1000 Essays
1000 Essays
I was just re-reading Simon Blackburn’s intelligent and sympathetic review of my book Philosophical Provocations: 55 Short Essays (2017) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2018). He praises the book highly, recommending it as a good text for a graduate class. The book contains essays written in the style of the essays published on this blog. In fact, I started publishing my essays on this blog because I was having difficulties publishing them in book form (you can guess the reason why). I was even told by the philosophy editor at Oxford University Press (UK) that a collection of them was unsuitable for publication because of their style—being neither introductory nor advanced (this despite recommendations to publish from the usual panel of referees). This objection was pure rubbish, of course, but the decision was final. I have published several books by OUP over a thirty-year period, some of them written in the same approachable style. In any case, the point I want to make here is that since writing that book, I have written many more such essays—I estimate over a thousand of them. A thousand—in pages, at least three thousand. That’s a lot of pages. Joyce’s Ulysses is just under 700 pages, Tolstoy’s War and Peace weighs in at around 1200 pages, as do the complete works of Jane Austen. This is equivalent to about ten substantial books. I arrive at this estimate based on the fact that I have been writing roughly two essays a week over the last ten or so years.[1] Let’s suppose Blackburn is right about the quality; that means that material of comparable quality (or higher) would compose those hypothetical books. Really, then, those books should exist; but they don’t, and won’t. At least they appear here, though without the organization and accoutrements of a standard book. I think it is not too much of a stretch to say I have published 10 books in the last 10 years (so I have published about 40 books altogether). I actually believe this later material represents my best philosophical work, because not written under pressure of time and with the maturity of a lifetime in philosophy. I wonder what history will have to say about all of this.
[1] Not all the essays published on this blog are philosophical essays; I am not counting those. In total it is more like 1,500.
So you’re like Prospero exiled to your island, but without Ariel and Caliban or even Miranda, and this blog is the opening with which you communicate your wisdom for the minority who care.
That’s about right. Maybe that’s why I like The Tempest (I had one of those myself).
Hi Colin,
Enjoy all your essays here. How about bringing them together and publishing them independently via Amazon or some other platform? I think plenty of people would prefer to have them in a book format.
All best wishes,
G
Yes, the idea has occurred to me. That way I could group them by subject. The problem is that it would require a massive amount of work and computer competence. I’m too busy writing them and doing other things to undertake such a project. I hope someone does it posthumously. I do worry that the intellectual world (what remains of it) is not getting the full benefit–but they have shown no sign of concern hitherto.