I think best in dialogic form. When people ask questions, offer their perspective, and suggest venues of analysis, that really helps me figure out my own ideas. Unfortunately, the kind of teaching that I do precludes any dialogue about the ideas that interest me. So I created this blog, and it’s literally the most useful tool I have found to advance my intellectual development. I’m grateful to everybody who is participating because I’m a slow, plodding thinker, and I need a lot of repetition and looking at things from different perspectives to arrive at complete ideas.
When I’m stuck in my writing, which is at least every other day, I write something on here, and it always pushes me along to where I need to be.
The whole point of the blog for me is to share what I read and think about and receive feedback. I read voraciously in many different directions. I need complete freedom to look at all sorts of ideas, try them on, discard, adopt, modify, and so on. I don’t have another place to do it other than this blog. Life isn’t worth much to me if I can’t read, think and discuss. This sounds like a big statement but I’m completely sincere. I need this like I need to breathe air.
Many people over the years have found value in hearing what I have to say on here. Some found books to read, discovered favorite authors, sharpened their rhetorical skills, consolidated their system of arguments, or simply found a way to have fun, enjoy, relax, and have a chuckle. I think it can be very useful to witness a person’s intellectual journey as it happens and see what goes into making ideas. If Zygmunt Bauman, for example, had a blog where I could see how he arrived at his ideas, that would be fascinating to me. Obviously, I lay no claim to being at the level of Bauman but I believe there’s value in observing a regular person, a mom, who packs lunch boxes, makes PB&J sandwiches, and decorates the dining room table with fluffy bunnies, read and then create philosophy.
I’m very attached to long-time readers who, to me, are more close and real than most people I know in my daily life. But this is a relationship that has to be honest and free if it is to have any meaning. I’m not going to censor myself because then what’s the point? We have to accept collectively and individually that pursuing the life of the mind isn’t always all flowers and butterflies. It’s akin to crashing through the thick forest undergrowth, leaving flaps of skin and drops of blood on thorny branches.
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