Visualising Philosophy
Recently Peter Wolfendale wrote up a very frank and honest discussion of his time in and out and on the edge of academia, and the relationship between this and his type II bipolar disorder. It's a long essay - insightful, but heavy stuff, so give it a read when you feel in a place to read about depression and its effects on a philosopher's life. (It will perhaps pair well with this interview with Carrie Jenkins.) While it's not really the focus of the essay, I was really struck by PW's description of how he thinks about philosophical problems: Here’s how I think about a philosophical problem. It is a branching tree of paths, splitting off into alternative solutions, each with their own forking reasons, each caught in dialectical interaction with its opponents. You choose a path that seems right, and if you’re lucky you outlast the alternatives, chasing them into dead ends of bare assertion or loops that beg the question (either is a pyrrhic victory). However, the