Wright's Writing

When I was younger, I used to wonder: should I care what people think of me? I saw arguments on both sides of the question. And I still...

Here's a paper I wrote long ago in which I tried to clarify some issues around the philosophical distinction between analytic and...

Here's a paper from my undergraduate days, which you might find mildly interesting in its outline (and critique) of both Kantian and...

Back in my twenties I had an intellectual and creative energy I don't have anymore. I was consumed by philosophy, jumping from topic to...

[From 2008.] Reading Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings, which is about his experiences with post-encephalitic, Parkinsonian patients. It’s a good...

Over the years I've taken copious notes on various topics of philosophy. In case anyone is interested, I'll link to several sets of such...

[Old notes.] Reading The Problems of Philosophy (1912) by Bertrand Russell. I’m inclined to agree with most of it. (In a lot of ways I’m...

[Excerpt from this book.] There are delights and dangers in adopting a broad perspective on oneself and one’s society. Looking at the...

[From an email.] Jerry Coyne does not impress me [in this talk], although at least he seems less irrational and annoying than Daniel...

[Some notes I took a while ago. They may be kind of obvious, but I think it’s interesting to adopt something like Hegel’s perspective on...

From Peter Marin: “Kant called the realm of [human] connection the kingdom of ends. Erich Gutkind’s name for it was the absolute...

It’s a cliché but it’s worth repeating: one cause of modern loneliness is the attitude of treating people as means to an end, namely...

(This is the sequel to the blog post "From the Greeks to the Enlightenment." From my book Finding Our Compass.) Nietzsche ridiculed the...