summer reading

"I am not one who believes it is any necessary virtue in the philosopher to spend his life defending a consistent position. It is surely a kind of spiritual pride to refrain from 'thinking out loud', and to be unwilling to let a thesis appear in print until you are prepared to champion it to the death. Philosophy, like science, is a social function, for a man cannot think rightly alone, and the philosophy must publish his thought as much to learn from criticism as to contribute to the sum of wisdom."

-preface of Alan Watt's Nature, Man, and Woman.