Emrys Westacott grew up in the UK and moved to the US in 1986. He is currently professor of philosophy at Alfred University in Western New York. His work has appeared in both scholarly and popular publications, including International Studies in Philosophy, Philosophy Now, The Philosopher's Magazine, Aeon, and Humanities. His books include 'The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness and Other Bad Habits' (Princeton University Press, 2012), and 'The Wisdom of Frugality' (Princeton University Press, 2016). Email: westacott [at] alfred.edu
by Emrys Westacott Friedrich Nietzsche is my “desert island philosopher.” Guests, or “castaways” on BBC Radio 4’s long running program “Desert Island Discs” are allowed to take to their desert island, in addition to eight pieces of music, a text of religious or philosophical significance. Many accept the bible as the default option. For me,…
by Emrys Westacott What should we do with our leisure? In his Politics, Aristotle identifies this as a fundamental philosophical question. Leisure, here, means freedom from necessary labor. If we have to spend much of our time working, or recuperating in order to work more, the question hardly arises. But if we are free from…
by Emrys Westacott Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is clearly a historically momentous event, already appearing to cause a seismic shift in the geopolitical landscape. What the long-term consequences will be are hard to say. The most obvious losers are the millions of Ukrainians–killed, injured, bereft, and displaced–who are the immediate victims of Putin’s…
by Emrys Westacott The philosopher Theodore Adorno, probably with activities such as reading serious literature and listening to classical music in mind, famously said about himself: I have no hobby. Not that I am the kind of workaholic who is incapable of doing anything with his free time but applying himself industriously to the required…
by Emrys Westacott On the anniversary of the attempt by Donald Trump and some of his supporters to subvert the 2020 US presidential election, Joe Biden denounced those who “place a dagger at the throat of democracy.” To which one can only say: About bloody time! The threat posed by Trump and the Republican party…
Moth A tap at the black glass, discrete, but urgent. A night moth, big as a beech leaf, burnt, brown, wind-ripped, flaps in its frame, peddling high-step, then ascends the pane as if winched, hovers against the jamb, plunges free fall, recovers, begins again to climb, then crabs sidewards across the window, drifts back, then…
by Emrys Westacott An old joke that is regularly rehashed goes something like this. A schoolteacher is asking a class of ten-year-olds what their parents do for a living. The children describe the work their mothers and fathers do as mail carriers, firefighters, librarians, electricians, cabinet makers, and so on, until it is little Sammy’s…
by Emrys Westacott Upton Sinclair famously remarked that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It is easy to imagine the sort of scenario that illustrates his point. A drug company rep works to increase how often a certain drug is prescribed, putting…
by Emrys Westacott 1859 was not a bad year for publishing in Britain. Books that came out that year included Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, and George Eliot’s Adam Bede. The first installments of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White also made their…
by Emrys Westacott The view that everyone who is capable has a basic duty to work and not be idle is the main tenet of what we call the work ethic. Closely related to this are two other ideas: A person’s approach to work reveals something of their moral character. The activity of working itself…
by Emrys Westacott The work ethic is deeply ingrained in much of modern society, both Eastern and Western, and there are many forces making sure that this remains the case. Parents, teachers, coaches, politicians, employers, and many other shapers of souls or makers of opinion constantly repeat the idea that hard work is the key…
by Emrys Westacott George Saunders’ recent book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, is the most enjoyable and enlightening book on literature I have ever read. Saunders’ collections of short stories and his 2017 Booker Prize winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo have earned him numerous awards and much acclaim. He has taught…
by Emrys Westacott Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations begins with this claim: The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes….[1] In other words, labour is the ultimate source of a society’s wealth. In feudal times it had…
by Emrys Westacott The scheme Two weeks ago European soccer world was rocked by an announcement that 12 of the top clubs had agreed among themselves to form a European Super League (ESL) to replace the existing European Champions League (ECL). The “dirty dozen” were Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan,…
by Emrys Westacott If, for a long time now, you’ve been getting up early in the morning, setting off to school or your workplace, getting there at the required time, spending the day performing your assigned tasks (with a few scheduled breaks), going home at the pre-ordained time, spending a few hours doing other things…
by Emrys Westacott A friend, knowing that I’ve been learning German, recently sent me a volume of Theodore Fontane’s poetry. Fontane (1819-1898) is best known today for the novels that he wrote in the later part of his life. But some his poems have an affecting simplicity–a simplicity that is perhaps especially charming to those…
by Emrys Westacott Here is a hardy perennial: Are human beings naturally indolent? From sagacious students of human nature there is no shortage of opinions. The fact that sloth was counted by the Catholic church as one of the seven deadly sins back in the 6th century suggests that it is, at the very least,…
by Emrys Westacott The German language is famous for its often long compound words that combine ideas to neatly express in a single word complex notions. Torschlusspanik, (gate-shut-panic), for instance, referred in medieval times to the fear that one was not going to make it back into the city before the gates closed for the…
by Emrys Westacott Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class is a famous, influential, and rather peculiar book. Veblen (1857 – 1929) was a progressive-minded scholar who wrote about economics, social institutions, and culture. The Theory of the Leisure Class, which appeared in 1899, was the first of ten books that he published during…
by Emrys Westacott Like millions of others, my reaction to the result of the US presidential election was primarily relief. Relief at the prospect of an end to the ghastly display of narcissism, dishonesty, callousness, corruption, and general moral indecency (a.k.a. Donald Trump) that has dominated media attention in the US for the past four…