And so, we’ve hit the end of the year. This is our final reading list for 2025!
Read on to see what I’ve been reading at the end of 2025. And, as always, let me know what you think and what you’re reading as we wrap up the year and head into 2026.
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A local guy named Mason (note: not his real name) goes to lots of local events – political events, activist meetings, festivals, and so on. He’s somewhat older, friendly but rather awkward, and overall a good natured person.
He also still wears a mask in 2025.
Sort of.
To put it more accurately, sometimes he wears a mask and other times he doesn’t. And there’s little discernible pattern to it. Whether or not he wears a mask doesn’t seem to follow any risk assessment related to Covid-19. It’s not just that he’s not at elevated risk – though he almost certainly isn’t – but at times I even see him wearing a mask while he’s outdoors and not in a crowd and then taking the mask off or wearing it on his chin when he joins an indoor meeting.
I’m not trying to pick on Mason here. He’s a good guy. My point is that his behavior tracks a lot of what I see. I’ve seen a few dozen or so local characters who fit a similar profile during the pandemic. Most of them gradually reduced or cut out their mask usage by last year.
A few remain holdouts.
We’re now five posts deep into the Epicureanism 101 series! I’ll leave it to the reader whether to be happy or sad about this, but I’ll say that this is probably the final post in the series for now.
So far, we’ve built out a conception of Epicurean philosophy and its power to help us achieve happiness or flourishing in life. Epicurus advises us to achieve static pleasures, by which he means a state of tranquillity that comes from freedom from fear and mental disturbance. The way to achieve this state of tranquillity is by focusing on desires that are natural and necessary.
How, then, might we go about completing the picture? Epicurean philosopher Philodemus has the answer in the form of the four-part remedy, also called the ‘tetrapharmakos.’
As we move through the fall and to the end of the year, I’ve put together an eclectic group of books this month. For readers looking for variety, this will be a great list.
Read on for this month’s list.
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It’s unclear how many people want to read a 600 page biography of Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin. But count me among them. As an undergraduate, I made Austin’s paper ‘Other Minds’ the topic of my honors thesis. And even 20 years later, I’ve never lost the sense that there was something right about the method of ‘linguistic phenomenology’ Austin used in much of his work.
What was right about it? And how did it influence my own philosophical work? It can be difficult to say. I didn’t directly develop Austin’s ideas in my own articles and books. But my conceptual work begins from an understanding – we should situate philosophical concepts in relation to the everyday. This is to say that we must first understand – and only then expand upon or improve – ordinary notions.
As Austin put it, ordinary language is the first word.
On this blog, I’ve written a couple of reviews of books on Austin’s work. Readers can check those out here and here.
And so, with all this said, I was excited to read M.W. Rowe’s biography of the giant of ordinary language philosophy.
