Kaya York tries to comprehend Everything.
The night that Boonsri Amudee discovered The Truth she felt rather empty. After fervently writing down her basic insight until the early hours, she brewed a cup of sweet tea and watched the sun rise with no thoughts in her head. “I finished my tea,” she said in a later interview, “walked home, made normal love with my spouse, and dreamed about a featureless sphere.”
Her findings were published five years later in the ten-thousand-plus page tome The Truth. The first draft had been incomprehensible, as alien to any reader as the landscape of the Moon. Amudee responded to this problem by releasing another book, How to Interpret ‘The Truth’, alongside an additional sequel, How to Interpret ‘How to Interpret “The Truth”’ just for good measure. She left it at that, feeling that two levels of recursion were quite enough. (Although later, gradually, debates grew, even outside the usual literary circles, about how exactly to interpret How to Interpret ‘How to Interpret “The Truth”’.)
The Truth was found, drawn and quartered, subjected to the proper book-keeping, and available in the ‘T’ section of all major bookstores (the ‘ค’ section in Thailand, of course, and so on: translation into other languages was less difficult than expected).
The critical responses took years to emerge, and are exemplified by William Jacobson’s brief review: “Yes, I think that about sums it up.”
Esta historia es de la edición December 2017 / January 2018 de Philosophy Now.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición December 2017 / January 2018 de Philosophy Now.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.