Tag: literature

How to Avoid Reading

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The Intellectual Origins of Modernity
2–3 minutes

Rather, how to optimise your time commitment to reading.

I came across a digital copy of The Intellectual Origins of Modernity by David Ohana as I was purusing titles on PhilArchive. The title piqued my interest, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to reading it. What’s a bloke to do? Feed it to ChatGPT, of course.

Let’s just say, M. GPT was not amused.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

My first question: Is this at least tangential to my work?

Yes, it wanders. He tends to smuggle in parallel intellectual developments (Kantian autonomy, Cartesian doubt, social contract theory) even when they’re only indirectly related to his main thread. It’s a common sin in “origins of modernity” texts: the net gets cast so wide that causation and correlation start swapping costumes.

If you’re looking for the through-line, it’s probably his effort to show how early modern conceptions of reason metastasised into a moral and political framework, not just an epistemic one. But, yes — tangential is fair.

Is it more of a superficial survey with some connective tissue?

That’s a precise way to put it. Ohanav’s book reads like a well-informed synthesis—competent, even elegant—but not a deep excavation. He’s stitching together recognizable figures (Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hume) into a narrative arc about “modernity” rather than uncovering new terrain. The connective tissue is mostly thematic rather than argumentative: reason → autonomy → secular moral order → political liberalism.

It’s a survey that flatters the reader into thinking they’re tracing the genealogy of modern thought, but it rarely descends into the messy underlayers—say, the theological anxieties, material conditions, or institutional contexts that actually gave those ideas traction. In short: wide lens, thin soil.

Wow. Not a rousing endorsement.

So in a world of publish or perish, he’s publishing something more approachable than academic?

Exactly. It’s the kind of book that keeps tenure committees content and undergrads awake. Respectable citations, accessible prose, and a digestible thesis that flatters modernity while hinting at critique.

He’s not trying to break ground—he’s curating a gallery of the usual suspects and arranging them under good lighting. The prose carries that faint aroma of Routledge house style: serious but safe, just speculative enough to appear bold without alienating reviewers.

In the “publish or perish” economy, it’s survival by synthesis.

So closer to an undergraduate project than a grad school thesis?

Pretty much. It’s polished enough to pass for advanced scholarship if you don’t poke too hard, but structurally it’s more akin to a well-executed upper-level survey paper—ambitious in scope, cautious in depth.

He gestures toward big philosophical debates without really committing to any. The text moves like a docent through a museum: “Here we have Descartes, note his influence on Kant; over here, the Enlightenment’s moral optimism, soon to be critiqued by Nietzsche—moving on
”

You can tell he’s read widely, but the apparatus of argument—archival work, textual analysis, theoretical risk—is minimal. It’s competent, not adventurous.

OK, so dodged that bullet. I may still skim it.

Don’t do this to any of my books. đŸ§đŸ« 

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Written by Bry Willis and Chat GPT

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Embracing Your Anti-Self

Posted in identity, perception, philosophy, psychologyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Lessons from Keats on the Art of Self-Creation

I don’t believe in the notions of ‘self’ or identities, but it makes for a nice thought experiment.

Imagine, just for a moment, that somewhere on this planet, there is someone who is your opposite in every conceivable way. They live as you do not. If you are kind, they are cruel. If you revel in the thrill of running through a rainstorm, they are the kind who sit comfortably by the fire, dreading the mere thought of a brisk step outdoors. If you drink to toast life’s joys, they abstain, unwilling to let a drop pass their lips. They are your anti-self—an inversion of who you are, lacking everything that you have and yet possessing everything that you do not.

To truly grow, we must encounter the other

As strange as it seems, this image is more than idle speculation. According to the Romantic poet John Keats, holding such an image of your anti-self is an essential part of the process of creating your own identity. The elusive art of true self-creation lies, paradoxically, in our capacity to hold in our minds those lives and feelings that are utterly different from our own. To truly grow, we must encounter the other—whether that other is someone we know or a shadowy, imagined version of who we could have been if only we’d chosen differently. This exercise is more than an intellectual indulgence; it is at the core of what Keats called ‘soul-making.’

Keats believed in the concept of the ‘chameleon poet’—the idea that writers, and indeed all human beings, must cultivate the ability to lose themselves in the perspectives of others. It is not enough to gaze upon the world through the singular lens of our own experience; to truly create, we must dissolve our egos and embrace a kaleidoscope of possibilities. A woman might explore the life of a soldier, writing deeply about a battle she’s never fought. A contented parent might dare to delve into the unimaginable grief of losing a child. Fiction writers, poets, artists—they all do this: they shed their own skin, assume another’s, and, in doing so, broaden the horizons of their own soul.

But Keats’ lesson here isn’t limited to the domain of poets and storytellers; it’s a practice that should extend to all of us. In what he evocatively called ‘the vale of soul-making,’ Keats posited that life offers each of us the raw materials to forge a soul, but we must engage imaginatively with all the lives we might lead, all the people we could be. We must dare to envision every possible road before us, not as a commitment but as an act of creation—enriching ourselves with the essence of each path before deciding which one we wish to tread.

We must set ablaze all our imagined lives just to make room for the one we decide to live.

And therein lies the heartbreak of it all. When we choose one possible life, we necessarily burn the others. In the very act of committing, we close other doors. We must set ablaze all our imagined lives just to make room for the one we decide to live. This thought is thrilling but also terrifying. Unlike a poet, who can glide into and out of fictional worlds, we must choose where we stand and stay there. We are not chameleons. We cannot flit endlessly between possibilities. We cannot write a library of books. We must write the one, and we must write it well.

Keats understood that the art of imagining one’s anti-self wasn’t about living vicariously forever in a land of could-have-beens. The exercise is in acknowledging these spectres of other lives, learning from them, and then committing, knowing full well what is lost in the process. Self-creation means being both the builder of one’s house and the one who tears down all the others, brick by potential brick. It means knowing who you could have been and yet, resolutely stepping into who you choose to be.

Embrace the anti-self

In a world obsessed with keeping every option open, Keats offers us the wisdom of finality. Burn off your possible lives and focus on writing the best version of the one that remains. Embrace the anti-self, learn from it, and commit once you have glimpsed all the possible worlds you might inhabit.

That is the paradoxical art of soul-making—of becoming whole while knowing you could have been anyone else. The beauty lies in the commitment, not in the drifting dream of endless potentiality. There is a deep satisfaction in choosing, in writing your own story, in saying, ‘This is who I am,’ even though you could have been another. And for that, we have John Keats to thank, the poet who understood that our anti-selves are not merely an idle game of imagination but the fuel for becoming fully human—the forge in which the soul is made.

Language Insufficiency, Rev 3

Posted in language, perception, philosophy, politics, power, societyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m edging ever closer to finishing my book on the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. It’s now in its third pass—a mostly subtractive process of streamlining, consolidating, and hacking away at redundancies. The front matter, of course, demands just as much attention, starting with the Preface.

The opening anecdote—a true yet apocryphal gem—dates back to 2018, which is evidence of just how long I’ve been chewing on this idea. It involves a divorce court judge, a dose of linguistic ambiguity, and my ongoing scepticism about the utility of language in complex, interpretative domains.

At the time, my ex-wife’s lawyer was petitioning the court to restrict me from spending any money outside our marriage. This included a demand for recompense for any funds already spent. I was asked, point-blank: Had I given another woman a gift?

Seeking clarity, I asked the judge to define gift. The response was less than amused—a glare, a sneer, but no definition. Left to my own devices, I answered no, relying on my personal definition: something given with no expectation of return or favour. My reasoning, then as now, stemmed from a deep mistrust of altruism.

The court, however, didn’t share my philosophical detours. The injunction came down: I was not to spend any money outside the marital arrangement. Straightforward? Hardly. At the time, I was also in a rock band and often brought meals for the group. Was buying Chipotle for the band now prohibited?

The judge’s response dripped with disdain. Of course, that wasn’t the intent, they said, but the language of the injunction was deliberately broad—ambiguous enough to cover whatever they deemed inappropriate. The phrase don’t spend money on romantic interests would have sufficed, but clarity seemed to be a liability. Instead, the court opted for what I call the Justice Stewart Doctrine of Legal Ambiguity: I know it when I see it.

Unsurprisingly, the marriage ended. My ex-wife and I, however, remain close; our separation in 2018 was final, but our friendship persists. Discussing my book recently, I mentioned this story, and she told me something new: her lawyer had confided that the judge disliked me, finding me smug.

This little revelation cemented something I’d already suspected: power relations, in the Foucauldian sense, pervade even our most banal disputes. It’s why Foucault makes a cameo in the book alongside Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Saussure, Derrida, Borges, and even Gödel.

This anecdote is just one straw on the poor camel’s back of my linguistic grievances, a life filled with moments where language’s insufficiency has revealed itself. And yet, I found few others voicing my position. Hence, a book.

I aim to self-publish in early 2025—get it off my chest and into the world. Maybe then I can stop wittering on about it. Or, more likely, I won’t.