Cue That Philosophical Interlude, Betches.

R. and I have spent some time talking about some rather technical issues regarding the Sorites Paradox and the 'problem' of vague predicates. It is the first time in quite a while --- we're talking at least 5 years --- that I have spoken at length with anyone about such a technical and cutting-edge-sexy philosophical issue in the Analytic tradition.

My life as a philosopheress has become so rich since leaving graduate school. Regaining the helm of my own intellectual and artistic life is deeply rewarding and empowering. I struggle, occasionally, to define my place in the philosophical community. There are only certain moments in which that definition matters to me. The vast majority of the time, I am comfortable in my own skin. I'm more than happy to be my scholastic friends' authority on Kant; an overflowing fountain of detailed information on the English Enlightenment; a skeptical voice in ethical dialogue. The truth of the matter is that I have been blessed with some truly wonderful educators who have required of me more reading, work, and writing than is actually reasonable for a single human being in a given semester. I have read (and recall) most of Coplestone's History of Philosophy series. I am in love with a philosopher of Mathematics who dabbles in philosophy of language and has developed a recent interest in applied ethics. I am dear friends with an up-and-coming novelist and philosopher in the existentialist tradition. My life is so full of such wide and varied members of my discipline, and have been the benefactor of their intellectual and personal lives.

And then, there is my family. My family who has always been supportive of my choice to spend the last ten years studying philosophy, yet wants me to provide a definitive account of what my place in that tradition. I never know what to do with that question. My only account for myself is that I am the culmination of the last twenty-seven years of experience, the most dominant feature of which is a burning and passionate desire to think, to be, and to engage a very particular body of literature. How might I answer their questions about my position in the philosophical tradition apart from saying, I am Donovan's friend? I am Gaby's co-conspirator, I am Ashley's favorite resource, I am Ross's sounding board?

The truth of the matter is that I have always had a sense of myself -- a strong sense -- that what is most crucial to any "definition" of my "philosophy" is my relationships within the context of that very tradition.

Just as it is with my art, the content is secondary to the urge that motivates it. And ultimately, that urge seems tied up in the social aspect of philosophical dialogue. It is where I am happiest, and most myself.