Surfing to explain philosophy? Yep, yep, yep, Aaron James talks about Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CZCoFzGoge..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="730" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CZCoFzGoge..." width="216" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k3M66iUTRC..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="210" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k3M66iUTRC..." /></a></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>How could I ever resist a book with this title? So I didn't. And then I loved the book so much, I asked Aaron if he would come on the blog. Aaron James is an associate professor of philosophy at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers..." title="University of California, Irvine">University of California, Irvine</a>,and the author of Assholes: A Theory, and I'm delighted to have him here. Thank you, Aaron.</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Why do you think that surfing lends itself to philosophizing?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think surfing is all about what I call bodily “adapative attunement” to the changing movements of a wave, and the ocean and coastline that creates and shapes them in certain way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Whether you are thinking about it or not, this often brings a deep appreciation of the sublime and the beautiful, drawing you out of yourself, in awe, respect, and wonderment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In that way you naturally transcend the mundane, even on the most ordinary day, often with a profound sense of fortune, or even gratitude, that the circumstances of one’s life have coalesced as they now have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Which is already a kind of reflection of a philosophical sort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But then ideas can be sublime, or even beautiful, as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And being attuned to them through skillful philosophical thought or discussion is also a way of transcending the drab or the blah in the mundane, a way of being more attuned to what’s wonderful or curious or puzzling in ordinary life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>So although surfing and philosophizing draw on different skills, to me at least, the enterprises are valuable in much the same general way.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I love the title, though the idea of Jean Paul Sartre surfing is delicious—and maybe that’s part of the delight of your essays, getting us to think about things in a new and fun way. Care to talk about this</b>?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is really fun that, deep in his long masterwork _Being and Nothingness_, Sartre has these long passages about snow skiing and freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He writes in this excited rush, as he often does, just enthralled with looking at skiing in a deep, fresh way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I thought I should do something like that with surfing, picking up from Sartre’s comments about waterskiing, which he thinks of as even better than skiing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>So I’m trying to do phenomenology in something of the way Sartre understood it, in hopes of looking at things in a new way and discovering what would otherwise be obscure, which is delightful and fun in itself.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What was it like writing these essays? Any snags along the way?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To me the idea of the book was exciting for its scope and ambition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It could be like an olden style treatise of the sort you can’t write in specialized academic philosophy these days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The general reader might want to just see big connections, so I thought the book should “surf” through any and every big issue in philosophy that surfing might illuminate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But it took me a long time to figure out how all the topics and parts might fit together, with some sort of progression that adds up to a grand picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It helped a lot when I realized the chapters could mainly be general, single-word topics, like Freedom, Control, Flow, Being, Transcendence, Society, Nature, Work, etc..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Then I could just focus on the ideas that seemed to develop that particular topic, and stack the topics across the chapters so that they build upon each other over the course of the whole book. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I’m curious if your personal philosophy ever changes—and why?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Well, I think of myself as constantly learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A lot of the time you feel like you’re gradually understanding more fully what you were already inclined to think, what you previously had a bare grasp of, or saw dimly, in the distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But the new learning also gradually shifts other things you feel like you might have mostly sorted out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In working on the book I became much clearer for myself about what exactly I have always loved about surfing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And in reading around all the various areas of philosophy, which go beyond my usual specializations, I was led into some new research interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I now think professional philosophers haven’t really appreciated certain connections, which I’m hoping bring out in my academic writings.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m tacking back to some of my core interests in political philosophy at the moment, planning what will be another academic book on international socio-economic issues. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also thinking more about a pop book that joins asshole and surfer theory by offering ideas about how to get from our present culture of assholery to a more leisurely, less competitive kind of capitalism.</span></span></div>