“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Realist Magic Liveblog 8

75 000 words. I'm getting quite excited by what's in it—what the heck did I write?! I now have eight of 163 note files on the database to go.

Some of you have been enjoying these posts, some of you have not. It's interesting for me, in any case. Writing books is not something you do all the time, so introducing some reflection into the task is quite a good thing.

It's also the case that writing it has been part of the thinking process. Some books I've really known what I was doing before I put pen to paper. I made sure of it. But some books are more experimental: it's just the way it is. This is one of those books. Writing it has forced me to think some things through.

Like just now I came across some arguments about materialism that could do with some extra work, so that pushed me to talk about what Heidegger's as-structure means. (Long story.) It was a very interesting moment: not contradicting what I'd said before, but hugely clarifying it.

1 comment:

ulrich said...

i´m one of those who enjoys it a lot. always nice to get a glimpse of methods and techniques from someone with lots of experience like you.

I would also love to have your optimism and excitement - perhaps that´s one of the things that can make a real difference