After Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Pascal, Simone Weil, Scruton. A small shelf, often re-read.
From the Source§ in preparation
“The eye does not see itself except by reflection. So with the life one is living.”
Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Pascal, Simone Weil, Scruton. A small shelf, often re-read.
5 principles forthcoming
The Central Argument
A life is given its form by what it consents to refuse. The philosophical disciplines — attention, patience, the refusal of cleverness — are continuous with the disciplines of dress and of the well-set room.
“The eye does not see itself except by reflection. So with the life one is living.”
Forthcoming Principles
Attention as Practice
Attention — paid to a page, to a painting, to another's voice — is not passive. It is the highest activity.
On What to Refuse
The philosophical life is not a programme of denial but a discipline of discernment: knowing what not to say yes to.
The Examined Room
Montaigne's tower, Pascal's study, Marcus's tent: the great philosophical works were written in small, deliberate spaces.
Humility as Method
To acknowledge that one does not know is a starting point, not a failure.
On Reading Against the Current
The books that last are the ones that cost something to read — that require us to revise rather than confirm.
This chapter is in preparation.
From the Reading List
Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner
The argument that writing is a conceptual stand, not a skill — and that classic style, like elegance, is a discipline of selection: the refusal of the superfluous.
Princeton / University Press
1994
The Editor
Ask of dress, of interiors, of music, of beauty, of the empirical preface. The editor will draw on what the wiki has indexed, and confess where it has not.