On Writing Philosophy: A Manifesto

Polemical and aiming at both the academic and general reader, this short and punchy book – a manifesto, manual of instruction, and inspirational romp through the history of philosophy – argues that what we typically take to be ‘philosophy’ these days is actually not philosophy in the strong or ‘true’ sense at all, but a mix of intellectual history, the history of philosophy, philosophical scholarship, and ‘academic’ philosophy.

In a nutshell, this manifesto's argument runs as follows: True, original philosophy comes with certain indelible, defining features that make for a particular discursive-conceptual, dynamic ‘phenotype’. These features are what the author calls: The Idea, The Gesture, The Break, The Cull, The Style, and The Rock.

Drawing on a plethora of examples culled from across the history of philosophy, the author demonstrates how “authentically philosophical” writing (in contrast to its academic-scholarly-historical-philosophical counterpart) works, making a pedagogical-institutional recommendation for the creation of what he envisions as MFT (Master of Fine Thought) programs in the process: programs, that is, which will be geared toward teaching how to create true, original philosophy (along the lines of creative writing programs), as opposed to, for the most part, how academically to discuss and write about the original philosophies of others.