John T. Lysaker, "Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
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What is the opening sponsorship and introduction for this episode?
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Hello and welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Sarah Tyson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Denver, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Carrie Figdore, Robert Talise, and Alexis McLeod. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with John T. Leisaker, who is the William R. Cannon Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. His book, Philosophy Writing and the Character of Thought, is just out from the University of Chicago Press. What is the relationship between the form of writing and what could be thought?
How is a writer's thinking shaped by form? How is a reader's? Does this matter for philosophy? In philosophy, writing and the character of thought, John T. Leisaker explores the importance of the praxis of writing for philosophy. Essaying a variety of forms, the book invites the reader to investigate the volume in their hands as a performance. It engages with among others the work of Plato, Emerson, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Cavell. Not only to show how form matters for thought, but also how thought is always made possible by what has come before. The book argues for philosophy to reconsider academic articles as the dominant mode of writing in the profession, and offers an example of the creative ways in which philosophy can unfold.
Uh hello John and welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Hi Sarah, thanks so much for having me and thanks so much for the uh excellent questions you sent.
Oh well it was a pleasure to read your book and I'm really looking forward to talking about it with you today. Um Would you tell me would you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a philosopher and then how you came to write this book?
Sure. So uh I'd always had general interests in the humanities. Um Poems, paintings, music, films, questions of the good life, the human condition. Um but I also always thought those things needed to be brought into Conversation with critics and theorists. sort of somewhere in between uh the poet and Plato.
Uh well,
neither of them are sufficient, but they're they're actually in a joint project. And so Eventually uh philosophy seemed to me to be best able to kind of have those conversations the way I wanted to. Um my goal wasn't to be a master of some particular author. Um, but to sort of think with them about whatever was at stake there. So I went to Kenyon College. I had a great philosophy professor, Juan de Pasquale, and that sort of Uh I was hooked. You know, eighteen, I was hooked, that was it. Um then I went to graduate school uh at Vanderbilt and I had a very good pluralist education.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the opening sponsorship and introduction for this episode?
0:00–5:05
2
How does Sarah introduce John Lysaker and the main themes of his book?
5:05–14:32
3
What personal and academic background does John share that led him to write *Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought*?
14:32–24:22
4
How does John explain the relationship between writing form, thought, and philosophical practice?
24:22–34:32
5
Why does John emphasize footnotes and what role do they play in his experimental approach?
34:32–43:48
6
What is ‘deliberate writing’ and how does John propose philosophers should write more consciously?
43:48–54:24
7
How do citation practices shape philosophical communities and inclusivity according to John?
54:24–1:03:24
8
What future projects and experimental formats (blogs, journals, interdisciplinary work) does John discuss before closing?
1:03:24–1:12:10
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