Herbert McCabe on the sesquiguous I should, perhaps, introduce here my invention of the sesquiguous, which lies between the ambiguous and the plonking or flat statement. The plonking statement is one-dimensional, clear, unarguable and unimportant: in theological terms it belongs to the pre-conciliar world of what were thought of as clarities and certainties. The ambiguous statement on the […]
David LaRocca on Autobiographical Remarks The greatest obstacle to truth in conventional autobiography is not insufficient insight (about facts, memories, desires, or ideas elucidated by the intellect) but vanity — a resistance by one’s will to that very difficult type of understanding we may call self-understanding. […] In the present essay, in light of Wittgenstein’s […]
Rush Rhees on the philosophical life The difficulties of philosophy have in certain ways the character of moral difficulties. This is what Wittgenstein implies when he says that in philosophy one has to struggle constantly against a resistance within oneself, which is a resistance of will. One is unwilling to let certain ways of thinking go. […]
M. O’C. Drury on Wittgenstein and the history of philosophy It is said that Wittgenstein knew little about the history of philosophy and spoke with some contempt about what had previously been called metaphysics. This is not true. Certainly he would not allow a philosophical discussion to be side tracked by irrelevant references to the […]
Oliver O’Donovan on the practical character of Ethics Ethics is not distinguished from other disciplines by an “object” or “subject-matter” which defines its territory over against those of other studies of other objects. What kind of thing is this morality, of which Ethics undertakes to speak? Clearly not a thing among other things, a segmented […]
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