Year in Review 2022
Yes, alright, I’m being lazy, but I haven’t had time to finish a column during the winter break, and I thought I would substitute by looking back at my writing over the past year. Unless you are a completist, you should find something new by me in the list below.
In January, I wrote about David Chalmers and the ethics of virtual worlds: “If I sincerely thought what he does and I wrote a book about it, my goal would be to stem the tide of technological progress before it goes too far.”
In March, I decoded Wittgenstein’s private notebooks, newly translated by Marjorie Perloff, and wrote about the personal and philosophical: “Philosophers are an astonishing, flawed, obsessive bunch. We have something to learn—about them, and about their philosophy—from figuring out what makes them who they are.”
In June, I raised doubts about Buddhism as self-help, quoting William Godwin: “What magic is there in the pronoun ‘my,’ to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?”
In August, I wrote about philosophy as standup comedy, about the moral mathematics of “longtermism,” and about philosophical form: “If the persona that narrates Montaigne’s essays is open, generous and sincere, the voice of the generic philosophy paper is defensive, pedantic and judgemental—antagonistic to a reader it does not trust, and of whom it is afraid.”
In September, I started a substack newsletter; you are reading it now.
In October, Life is Hard came out in the US, UK, and Spain. The next month, several pieces were adapted from the book: on narrative and failure in Nautilus, the pursuit of happiness in the Guardian, loneliness in Big Think, injustice in BBC Future, chronic pain in the Atlantic, and physical disability in LitHub.
In November, I wrote about Nick Riggle and Crispin Sartwell on beauty and why it matters. And in December, hope in the New Statesman and a tribute to the BBC.
Finally, just so this post is not all about me: my two favourite novels of 2022 were Pure Color by Sheila Heti and The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund. Both short, funny, and philosophical.
So that’s it for a busy year. Up next: standup comedy and the Book of Ecclesiastes. Thanks for reading, and subscribing, if you do!