We should not be impressed by anybody who describes themselves, or is described, as a ‘philosospher’, and should recognise that many who are never called it might be that very thing. That brooding bartender, the distant cousin who makes curios comments, the cab driver saying things that make your ‘ragged Ronts all shiver and shake’ – any or all of these might be a philospher. Even You-Tubers, bearded or otherwise! I am not making this up. Any attempt to gather people who have been called a ‘philosopher’ and work out what they have in common yields one answer: it was not what they studied, what they believed, or when they lived – it was simply that they thought, and thought well.

– Sheehan Quirke

I sympathize with this sentiment. That one doesn’t need an academic degree to be considered a philosopher. Or that it’s knitted only to one type profession. But how does one “think” well. We’ve all thought. Is thought well the memorization of facts? Is it generating new ideas? Or is it an apprenticeship of deep research on specfic topic?

Maybe Opus 4.1 has an answer. Enjoying this book though. Self recommended. Deserves more love and buzz.

Sheehan Quirke, The Cultural Tutor: Forty-Nine Lessons You Wish You’d Learned at School (London: Viking, 2025), 83,84.