Evil: A Rhetorical Artefact and Conceptual Inertia

The source is a philosophical blog post that articulates a critical perspective on the politics of solidarity, prompted by a colleague’s definition linking solidarity to virtue and the common good. Author Bry Willis rejects the benign perception of solidarity as a "warm circle," arguing instead that it functions as a demand for ideological conformity, forcing the individual to harmonise their interior life with an external "tuning fork." The author posits that the pleasant notion of unity is merely a euphemism for enforced-unity or ideological choreography, noting that one never gets to select the routine. Willis maintains that true solidarity necessarily requires a centre of power to define boundaries and enforce consensus, illustrating that the desirable fantasy of "we" inherently disintegrates into the controlling machinery of they.👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/03/on-the-strange-politics-of-solidarity/

The philosophical essay from the "Philosophics" blog provides a detailed comparison between the author's concept of Transductive Subjectivity (TS) and the secular Buddhist philosophy of Stephen Batchelor. Both frameworks fundamentally agree in rejecting the continuous metaphysical self, defining identity instead as an unfolding process generated by specific conditions. Their divergence lies primarily in aim: Batchelor seeks ethical and therapeutic liberation from attachment to the self, whereas TS pursues metaphysical accuracy to provide structural clarity and critique systems of retributive justice. The author identifies the key separation point in their methodology: Batchelor accepts the phenomenological feel of continuity as a starting point for gradual transformation, essentially working with folk psychology. In sharp contrast, TS dismisses the continuous self sensation as a category mistake and a narrative compression artefact, opting instead to rebuild the ontology of the self from entirely new principles.👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/02/a-key-point-of-departure-he-accepts-the-folk-psychology-i-reject/https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/02/a-key-point-of-departure-he-accepts-the-folk-psychology-i-reject/

🧐 NotebookLM TOTALLY missed the satire in this post. It's worth listening to just for the comedy of errors. 🤣The source provides a detailed, dictionary-style entry for the contemporary neologism "wœnder," a word coined by philosopher Bry Willis to describe the intentional act of intellectual wandering combined with sustained curiosity. This term, which uses a non-standard ligature spelling to signal conceptual hybridity, defines a thinker who deliberately pursues understanding through associative and non-hierarchical thought, resisting the limitations of linear inquiry. The text explains that a wœnder differs from a mere wanderer or wonderer by engaging in a serious, reflective mode of conceptual movement without committing to a predetermined teleological destination. Crucially, the entry includes a self-awarely fabricated "Brief and Dubious History" section, humorously tracing the word's imagined lineage through bored medieval scribes and misquotations from major philosophical figures like Hegel and Schopenhauer. Ultimately, the document serves both as a definition of this specialised term and as a commentary on the rapid adoption of intentional lexical pranks within post-Enlightenment philosophy.

The provided text is an excerpt from "The XAND Manifesto," a highly satirical and pedantic essay by Geoffrey Pemberton-Smythe concerning the perceived failures of modern linguistic usage. The author declares a humorous, relentless war against the common conjunction "and/or," which he condemns as a "coward's conjunction" that introduces intolerable ambiguity and represents linguistic capitulation. To remedy this perceived error, the manifesto introduces the replacement conjunction "XAND" (pronounced 'zand'), an exclusive-or term borrowed loosely from Boolean logic and imbued with intended British pretension. Pemberton-Smythe encourages readers to adopt this term immediately, arguing that its usage is a mark of refined sophistication, even while humorously noting its implementation has resulted in professional ostracism and domestic turmoil. Overall, the essay employs an exaggerated, self-important tone to mock overly rigid grammatical fixes and the inherent ambiguity of everyday language. ✒️ https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/02/the-xand-manifesto/

Language philosopher Bry Willis, who writes on Philosophics.blog, shares thoughts on his newest project on Transductive Subjectivity, what it means, and "Why such an odd name?"

Language philosopher Bry Willis, who writes on Philosophics.blog, shares his backstory, discusses how he incorporates generative AI into his workflow, and talks about his projects. He also published speculative literary fiction under the pseudonym Ridley Park.I may even take time to make a fancy thumbnail – but not today.Blogs: http://philosophics.bloghttp://ridleypark.blogPhilosophy & Anti-Enlightenment Project: https://zenodo.org/communities/antienlightenmentPhilPapers: https://philpeople.org/profiles/bry-willisSocials:https://x.com/Microglyphicshttps://mastodon.social/@microglyphicshttps://bsky.app/profile/microglyphics.bsky.socialhttps://www.instagram.com/microglyphicshttps://www.threads.com/@microglyphicshttps://www.tiktok.com/@microglyphics

This academic essay by language philosopher Bry Willis proposes a deflationary account of evil, arguing that the term is merely a rhetorical artefact that survived the Enlightenment by retaining the conceptual structure of theological demonology without its explicit metaphysical substance. The author contends that the word functions primarily as a cognitive shortcut, replacing the difficult work of structural or psychological analysis with an instant, pseudo-explanation for overwhelming atrocities. According to the essay, this persistence reflects motivated conceptual inertia, as the term efficiently compresses complexity, licenses retributive responses, and serves as a moral shibboleth for stabilizing group boundaries. Willis stresses that by treating perpetrators as marionettes animated by an occult force, the vocabulary of evil strategically obscures the mundane, traceable mechanisms that produce extreme harm. Ultimately, the essay calls for observers to abandon this theatrical vocabulary in favour of a more precise moral cartography focused on understanding and prevention.

The segment offers a philosophical treatise distinguishing between occupying a perspective and falling into a partisan rut, arguing that the former is a structural feature of being human while the latter implies unexamined repetition. The author critiques those who dismiss an analysis by claiming the analyst is biased, labelling this tactic an invalid "epistemic shrug" that attempts to delegitimise the argument without engaging its substance. According to the text, a perspective implies an intellectual stance, but a rut suggests dogma, and accusing someone of the latter without supporting evidence is a subtle form of ad hominem. For an argument to be legitimate, opponents must demonstrate precisely where the logic fails, the evidence contradicts the claim, or the interpretation distorts the symmetry. The central assertion is that acknowledging one’s situated viewpoint does not invalidate the quality of the observations, though pretending to occupy a position of absolute truth certainly compromises integrity.https://philosophics.blog/

This segment, a satirical philosophical essay from the "Philosophics" blog, introduces the concept of Homo Legibilis, a fictional new hominid species representing modern humanity’s obsession with documentation and digital transparency. Framed as a field note from bureaucratic anthropology, the essay posits that this creature’s primary evolutionary imperative was the need to ensure its dataprints were tidy and machine-actionable, allowing it to thrive within highly surveilled digital and corporate environments. H. Legibilis is depicted as feeding not on information but on algorithmic appraisal and interpretation, consuming metrics and performance reviews because its digestive tract is incapable of processing nuance. The essay uses postmodern critique and dark humour to suggest that for this creature, identity was not lived but administered, derived from a consensual hallucination produced by HR departments and advertising lobbies. The source concludes by describing the species' demise during the Great Blackout, arguing that the Readable Human eventually perished under the weight of its own requirement for perfect visibility.https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/28/homo-legibilis/

The segment presents a comprehensive critical analysis from the philosophical blog Philosophics, focusing on the rhetorical architecture and epistemology of a colleague's political book titled Why Democrats Are Dangerous. The author establishes a position outside the American partisan binary, choosing instead to perform a "dis-integration" of the book’s framework rather than a line-by-line rebuttal of its claims. The core argument asserts that the book is a "closed epistemic loop" that operates less as political analysis and more as a morality play, presupposing its conclusion and pathologising disagreement. Key structural flaws identified include rampant projection—where the author attributes his own side’s behaviours to the opposition—and a failure to recognise the symmetrical political vices shared by both the left and the right. Ultimately, the author concludes that the true threat is not any single political party but the "danger of certainty without introspection," which reduces complex politics to a simple, unexamined moral narrative.https://philosophics.blog