The Lockdown Tapes
A few videos, e-salons and the like that I have done during the coronavirus lockdown.
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Tag: Truth
How narrative leads us astray
While the narratives we like tell tend to be more like Hollywood movies, reality looks more like the work of a Beckett or a Pinter. The more we tidy the tales we tell, the more they resemble works of fiction rather than truthful histories.
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The art of changing your mind
Everyone likes to think they are open-minded. However, even those of us that actively invite different ideas rarely allow them to set up home. In the past I found this depressing. Now, I’m not so down on our apparent resistance to change. In short, I’ve changed my mind about changing minds.
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How to misread
At the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Monday I thought I would have a break from talking about my own ideas when I took part in a discussion about Nietzsche’s aphorisms. What i discovered was that, in fact, when talking about Nietzsche’s aphorisms, or anyone else’s, exploring what you think is the whole point.
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Plato got virtually everything wrong
You could never call Plato overrated. He was clearly a genius of sorts. He set the terms of philosophical debates that have run for millennia and many of his own positions have lasted as long, albeit with revisions. But on virtually every point that mattered he was disastrously wrong, and his errors entrenched fundamental mistakes that would hamper philosophy and intellectual culture forever more.
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