The Monthly Digest - July 2024

The month that was and the month that will be, the Aristotle read-along (a progress report), thoughts about future reads, and more you could enjoy.

Hello all,

For a time, I was publishing what I called The Weekly Reading List. I stopped publishing it because I found that looking for enough articles for each week was distracting me from the work I needed to do: working on my book, making videos, and writing more here. It also prioritizes short pieces — and I didn’t want to encourage that kind of media consumption.

So instead, I’m trying this out: The Monthly Digest. Part round-up of Walking Away, part collection of articles and videos, part reflection on the month that was and the month that will be. Expect it near the end of the month (or in this case, at the beginning of the month) for a time. I’m experimenting, so just let me know down below.

As always, thank you for your support.

What’s happening at Walking Away?

This month, we really kicked off our discussion of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. We have read and discussed Books I-IV and we also had our first members only Zoom call. I encourage everyone to read that linked piece, as the paywall only applies to the recording of the call. In our hour discussion, we touched on many great topics: Aristotle’s applicability to our life, the possibility of cultural relativism infecting virtue ethics, the idea of virtue as a mean, and so on.

We’re about a third of the way through the Nicomachean Ethics, and now is a good time to catch up if you’ve fallen behind. I promise it will be worth it.

In addition to the posts about Aristotle, I published 10 other posts (this meant I was publishing roughly every other day). My favorites for the month: ‘AI won’t replace you, unless you let it’, ‘The devil in your pocket’, and ‘What’s the point of a university?’

AI won't replace you, unless you let it

The devil in your pocket

What's the point of a university?

It is interesting to look back at what you wrote and see themes emerging. We are in a period of rupture, I think, where more norms are being questioned and more defaults are being unsettled. We have to ask big questions in a time like this. What will our relationship to technology look like? What should our institutions do? What does it mean to be human?

So I suppose the real winner this month, the post which really captured what I’ve been thinking about, is this piece:

Coming up in August

So far in August, I have published just one piece: Embrace the Tedium. I plan on publishing three or four pieces per week, as has become my habit — of course, one of those each week will be part of our series on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The latest entry in that series can be found here, and you’ll also be able to check out the schedule for the whole read-along if you click through. The next installment is coming tomorrow.

I’ve noticed that engagement on the Aristotle posts has been declining; my suspicion is that it is becoming difficult for people to keep up. I’ll take all of this into consideration for the future, but the worry is that if you slow the pace down too much people forget about the reading altogether. (If you have suggestions for how to do this well, let me know!)

One more thing about Aristotle: the next members-only Zoom call will be on August 18 at 8 PM Eastern. That’s a Sunday this time. If you want to join, just become a paying subscriber. I believe that the people who attended got a lot out of it, and I know that I had a lot of fun.

I’m working on a few longer pieces for the month, most centered around the idea of work. Work is a topic I’ve long been interested in – it is why I picked St. Benedict as my patron saint when I converted to Orthodoxy – and it became much more salient when I was laid off at the beginning of the summer. Looking back at old writings, I realized that I had been thinking about work for quite some time, but I never really systematized my thoughts. That is my new big project, and I’ll use Substack to explore some of these ideas.

Thinking about our next read

At some point, we need to think about our next read-along. It won’t start immediately after Aristotle is done, but we shouldn’t take more than a few weeks off. I don’t know what we’ll read next, but I’ve been thinking about fiction or more narrative non-fiction. It would need to be something rich with philosophical themes, but I like the idea of (temporarily) moving on to something just a touch lighter.

I was considering a shorter Russian novel, so maybe something like Dead Souls. But I have also been reading to read more Kafka, and we could turn to him. Short stories might serve us well?

Or for a real twist, what about Jane Austen? Novels about manners, relationships, social niceties never interested me much, but surely there are interesting discussions to be had.

Or we could try out a bit of science fiction (of the more philosophical, serious sort). Could we perhaps read The Dispossessed together?

Part me also wants to recommend Wolf Hall, as I’ve been meaning to read the other two books in the trilogy anyway. But there is already a Substack read-along of Wolf Hall, and I don’t want to step on any toes.

I’m open to suggestions (though this is not truly a democratic process, as at some point I just have to make the decision). Let me know down below.

After we read something lighter, we’ll move back into the realm of philosophy, of course!

Personal reflections (if you care about that sort of thing)

If you’ve made it this far, you might be interested in hearing a bit about what’s going on in my life.