virtual philosopher

Nietzsche and The Death of The Typewriter

Hard to believe, but true. Nietzsche used a typewriter (cue PhD thesis?). This bit of information comes from Joan Acocella's interesting review of Darren Wershler-Henry's The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting. Actually, it may not be true that Nietzsche used his typewriter - I emailed Brian Leiter who is an expert on Nietzsche about this, and he replied:

'I'm pretty sure it's inaccurate - I know of no type-written Nietzsche manuscripts'

Does anyone know of evidence to the contrary?

Acocella has a nice bit at the end of the piece about the experience of writing on a computer compared with writing on a typewriter . As I read it I could hear the satisfying clatter of keys, the reassuring end-of-line ping, and the whirr of the cogs as I removed the typed sheet of paper (even the noise of crumpled paper and the parabola of the innacurate lob to the wastebasket all came back). People are making a lot of the death of the book these days (perhaps prematurely). But the typewriter is dead and a whole range of sensual experiences connected with old-style writing will be almost meaningless to the next generation...

Listen to Brian Leiter on Nietzsche.

Copyright, Freedom, Literary Creativity

Lawrence Lessig who is at the centre of the Creative Commons movement and opposed to the ways in which current copyright law constrains creative use of past creations has an interesting presentation 'Free Culture' online (delivered in 2002) - interesting, not least for his use of Powerpoint. One of his refrains is

'Creativity and innovation always builds on the past'

which is hard to argue with. But the important question is, What follows from this? Lessig wants to open up free access to past creation. He is, rightly, concerned about the ways in which large corporations can restrict access to the very sources of creativity. He has selected extreme examples to make his case...

A different conclusion, however, might be: we need to find ways to encourage and, even more importantly, fund creativity in the present if we want creativity in the future. In the case of the printed word, copyright legislation has performed this role effectively, making it possible to be a professional writer, and giving the publishing industry incentives for promoting the works of writers.  True, the extension of postmortem copyright to 70 years is hard to defend on moral or pragmatic grounds, but copyright legislation relating to the printed word, both in its primary and secondary uses, has been a major stimulus to creativity...without a source of income (and writers often get by on very little - see the latest survey  on this 'What Are Words Worth?' commissioned by ALCS) few people will have the time to write. What we need is the balance between availability and possible income.

'Creativity' and 'Freedom' are emotive words. 'Copyright' and 'Fair Recompense' in contrast sound a bit boring. It's probably time that those of us who recognise that copyright can be part of the solution start expressing ourselves in terms of creativity and freedom too - freedom to earn a living from writing, freedom to insist on the integrity of one's work, on the paternity to be recognised...We also need to make people more aware that as writers we don't need just the raw materials of creativity (including access to the work of past creators) but also income. Which isn't of course to say that current copyright legislation doesn't need to adapt to the age of the Internet - of course it does...

See also the webcast of The  Copyright Debate: Fair Trade or Foul Play, chaired by John Humphrys.

Can You Do Philosophy on a Weblog?

In a recent article in The Philosophers' Magazine (1st quarter 2007, no.37, p.12-14) Ophelia Benson (recently interviewed for Virtual Philosopher), opens up with the question of whether weblogs are somehow incompatible with 'the rigour, discipline, and seriousness of real, grown-up philosophy?'  To me this is a bit like asking whether ink on paper is compatible with philosophy - apart from Socrates, most philosophers have agreed that it is. I suspect in the next few years most philosophers will also recognise that blogs provide a good place to do philosophy and to communicate with anyone who might be interested in it.

I suspect Ophelia's opening angle was a reaction to her editor's parody blog that she mentions where he remarks 'Blogging would waste my time and yours. Go read something I or someone else has put some prolonged thought into.' Apart from the informal fallacy of assuming that more prolonged thought = better results (the Protestant Work Ethic Fallacy?), this seems confused. As I've mentioned in a previous post, one of the best ways of conceptualising blogs is as published commonplace books.  Once you see them that way, anything goes  - including  philosophy of any kind. For an example of a philosopher doing  philosophy on  a blog, see Stephen Law's new blog with his ongoing discussions about relativism: the medium allows musings, links to articles, comments, responses to comments, and revisions...philosophy in action. Add to that the possibility of delivering files in all formats, images, and MP3s or webcasts...and it is hard to see why anyone might think that blogs are intrinsically incompatible with any content whatsoever. You could put a digital book as a downloadable file on one if you wanted.

I stand by what I said for her article about how they can also trigger new ideas:

'Instant publication of drafts of ideas can be stimulating: archiving of articles can be useful. I like blogs which give you leads to other interesting things on the same topic - so reading blogs can stimulate you to thoughts you might not otherwise have had and resources (and even people) you didn't know existed. What is great about a blog is that you can link up all kinds of things that might otherwise not be noticed.'

There's more on this topic from Richard Chappell here - not sure I completely agree with him though. He seems to ignore the fact that blogs can deliver book-length file, article-length files, paragraphs as posts, or aphorisms (not to mention audio and video clips) and that there is nothing about the medium that condemns it to be transient or brief.

The 4 Habits of Highly Effective Philosophy Students

You can download a handout from a talk on Philosophy Study Skills I'm giving to A level students at a sixth form conference at Heythrop College. Download the_4_habits.rtf [44KB rtf]. This is based on my book Philosophy: The Essential Study Guide.

Further Philosophy study skills advice: Preparing for Philosophy Exams: 5 Tips.
For more general advice on writing, see The Basics of Essay Writing: 10 Tips.

Is irony on weblogs difficult to spot?

In the last few days two people have taken ironic statements I've made in posts on this weblog literally...I wrote at the end my post on Lynsey Hanley's not-so-well-researched book Estates how odd it was that flats in Trellick and Balfron Tower change hands for such high sums, given that, if Hanley is to be believed, these are hellish places to live...this confused at least one reader. And then my bad joke about not having been photographed by Steve Pyke, one reader asked me whether it was meant as a joke. These are just the two I know about. I'm beginning to wonder whether there is something about weblogs that makes irony difficult to spot. Perhaps because bloggers tend to speak from the heart, the form invites literal readings. The informal tone can mimic speech in some ways, but without the non-verbal messages some framing is lost. Or is there a new literalism at large?

Book Review: Posner on Plagiarism

The Little Book of Plagiarism by Richard A. Posner

This is the age of cut and paste. Word processors have made plagiarism feasible on a wide scale; at the same time improved plagiarism detection software is making it harder to get away with this ‘unoriginal sin’ for long. Richard A. Posner’s book, The Little Book of Plagiarism, is by far the best treatment of plagiarism I’ve read. His strengths are clarity, sensitivity to the variety of activities that get clumped under the heading ‘plagiarism’, balance and brevity.

Posner opens with the case of the Kaavya Viswanathan, the chick-lit novelist who at 17 landed a two-book advance of 500,000 US dollars and had sold the movie rights to Dreamworks for an undisclosed sum. She was then exposed as a probable plagiarist: her first book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, contained over a dozen passages that overlapped significantly with the work of other writers of this genre, notably Megan McCafferty. Posner goes on to explore the subtleties of motivation, reception and culpability of a range of literary, student and academic plagiarists and near-plagiarists as well as the phenomenon of ghostwriting, and the difficulties of writing textbooks without borrowing ideas. Throughout he distinguishes plagiarism, which involves adopting other people’s expression of ideas and passing them off as if they were your own, from using other people’s ideas but expressing these in your own way. In the process he explores the related phenomenon self-plagiarism typified by Laurence Sterne’s preposterous re-use of his own love letters to his wife: he later copied them out and sent them to his mistress. If this is culpable, it is very different in its effects from standard cases of plagiarism, particularly in the age of copyright (though Posner makes the important point that copyright infringement and plagiarism overlap, but are not congruent: copyright infringement is ‘the invasion of a property right’ (p.46) and reduces the income of the owner of whatever is copied – student plagiarism, for example, hardly does this).

As Posner points out, typical cases of plagiarism are a kind of intellectual fraud that can cause serious economic harm to those whose writing (or other creative work) is copied unacknowledged. He is also  interesting on its historical relativity: ‘The demand for originality’ Posner writes (p.72) ‘is an economic phenomenon anchored in time and place.’ It is now tantamount to trademark infringement, and should not be subject to exemption on grounds of ‘fair use’; in Shakespeare’s age, the premium on originality was different, as were the economics of authorship, and the audience’s expectations, so his unacknowledged borrowing should be judged differently from Viswanathan’s.

Posner is excellent on the distinction between originality and creativity. ’Originality’ is not a normative term; ‘creativity’ is. To say that something is creative implies that it has value because of its novelty. Posner writes (p.96): ‘An original work is simply something that is different enough from some existing work that it could not be confused with it. From an aesthetic standpoint the work might not have been worth making.’ (This is analogous to George Dickie’s point about ‘art’ used in a non-evaluative way, where to label something a work of art implies nothing about its value to humanity whatsoever, but merely categorises it and distinguishes it from non-art).

Most exposed plagiarists use one of two defenses: sloppy note-taking or ‘unconscious copying’ (cryptomnesia). Posner quotes the American Historical Associations line on the former, that ‘the plagiarist’s standard defense – that he or she was misled by hastily taken and imperfect notes – is plausible only in the context of a wider tolerance of shoddy work.’ (p.94).  Well put. And on the latter, whilst he accepts that unconscious copying of an idea or a tune is possible, Posner is reluctant to accept its genuine occurrence in the literary case, declaring (without citing the evidence):

‘Psychologists have investigated the phenomenon and have found no evidence that people can recited entire passages written by someone else yet believe they are their own – no evidence of a photographic memory that forgets the act of photographing.' (p.97).

In response to Posner, absence of evidence does not prove that it couldn’t or doesn’t occur: but it reduces the plausibility of this defense significantly (assuming, of course, that the uncited psychological research was genuinely scientific). Posner is surely accurate about motivation in this areas: the exposed plagiarist’s payoff for using this excuse, is clear: unconscious plagiarism is a lesser sin than conscious.

Although Posner touches on the impact of the Internet and on plagiarism software on this topic, the most obvious omissions are in this area. There is far more to be said. Nor is the challenge of the Creative Commons movement addressed. Unlike some contemporary commentators on this area, however, Posner recognises the creative stimulus provided by enforced copyright law, rather than treating it as an anti-creative curb.  The book suffers from lack of chapter titles, contents page, and index, though it makes up for this somewhat by providing an intriguing list of books and articles for further reading. At times, reading this feels like entering the stream of consciousness of a sophisticated and interesting thinker. Without the signposts or an index, it is hard to relocate a topic, and the same topics resurface in different versions throughout. But Posner is such a good writer and the book so short (116 small-format pages), and so stimulating, that I’m prepared to forgive him.

Interview with Mel Thompson, author of Teach Yourself Philosophy

The recently relaunched Teach Yourself series has been the basic fare of autodidacts (and many others) for an amazing seventy years. It now boasts over 500 titles. I remember buying and treasuring several of them, including Teach Yourself Judo, as a teenager, when they were still published in their distinctive black and yellow covers. Mel Thompson has contributed a number of very clear, wide-ranging and popular books in the areas of Philosophy and Religion since the mid-90s. He kindly agreed to be interviewed on the topic for Virtual Philosopher.

Nigel: How many books have you written for the Teach Yourself Series now? Are you writing any more?

Mel: I’ve written a total of 6 so far – on Philosophy, Ethics, Eastern Philosophy, Philosophy of Science (recently out of print), Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Religion.  The first couple are already in their fourth editions.  I’m in the process of up-dating the Philosophy of Religion title, and want to include something specific on humanism and atheism as well as generally refreshing the text.  I’m contracted to produce Teach Yourself Political Philosophy for next November, so that should be coming out in 2008.

Nigel: When did you first publish in this series?

Mel: My first one was Teach Yourself Philosophy, which was published in 1995.

Nigel: What do you think of the idea of the series? What are its strengths? Do you know anything about the history of the series?

Mel: When I was at college in the 1960s I used the earlier Teach Yourself Philosophy of Religion as a quick read before starting my course, and had a number of the old black and yellow covers on my bookshelves. Teach Yourself has a long history: in fact, it’s celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2008!  What is wonderful about them is that they attempt to give you a working basis for understanding any subject, without pretending to offer all you need to know, or talking down to you.  I read a sample section on a book on Massage the other day and found it fascinating – I just wanted to go out and try for myself. That’s what Teach Yourself is all about.

Nigel: Teach Yourself books sound as if they are aimed at autodidacts. Is that the readership you imagine when you are writing? Do you have any evidence about who buys these books?

Mel: The slogan used for marketing a recent set of editions was ‘Be where you want to be’, and I guess that’s reasonable. It’s for people who want to explore a subject but who have limited time, or who just want a taster to see whether to take things further. So a large part of the market is the general reader with broad interests. I guess also, since I happen to know that a large number of my books are used by students taking A level, that I write to that market too.

Nigel: How do you pitch your writing so that it is accessible to a wide range of readers? Are there any techniques (like reading aloud) that you use to make sure that what you have written makes sense to someone unfamiliar with the area?

Mel: I think the key is not to assume knowledge on the part of the reader, but not to patronise either. I try to keep sentences short, and prune back every time I edit text. The challenge is always to explain something as clearly as possible in each sentence.  Breaking up the text and using bullets or boxes is an aid to that.  Don’t waffle, just give it straight – that should be the motto of every Teach Yourself writer.  I actually find it quite difficult to simplify complex issues, especially when I’m interested in them – but if I go off on one of my particular ‘things’, I’m imposing my own interpretation of an issue on the reader. That’s fine in some books (I’m reading Dawkins on God at the moment!) but not for Teach Yourself.

Nigel: Some academic philosophers sneer at the idea of making philosophy accessible to a wide readership. They claim that their discipline is intrinsically difficult, and requires years of devoted study to understand. Have you encountered this sort of attitude?

Mel: Some of my most bored moments have been listening to, or trying to read, those who think that the more clever and obscure they sound, the more profound their thought.  To me, a straightforward and easily grasped argument is – to use a word more associated with mathematical formulae – elegant. Complexity may too often be used as a mask for muddled thinking. In evaluating philosophy, I often ask ‘To what significant and universally relevant question is this the answer?’  To me, the longer you study and the more profound your thought, the more straightforward should be your exposition of it.

Nigel: Do you have a favourite Teach Yourself book?

Mel: The ones I dip into most are Teach Yourself Dutch and the Teach Yourself Dutch Dictionary: the reason being that my wife is Dutch and I so long to be able to converse in her native tongue with friends and relatives – the snag is, of course, that they immediately break into English!

Nigel: What is your favourite philosophy book of all time?

Mel: Like sex, it’s your initiation that you’re likely to remember best.  Aged 19 and waiting to go to King’s London, I bought a copy of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy(which was on the pre-course reading list) and worked my way through it, enjoying his humour and entering into a world of which, until then, I knew absolutely nothing.  It was a revelation – and remains an object lesson on clear and witty philosophical writing, although hardly an object lesson on objectivity itself!

Nigel: Thank you very much.

UPDATE 30.1.07
I received the following from Terry Thomas who has written a comparison of Mel Thompson's book with the much earlier Teach Yourself Philosophy book by C.E.M.Joad:

Terry Thomas writes: "I've just been reading your interview, via 'Butterflies and Wheels', with Mel Thompson concerning his 'Teach Yourself Philosophy' in Virtual Philosophy, of which I have become a subscriber. It is a book I have tried to use myself. But this email refers to a chance purchase of the original Teach Yourself Philosophy by C.E.M.Joad in a bookshop in Great Malvern, which was published during WW II and under the paper restrictions then in force. I wrote a short piece on a contrast between the ancient and modern versions for The Philosophers' Magazine' [Issue 29, First Quarter, 2005, p.16]  and I'm giving a talk at the Tintern Philosophical Circle on the same topic in February [20 February, 2005, at 7.30 p.m. in the Rose and Crown, Tintern].

As you know Thompson uses all the most recent pedagogical methods to get the message across. In his interview with you he talks of: ''Don't waffle, just give it straight...' Joad does sometimes waffle but when Joad 'gives it straight' the tone of his approach is found to be very different. In his opening words he writes: 'Philosophy is an exceedingly difficult subject and most books on philosophy are unintelligible to most intelligent people. This is partly, but not wholly, due to the difficulty of the subject-matter, which, being the universe, is not surprisingly complex and obscure. There is no reason, at least I know of none, why the universe should necessarily be intelligible to the mind of a twentieth-century human being, and I take leave to remind him how late a newcomer he is upon the cosmic scene and how recently he has begun to think.'

Joad then proceeds to give a brief lesson in cosmology and evolution and concludes: 'By any reckoning, then, the human mind is very young, and it is not to be expected that it should, as yet, understand very much of the world in which it finds itself.' Halfway down the third page he has a longish quotation from Kant which is practically unintelligible to anyone, just to prove his point perhaps. His comment on this quotation is as follows: 'Some of the terms employed are technical, and some acquaintance with the special senses in which they are used is necessary to a full understanding of the meaning of the passage. Also it is fair to point out that Kant wrote in German and that the sentence I have quoted is, therefore, a translation.' Joad considered Kant 'still intolerably and unnecessarily obscure' and that he should have 'taken more pains with his writing'.


The rest is so different to the Thompson version of philosophy that they might almost be writing about two different subjects.

Thompson lists the aims of his book on p.ix, and they consist of mapping out the main areas of philosophy; an outline of some of the main philosophical arguments; and the main ways philosophy has developed in history. Joad leaves it until the end of his book to speak of 'The Purpose of the Book' (pp.225-6). 'It began as a guide to philosophical reading and study for those who are embarking upon the subject for the first time; but it has outranged its original purpose and become both an exercise in philosophy and an apology for its pursuit. I have long felt that philosophy has a contribution to make, however modest, to the alleviation of the distresses of our times, [i.e. the war effort], and have on occasion ventured to indicate what this contribution should be.' He then proceeds to discuss Plato's 'philosopher kings'. He then says: 'In a time not very different from that of Plato philosophers ought, in my view, to accept a similar obligation....It is in the spirit of this obligation that I have ventured to write this book." Terry Thomas

Interview with Jonathan Wolff, author of the best introduction to Political Philosophy

Jonathan Wolff (aka Jo Wolff) Professor of Philosophy at University College, London, is, amongst other things,  the author of the best introduction to political philosophy that I have come across, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (I'm not the only one to think this - see comments on the first edition). He kindly agreed to an e-interview about this book for Virtual Philosopher…

Nigel:  How did you come to write the book?

Jo: After I finished writing my first book, which was on Robert Nozick (published in 1991) I realised that I enjoyed writing for students, and that there was no introductory text in political philosophy that I would recommend to my own students. The two things together led me to think about how I would write such a book; an idea came to me of linking together a series of questions with contemporary discussion and the ideas of the great political philosophers, and I wrote a two-page plan. However Will Kymlicka's Contemporary Political Philosophy came out just about then, and I thought it an excellent work that filled the gap in the market. A year or two later, though, I got an invitation from OUP to write a book in what was then their OPUS series. By this time I had realised that Kymlicka's book was a bit hard for beginners, and also covered much less ground than I wanted to, and so I dusted down the plan I had in my drawer and sent it off. They liked it, and signed me up. The aim was to write a book that was 'problem' driven, rather than 'concept' or 'thinker' driven. The point of this was to engage and inform readers who like to think in an active, philosophical way, rather than simply giving them a lot of information to remember.

Nigel:  Do you think that philosophy has anything to offer politics or is political philosophy just an interesting and intellectually stimulating activity focussed on what we'd like to happen, yet which leaves everything as it is?

Jo: My own research over the last ten years has aimed to bring political philosophy into greater contact with issues in social and public policy. I started with the naïve view that one could formulate abstract theories of social justice and then use them to assess the actual world and suggest reforms. This turns out to be a poor idea. First many of the recommendations are utterly utopian, and ignore issues of feasibility, context and compliance. To take one example, many theories have the implication that there should be 100% inheritance tax. But if we did pass such a law, the main effect would be that clever lawyers and accountants would work out ways round it. Just as importantly, though, there is a lack of ‘fit’ between the concepts used in theory and practice. People in policy fields worry about health, education, housing, the material environment, land use, agricultural policy, and so on. Theories of equality, couched in terms of ‘preference satisfaction’ or ‘resources’ have no obvious direct contact with these issues, and so a lot of work is needed to make political philosophy applicable. For anyone interested, I have a book coming out in 2007, co-written with Avner de-Shalit, called Disadvantage, which tries to give one model of how it could be done.

I don’t want to give the impression, though, that I oppose very abstract, idealistic, political philosophy, which I think is very important. It is inspiring and a source of ideas that can then be used by others. I have chosen not to work that way because plenty of other people do, while the more applied side is terribly neglected.

Nigel:  Which political philosophers do you most admire, and why?

Jo: There are not many surprises here. The political philosophers I find myself re-reading are Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Mill, and among contemporary figures Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin and my teacher Jerry Cohen. I have also found myself thinking about the ideas of Michael Walzer increasingly, and I also have a lot of respect for Alasdair MacIntyre. There are many younger people who do really excellent work, but I don’t want to pick anyone out in particular. The people I admire generally combine two features: imagination and argument. They make you aware of new possibilities - a new landscape of ideas - while at the same time showing how their ideas are connected, can be supported, and defended against opposition.

The most problematic figure for me at the moment is Mill. I am a huge admirer of him as a writer and public intellectual, and his courage and rhetorical force is quite possibly unmatched by anyone else. However the more I read On Liberty and Utilitarianism the less able am I to think of him as a political philosopher. The arguments are more often hinted at than given, and often cannot be reconstructed in any plausible way. Opponents are dismissed rather than refuted, objections are noted but their implications ignored, and often repetition does service for argument. It is, perhaps, an irony that Mill’s most read works were those published for the ‘educated general reader’ rather than those intended for a serious philosophical audience, such as A System of Logic or An Examination of the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, where the exposition is much more careful.

Nigel: What changes did you make for the second edition of your book?

Jo: Oxford University Press were keen for me to do a second edition, essentially to kill off the second-hand market, and to boost library sales. I didn’t find these especially honourable motives and so resisted for a few years. However the design of the book was looking more and more dated and old-fashioned, and eventually I had to agree that a ten-year old ‘Guide to Further Reading’ was less helpful than it could have been. There were also some mistakes in the book I wished to correct. I read through the text wondering if I should make substantial changes, but decided that if I started I couldn’t be sure that I would make it better, rather than worse. After all, the original version was the result of a period of intense engagement and concentration and I was unlikely to be able to recreate this mood of work. So I more or less left the text as it was. There is a new cover, an updated reading guide and a typeface that no longer makes me cringe when I look at it. Anyone who has the old version has no reason to update.

Nigel: You are unusual in managing to communicate to a wide readership without being patronising or oversimplifying the issues. Do you read your work aloud, get others to read it, or have some other way in which you edit your writing into a form that makes it accessible but avoids the charge of simplification?

Jo: On the whole, I do my all my reading and thinking before I start writing, formulate in my head the basic plan of a section or chapter, and then write very quickly with minimal revision. There are various traps I try to avoid. One is constantly to hint that you know a lot more than you are saying, as if you are worried that your old supervisor is going to jump on you for over-simplification. Another trap is that philosophical writers often introduce a distinction and then illustrate it with an example, which sounds like good technique but in fact makes the text flat and dull. It is much better to introduce a puzzle by means of an example, and then use a distinction to show how the puzzle can be solved. Exactly the same material is used but in a more engaging way. In general I try to use whatever tricks I can to have a dynamic driving the text forward. When thinking about writing for students I realised that it is not at all uncommon for me to simply stop reading a work of philosophy at some point, whereas this rarely happens for me when reading a novel. I wanted to write philosophy in a way in which the reader always wants to keep going, with enough tension or suspense to make the reader want to return.

I don’t read my work aloud; actually it has never occurred to me that this would be useful. But I do get others to read it. Because I write largely from memory, rather than with a pile of books on my desk, it is very helpful to have other philosophers read my work to point out ways in which I have got others wrong. My wife – a philosophy graduate who worked for many years in publishing – reads the work I write for students. If she has to read a passage twice to understand it, or gets too bored, I know I need to make changes. She also tells me when my attempts at humour fail. I’m not going to reveal how often this happens.

Nigel: Are there any other introductory books on Political Philosophy that you'd recommend to someone new to the subject?

Jo: I've mentioned Will Kymlicka's book, with is very good for somewhat more advanced students. Ian Hampsher Monk’s A History of Modern Political Thought is a very useful guide to the major political philosophers, and I also like  Adam Swift’s Political Philosophy: A Beginners’ Guide for Students and Politicians. None of these are direct competitors to my book. I have tried to avoid reading the many other introductory books in political philosophy competing for the same market slot as my book. I’m certain one will come along which will be better than mine, and maybe it is already published, but I’ll leave it for others to make that judgement.

Nigel: What part does writing more popular works like this one and your book on Marx play in your academic life? Are there any other books like this that you're planning to write?

Jo: This is a tricky area. My books for students do include original ideas and arguments, but I don't make a big fuss about it so they are easily missed, especially by people who do not know the area well. I was amused to see that a first year undergraduate wrote on a blog site that he got nothing from my Marx book as he knew it all already. I’m a bit slower than that: it took me about 25 years of thinking about Marx to come to the views I argued for there. [Listen here to Jonathan Wolff on San Francisco radio talking about Marx]

In a couple of cases I have written up ideas in my student books for a more academic audience, or given papers on the topics. There is a continuity between my writing for students, my teaching, and my other academic writing, but I don’t have any general plan to try to bring it all together systematically.

I am always having ideas for new books, but my enthusiasms typically only last a few months and then I get another idea. At the moment I’m thinking about a couple of possibilities, and have talked to various publishers about them, but experience suggests that it would not be sensible to say what they are at the moment.

Nigel: Thank you very much.

© Jonathan Wolff, 2006.

We must cultivate our garden

There was a brief interlude of golden sunlight at 10 a.m. this morning, so I went and raked up the cherry tree leaves in my garden. I had been procrastinating for half an hour before that (not long by my standards), not getting down to writing. But the clear air and sunlight seemed to help my thinking…and I got the leaves raked up as well. If only I could work so effectively every day, doing two things at once. On mornings like this I feel so lucky to be a writer. But these moments are fragile. An intervening phone call, 'person from Porlock' or distraction could have unwoven everything I got sorted out in that half an hour of raking. Writing, even about apparently logical subjects, involves coaxing the non-conscious part to get to work and to let thoughts surface in a way that makes writing easy. Sometimes writing can be a bit like what John Stuart Mill said about happiness - it is best achieved by pursuing something else, and then discovered in the pursuit of that goal. Typing the words is the easy bit if the preparation is right.