Anti-Climacus

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: As I contemplate (and write on) my first extended project (sometimes also known as my dissertation), I find that I spend a lot of time reading what other people think about writing and the creative process (and also, to a lesser extent, the means by which research is carried out). A few things have become obvious to me: you have to sit down every day and write something, no matter how insignificant (there appears to be some rule that inversely correlates how much I think I have to say on a given topic and how much I actually have to say); that reading marginally more can be helpful, but is generally not as helpful in figuring out where to go next as writing until you hit a gap in your knowledge or a problem you don't know how to solve; that the structure of an argument matters at least as much as its content. Then, of course, there's the value of reading things that have nothing whatsoever to do with your topic, as a means of getting some mental distance from whatever else it is you're trying to do. Occasionally, something useful turns up where you wouldn't otherwise expect it--I've found the introductions of Robert Nozick's various philosophically-oriented books to be excellent places to turn on the question of what exactly a piece of philosophical writing is supposed to be doing. To wit, from Philosophical Explanations:

"I place no extreme obligation of attentiveness on my readers; I hope instead for those who read as I do, seeking what they can learn from, make use of, transform for their own purposes. Much as they wanted to be understood accurately, the philosophers of the past would have preferred this response, I think, to having their views meticulously and sympathetically stated in all parts and relations. The respect they paid their predecessors was philosophy, not scholarship. Rather than our listening to them, wouldn't they prefer we spoke to them? (We have to listen closely enough, though, to speak to them)"