Somebody somewhere made mention of The Social Construction of Reality, so I asked ChatGPT if I should engage with it directly, which is to say, to read it. Already believing that what we perceive and experience is a subjective construction, albeit shaped by relative forces, I thought it might be a lot of choir preaching.
ChatGPT admitted that this was partially true, but that the benefit would be to get a sociological rather than strictly philosophical account. Having read the introduction and started the first chapter, I already feel this to be true. The authors make it clear that Sociology is just a special philosophy that doesn’t aim quite so deep and has a specific and obvious focus on societies. Fair enough.
So far, I’m glad I picked it up. It’s relatively short, which was a deciding factor, and it’s giving me a break from the 1066 material I’ve otherwise been consuming as of late.
I don’t have more to add, save to say, so far so good. I look forward to the rest. I’ve got more to do today, including editing a video for YouTube, which is me rather than AI for a change – a process that reminds me why I use AI in the first place: so much time investment.
NB: I am actually listening to an Audible version of this book. Whilst searching for an apt cover image for this post, I found the associated image, and it is as apt as one might find.
This is not the announcement of a new book – The Illusion of Light: Thinking after the Enlightenment.
“Have the courage to use your own understanding.”
— Immanuel Kant, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ (1784)
I hate the business of business. I am wrapping up another book project, but it’s been delayed by the government shutdown in the United States. I want a Library of Congress number (LCCN), but submissions must wait for an employed person to assign it.
Too clever by half and smarter than the average bear, I thought I could release an audiobook version first; audiobooks don’t need an LCCN. To be honest, neither do books. As some do with ‘Patent Pending’, I could follow suit. The book receives an LCCN, but it isn’t printed on the copyright page with the other administrivia.
My idea worked – partially. I rendered an audio version and published it – though it won’t be available until the start of November. Even so, I need distributors. It’s always something.
Meanwhile, I’m sharing an excerpt for your listening pleasure. Read along if you please.
Audio: The Illusion of Light: Thinking after the Enlightenment; Preface — Reading by Residual Light
Preface – Reading by Residual Light
To read these essays is to move slowly from the glare into the dimmer spaces where things regain texture. The Enlightenment taught us to equate light with truth, but illumination has always been double-edged: it clarifies outlines whilst erasing depth. What disappears in the brightness are the gradients – the in-between shades where thought and feeling meet, where contradiction still breathes.
The half-light is not a retreat from knowledge; it is where knowledge stops mistaking itself for salvation. It is the hour before dawn and after dusk, when perception is most alert, and everything seems both clearer and less certain. That is the discipline these essays practice: a sustained attentiveness to what persists when certainty burns away.
This project does not ask readers to abandon reason, only to notice what it has excluded. It invites a kind of intellectual night vision – the patience to see without spotlight, the willingness to sit with what does not resolve. In the half-light, the world no longer arranges itself around the human gaze; it reveals itself as unmastered, partial, alive. Here, we will learn to dwell in that half-light – not as a retreat from knowledge, but as a discipline of seeing what the Enlightenment’s glare erased.
The Enlightenment promised that truth would make us free. Perhaps it made us efficient instead. What these pages attempt is smaller and slower: a freedom measured not in control but in composure – the ability to live with what cannot be fixed, to keep tending meaning after its foundations have collapsed.
If there is light here, it is not the triumphant blaze of discovery but the ambient glow that remains after something ends. It’s the light of screens left on overnight, of cities at rest, of the mind still thinking long after certainty has gone to sleep.
Step carefully. Let your eyes adjust. The world looks different when it stops pretending to be illuminated.
Philosophics 