Stories, Pictures, Arguments

Extract

There is a tradition of philosophy—a conception we can easily under-stand as a limit of a tendency of our own thinking—that philosophy consists only of argument. The rest of the (admittedly) vast prepon-derance of words in philosophical texts is simply embroidery. ‘Naturally’, it will be conceded, actual philosophy books contain more or less of verbal pictures, words and phrases whose purpose is to evoke images, and many stories—examples, hard cases for definitions, and 4 anecdotes. These, it will be said, ‘are only the embellishments, the relief from work, the appetizers or the post-prandial delicacies.’