Philosophy for the Rest of Us

The amount of correspondence I receive precludes my responding to each email, letter, Facebook comment, etc., and so on, with the detail each deserves. But I still read’em all, and I am always grateful (and in the case of an unusual book likeĀ Montaigne in Barn Boots, especially grateful) when a reader takes time to share entertaining, kind, encouraging words.

I was very interested to find out that you and I share a very Montaigne-like condition whenever the talons of proctalgia fugax tear us from our Morphic musings.

I haven’t started reading Montaigne’s essays yet, but I am working my way through my own list of self-improvement texts, including the Stoics, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Emerson as well as Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. Like Montaigne, I am at the age where I am searching for a way to be at peace with mortality, when those of my parents’ generation are mostly gone and age brings nagging minor infirmities such as those you describe in your book.

I admire your willingness to read your musings out loud in public and in the form of the audio book to which I am listening. I hope to write something to leave behind, whether a book, or only a loose collection of essays that only aspire to Montaigne. It seems we are both at the point in life where we are coming to grips with mortality and its attendant ailments on the way to the grave, and I appreciate your efforts to express Montaigne’s thoughts in a way that non-philosophers can understand.

I bolded that last part. ‘Cuz that’s what I was shootin’ for.


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