Author Archives: Warren Ward

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About Warren Ward

Writer exploring the love lives of continental philosophers
July 28, 2013 · 6:24 pm

Reality bites in Cooroy

reality bites festival header

Cooroy

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m sipping on a latte in a cafe in Cooroy after spending the last four days attending the Reality Bites nonfiction writers festival. For those of you who don’t know Cooroy, it’s an unspoiled hidden gem of a town in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Wind back four days to Thursday morning as I drive into this sleepy rural town, and I am welcomed by the sight of organic grocers, massage therapist signs, op shops and very relaxed and happy-looking people walking around very slowly in the crumpled and colorful clothes you often see on tree-changers and middle-aged hippies. I pull up and walk into the newsagent where the lady behind the counter seems genuinely pleased to see me, and as I leave, wishes me a good day in a way that indicates she really means it, not something I’m used to in the throbbing cosmopolis of Briz Vegas (Brisbane) where I come from.

The first workshop I went to at the Reality Bites festival was on blogging, delivered by Rhonda Hetzel who has a very popular award-winning blog, Down to Earth, about her daily experiences of trying to live a simpler life, where she makes everything herself from soap to butter and ice-cream. Her blog eventually resulted in a book deal with Penguin. Rhonda pointed out, as have many others, that blogging is an almost obligatory requirement for writers who want to ‘build a platform’. To be honest, industry phrases such as ‘author platform’ leave me a bit flat. As a writer I prefer just to write. But of course as writers we all want to connect with our readers and blogging is a way of doing that.The key suggestions I took away from Rhonda’s talk were:

  • develop a disciplined routine to posting on your blog
  • include photos in your posts
  • be generous in your blog in what you give to your readers
  • end each post with a question to encourage readers to interact with you

So on that note my questions for you at the end of this post are:

What would you like to see on this blog? More about the continental philosophers? More about these philosophers’ relationships and love lives? Or perhaps you’d like to hear more about writing resources and processes that I and others have found helpful? I’d love to hear your comments…

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April 2, 2013 · 7:37 am

Listening to the language

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger came up with a radical notion that has enabled a whole new way of seeing ourselves and the world. This notion has since gained wider acceptance, and is especially prevalent in European contemporary philosophy. The notion is this: that language speaks us rather than we speak language. Or that we are constructed by the language. As Heidegger put it, if we listen we hear the language before and as we speak it–the words come naturally to us and shape what is important in the world.

Language can also help us to uncover, to unveil, to reveal the truth. Thus words, through speaking or writing, can help us to see the truth. Words can show us what is there.

The above ideas might not seem so strange to those of us who have tried creative writing. Just as the sculptor chips away at the marble to reveal the figure that was waiting to be revealed, writers have often commented how their stories unfold despite the writer. The writer’s worst-kept secret is that they didn’t write stories; the stories write themselves.

A Stephen King described in his book On Writing, the writer is like the palaeontologist who brushes the dust off to reveal the fossil (writing–the story–the creation–the work of art), perfectly formed  underneath (that was always there).

 

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Dostoyevsky on truth

Photo of F. Dostoevsky Русский: Фёдор Михайлов...

Photo of F. Dostoevsky Русский: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский Suomi: Fjodor Mihailovitš Dostojevski Svenska: Fjodor Dostojevskij (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“To make the truth more plausible, it’s absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

I love this quote for two reasons.

Firstly, Dostoyevsky has always been my favourite author – he is a masterful storyteller.

Secondly, although my current writing project is non-fiction and based on historical research, I am looking for the story amongst the facts. And so it reminds me I must use a little imagination to make the truth more plausible

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March 9, 2013 · 10:24 pm
March 9, 2013 · 8:43 am

Mind Mapping

One tool I have found useful in the conceptualisation phase of my writing project was mind mapping. A mind map helps you to ‘see’ the conceptual framework for your book or other large project. The free mind mapping app I used was Simplemind Free which can be found at the Mac Appstore. Using this app I created a mind map for my book which you can view by clicking on LOVERS OF PHILOSOPHYmindmap.

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March 9, 2013 · 7:23 am

What Lovers of Philosophy is about

They were Europe’s greatest thinkers. But what were they like at life? In particular, did their highly developed capacity for critical thinking help or hinder their ability to have relationships with other human beings? Were they superior in their ability to succeed in having mutually fulfilling intimate relationships, or did they flounder just as much as we mere mortals?

Lovers of Philosophy is an exploration of the love lives of the great European philosophers from Kant to Derrida. It introduces the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault and Derrida; and examines whether their deep pondering on the meaning of life helped them to be any better at living and loving than we non-philosophers. Their lovers tell us what these philosophers were really like. We hear from Simone de Beauvoir about Sartre; from Hannah Arendt about Heidegger. We hear about the so-called continental philosophers’ peccadillos, mistresses, fetishes and foibles. These stories are told against the background of the bigger story of the momentous changes that have occurred in Europe in the past three hundred years, and how these philosophers initiated, and responded to the scientific, social, economic and political revolutions of modern times.

By exploring of these philosophers’ lives, the reader is taken on a journey through the intriguing world of continental thought from the 1700s to the 21st century. Starting with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the book chronicles the evolution of European philosophy from German idealism through to French existentialism, structuralism and post-modernist thought.

By drawing on historical research, the relationship between each philosopher’s love life and their work is examined. As well as their individual philosophies, there is an exploration of Kant’s celibacy, Hegel’s premarital liaisons, Nietzsche’s heartbreak, Heidegger’s hypocrisy, Sartre’s experiments in promiscuous polyamory, Foucault’s exploration of gay liberation, and Derrida’s dalliance in extramarital intimacy; as well as the role of marriage and long-term relationships in the lives and works of these intellectuals.

 

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Derrida on the lovers of philosophy

Cover of "Derrida"

Cover of Derrida

Amy Ziering Kofman:
If you were to watch a documentary about a philosopher – Heidegger, Kant or Hegel, what would you like to see in it?

Derrida:
Their sex lives. If you want a quick answer. I would like to hear them speak about their sexual lives. I would like to hear them speak about it. What is the sexual life of Hegel or Heidegger?

Derrida. Dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Zeitgeist Films. 2002. Film⁠1

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1 kirbydick.com/derrida/DerridaTRANSCRIPT.doc

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March 8, 2013 · 1:01 pm