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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.
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The Form and Purpose of Philosophical Irony
The essence of philosophical irony is to say one thing while showing something else, for the purpose that is the purpose of all philosophy: the pursuit of wisdom. For example, were I to say something like: ‘Having children is bad because they cost a lot of money.’ On the face of it, what is said here is literally true: children do cost a lot of money. But what is shown here goes against what is said, because someone with an ear for tone might recognise the point being made: some reasons are too shallow to deserve serious consideration.
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Product and Purpose Postscript: Brand Confusion
In the terms-of-today we’d say my writing shows some brand confusion. And it does, because I am confused. Were someone to ask me what my business is, in writing what I do, I wouldn’t know what to say.
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Palinode to the Rion
I recently wrote a satirical piece about popular philosophy. I was happy enough with it to put it online, because I think what it shows is interesting, but beyond that the net effect was to leave me thinking I probably won’t do this kind of thing anymore. As I recently seem to have discovered, I am currently writing to discover why I write, and what I seem to have discovered here is that, whilst I’m happy enough to write things that show something important about philosophy, I have no interest in writing anything combative, critical, or ‘snotty’. […]
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Cog Ergo Sum: A Very Short but Timeless Story About How a Man Makes Something of Himself
He began life as all life begins: free and completely dependent. He was taken care of by people who cared for him until he came to consciousness and realised that he could take care of himself. He started to learn how to take care of himself. When he showed how he could take care of […]
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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? […]
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Shadow Chasing: Afterword
By sheer coincidence, the day I published a post about how ‘once upon a time I used to chase shadows but now I don’t do that anymore’ was the same day I caught a shadow that I’ve been chasing for a little while. While out shopping for food and nappies and cleaning products, I thought […]
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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