-
Rustic
I read other philosophers and they are like symphonies, or at least etudes. I read myself and it is like hill country blues: rough and slightly out of tune, rustic and not urbane, repetitive, unsophisticated, improvised and full of duff notes. It’s not clean but distorted. I play badly. To the refined ear these are bad sounds, but these days I have no interest in playing any other way.
-
What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? ‘The construction of arguments.’ You may as well say that music is the activity of plucking strings. Some musicians do this, of course, and it can be done well or badly, but that is hardly the point.
-
Like Playing Music
Philosophy, when done properly, is like playing a musical instrument. The outsider only sees the music written down and thinks that this is all it means to play music. But the player reads the music and plays.
-
The Musician Allegory
As a musician, to play out of tune and not realise it is one thing. But to realise that you are playing out of tune and to keep playing: that is absurd. Such a person is ridiculous. If you realise that you are playing out of tune, you stop playing. You don’t start playing again until you have tuned yourself up.
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
tobybetenson.com 