the inner meaning and outward appearance are as one. But what do I show, here, except the continuation of so many ironic contradictions?
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One Year On, Part Two: Philosophy Applied to Public Debates
I’ve lost a measure of faith in the idea that philosophy can be ‘applied’ to the various debates of our times. In most cases, most people wouldn’t understand the arguments because they lack the requisite ‘preparation’; and so if you have a cause to fight for then that would be better served by appeal to other means of persuasion, such as one celebrity endorsement.
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One Year On, Part One: Philosophy as Therapy
This website is one year old. One year on, I think and feel very differently about things: this shows it’s done its work.
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On Election Day
The proper purpose of democracy is not to find the right answer (for that we should appoint experts) but to allow each individual to participate in their own government. It is a way of preserving freedom or self-rule (autonomy) as a community. The will of the people will often choose badly, just as people will often make bad choices in how they govern their own lives. But since this was a free choice, and our purpose was to preserve freedom, this is not a failure. Democracy does not fail when it chooses badly: it fails when people do not choose.
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The Allegory of Martial Arts, Bad Fortune, and the Sceptic
Philosophy is routinely dismissed as good-for-nothing: an old and out-dated discipline that serves no useful purpose. It is not alone.
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Literature and Life
When it comes to seeing things as they really are, it’s not only a matter of seeing, because you can see without recognising, if you don’t know what you’re looking at. If you want to correct this then it’s not enough to simply look: you must learn what to look for. This is why Iris Murdoch thinks it’s so important for human beings to study literature.
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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