Spoilers

[apolliana]

I like map-like works in philosophy--or at least, something map-like is what I am drawn to create. At the same time, I hesitate before looking at the way someone else has mapped a certain set of issues. (A book I couldn't resist at the library, Ilham Dilman's Love: its Forms, Dimensions, and Paradoxes sits across the room.) Wouldn't I rather make the map myself? I would. Another explanation as to why I prefer--if I am not looking for someone to quibble with for a paper--to read those whose maps are more rough, particular, and incomplete; maps that are actually like maps of certain traversable territory rather than a quick dividing up of conceptual space in the service of a theory; maps that are driven by the data. I usually overcome my fear of spoilers by reminding myself that the theory in question has probably left something out. Any theory whose object is a portion of experience is going to leave something out. Experience is very particular. In the possible world in which I could include in philosophy everything else I wish to do, I would want show the path from real, individual experiences (this one, and this) to a theory regarding the relevant concepts. I somehow doubt this is a goal that could get accomplished once and for all: it's really not possible, given how much particular experience there is. It's something enacted. Like a monologue of a character aware of all the moments passing: a drop in the bucket, but still, something to make you more aware of moments, and how they can be.