Catalogue of things that I’ve loved and have influenced me; updated when I’m procrastinating
Bernard Williams — Moral Luck and Problems of the Self (collection of papers)
[I especially love The Makropulos case and Deciding to believe]Iris Murdoch — The sovereignty of good
especially the first chapter ‘The Idea of Perfection’ [here]
“If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over… the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments.”Jon Elster — Sour grapes – utilitarianism and the genesis of wants
[from Utilitarianism and Beyond, a wonderful collection of econ + phil essays edited by Bernard Williams and Sen]John Broome — Weighing goods: equality, uncertainty, and time
[Ethics out of Economics is also wonderful]Amia Srinivasan — Genealogy, epistemology and worldmaking
WG Sebald — The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo
Benjamín Labatut — When We Cease to Understand the World
Partha Dasgupta — Time and the generations: population ethics for a diminishing planet
Andrew Miller — On Not Being Someone Else
[lovely essay by Joshua Rothman [here] which I re-read every few years]Iris Murdoch — Against Dryness
“Our current picture of freedom encourages a dream-like" facility; whereas what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being; it is through an enriching and deepening of concepts that moral progress takes place… We need a new vocabulary of attention.”Simone Weil — Gravity and Grace
Derek Parfit — Reasons and Persons (especially parts 3 & 4!)
Dov Monderer & Dov Samet — Approximating Common Knowledge with Common Beliefs
Mark Grief — Radiohead, or the Philosophy of Pop [here]
Samuel Scheffler — Death and the Afterlife
[this influenced me enormously in college!]Chris Marker — Sans Soliel
James Salter — Lights Years
Robert Aumann — Correlated Equilibrium as an Expression of Bayesian Rationality
Susan Sontag — On Photography