I must once more apologise to anyone waiting for things from me. I’m snowed under with writing commitments still, but I managed to discharge one of them today, and it’s one that some of you may be interested in. I’ve harped on about a lot of things since I started this blog several years ago, but perhaps the most mysterious of these has been the systematic philosophical methodology I’ve been working on, occasionally (and perhaps tantalisingly) referred to under the heading of ‘fundamental deontology’. I’ve said a little bit about it now and again (see here and here), but I’ve not gone so far as to really explain it in detail. This is largely because the ideas are complicated, and I haven’t had the time to do the work necessary to flesh them out.
However, the ideas have slowly built up over time, and I have now been handed the excuse I needed to work on it. My girlfriend is studying Chinese/English translation, and has asked me to provide her with a piece of work for a translation project. Despite my prodigious writings on here, I don’t have anything I consider either polished or accessible enough to warrant translation, so I have decided to write something with this purpose in mind. I’ve wanted to write a small book summarising my ideas about fundamental deontology for a while, but haven’t had the excuse. Now is the time.
Today I finished writing the outline of the book. Following the subtitle of the blog, its working title is: The Demands of Thought. It’s going to cover quite a lot of ground, but I hope it’ll still be concise. It’s also going to deal with some pretty abstract concepts, but I hope it’ll nonetheless be accessible. These are tough constraints to meet, but I think that it’s best to aim high and revise downward. Moreover, I hope that by posting the outline here I’ll tie myself to the project in such a way that I can’t extricate myself from it. I have too many ideas for projects like this, and at some point they need to be given a fixed form and pushed out into the world. So, please do hold me to this commitment! It’ll be good for me, even if I can already see myself regretting it. Also, if you happen to know somewhere that might fancy publishing it, do let me/them know!
DEONTOLOGISTICS 