Guiding principles for writing

• Change how the reader thinks, rather than what the reader thinks.
• Write the summary, not what can be better summarized.
• Say what’s interesting and then stop. Don’t state the obvious. Don’t explain beyond the interesting.
• Not cryptic or profound. Not systematic or persuasive. Interesting, provocative, helpful.
• Truth can defend itself – present truth clearly. Don’t pretend that language provides for persuasive, rational argument.
• Don’t hedge – prefer contradictions.
• Writing doesn’t have to be the most effective method to accomplish change. It need only be sufficiently more effective than silence to justify the work of writing and reading.
• Argument / structure is a lie – logic is a construction of language, not a discovery about the world – offer helpful ways of talking, not comprehensive, persuasive, deceptive argument.

reading Wittgenstein is very like engaging with works of art: it is a process deeply resistant to paraphrase. You have to experience it for yourself. And … not just what but how you think … will change. – Ian Ground

The goal in doing philosophy is not to figure out why the other is wrong – many wrongly read to find the flaw in logic or assumption that justifies maintaining their currently held beliefs unquestioned. Nor even to decide whether the other is right or wrong – humble enough to be question their own beliefs but arrogant enough to consider themselves the arbiter of Truth. Rather, the goal in doing philosophy is to see whether and how engaging with the other can provoke you to see your world differently. To explore another way of talking/being and see what parts are helpful. If you read Nietzsche in order to figure out what he thought based on what he said, then you’re not doing philosophy, you’re doing archeology – divining the beliefs of some person or people based upon the artifacts left behind. Doing philosophy is reading Nietzsche in order to further work out what you yourself believe.