I’m a writer in Canada. Trained as a classicist, I pursued doctoral studies in political science. I’m finishing a thesis on the moral and civil philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. My current employment is in the civil service.
This site is my venue for sharing a wide range of essays exploring Hobbesian variations on human themes.
In lieu of a more precise description of the character of these essays, let me first share two perplexing passages that form my point of departure. They inspired1 my title and some guiding questions: Can we understand ourselves? How can we get outside ourselves? What does thinking for ourselves require? Is writing constitutive of thinking? Can we always know what we mean?
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 4.13:
By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge, to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them, where they are negligently set down; or to make them himself. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves, according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning; in which lies the foundation of their errors. From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books; as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of names, lies the first use of speech; which is the acquisition of science: and in wrong, or no definitions, lies the first abuse; from which proceed all false and senseless tenets; which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For between true science, and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination, are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err: and as men abound in copiousness of language; so they become more wise, or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise, or (unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, section 309:
What is your aim in philosophy? -- To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
And now let me introduce a tragic note with a personal resonance. Growing up in rural Ontario, with farm fields all around and woodsmoke often in the air, I spent many winter afternoons next to a cast-iron fireplace. You could sit in front of the glass doors and watch the logs shimmer and spark. After the flames had gone out and the last embers had gone cold, sometimes a bird would fly down the chimney, crash-landing in the mound of featherlike ash. The force of its nosedive would open the flue, but, in the cramped interior of the fireplace, and with its wings weighed down, the poor creature couldn’t propel itself past the flue to the open sky. It couldn’t fly out the way it came in.
What if our entry isn’t our exit?
The inspiration began in the mind of my big sister, Gwynne Phillips, actor, writer, comedian, and creator of excellent titles.
