Ray Monk
@Raymodraco
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Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, biographer, evangelical vegan and eco-warrior. Also on Facebook and Instagram.
Southampton, UK
Joined February 2009
Telling the truth has become so rare in this government that when someone does it Rishi Sunak wants an inquiry to find out how it could have happened.
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The "Icon Of The Seas" sets sail in January 2024. 5610 passengers, 2350 crew members, 5 times larger and heavier than the Titanic, 19 floors with more than 40 bars, restaurants and bowling alleys. What a monstrosity!
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When they say "We're going to have to live with it", what they mean is, "We don't mind if you die from it".
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Thirty years ago today my Wittgenstein biography was published. The launch party was held at the Hampstead branch of Waterstone's and Tim Waterstone himself gave a lovely little speech about how proud he was of me. It was one of the happiest days of my life!
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Weymouth's rather idiosyncratic approach to encouraging tourism.
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I'm vegan but I think the difference between eating meat once a week and eating it every day is far more important than the difference between eating meat once a day and not eating it at all. Is this a minority view among vegans, I wonder?.
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Dear Twitter friends, I have been absolutely overwhelmed with the response to my tweet about the 30th anniversary of my Wittgenstein biography. People all over the world have written kind and generous things. It has brought a tear to my eye. Thank you all so much!.
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I don't understand why everyone on earth isn't freaking out about the scale of the problem presented by climate change and how little is being done about it.
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Here's a piece I wrote for the New Statesman to commemorate the centenary of the Tractatus.
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I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, but pretty soon the case for veganism is going to be impossible to ignore.
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I take the point that Rory Stewart's voting record shows him to be no friend of the left, but as PM he would be vastly preferable to Johnson.
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Well that is quite an honour. Thank you!.
Due to the movie, there is suddenly a lot of interest in J. Robert Oppenheimer, and that's a good thing. I've read a pile of books about him. The best by far is this one, in part because the author makes the pre-war adventure in the world of physics so compelling.
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Ever wondered what happened to Wittgenstein's Norwegian hut? Well, it's right here in the South Side of Chicago. Who would have thought?
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My home for the next couple of days: Jesus College, Cambridge, where I'm giving a talk on Oppenheimer tomorrow.
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These interviewers asking Mick Lynch if he is a Marxist - why don't they ask Jacob Rees-Mogg about his ideology?.
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Amazon has just sent me an email to say that they think I might be interested in *Philosophical Investigations* by Ludwig Wittgenstein!.
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The present "war on wokeness" is, to anyone who lived through it, very reminiscent of the battle against "political correctness" in the 90s. Both are fundamentally attempts by the right to portray left-wingers as a threat to common sense and decency.
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Increasingly, I see eating animal products as like smoking: an irrational habit we cling to simply because we are addicted #WorldVeganDay.
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Here's an idea: why don't we clap for management consultants and pay health workers a thousand pounds a day?.
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These awards are sponsored by the Sun, so it's important that we all vote for Gary Lineker as best presenter.
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So, I've now seen Oppenheimer twice and here is my verdict. It is an extremely good movie with a major flaw: it exaggerates the importance of Lewis Strauss to such an extent that it becomes a movie, not about Oppenheimer, but about how Strauss tried to ruin him.
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If you're worried about climate change, there is something you can do about it: cut down on meat and dairy products. That is now official UN advice.
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Sunak's appalling gaslighting effectively exposed.
The Prime Minister’s boast at #PMQs having been told of a child eating cereal with water because their parents couldn’t afford milk should send the country into outrage. If you share my anger RT this widely
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Despite being fully vaccinated, I've got bloody covid! Be careful folks, there's an awful lot of it about!.
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No, I do not want to buy Wittgenstein's Poker. I've already got it. I don't want to buy The Great Philosophers: Russell by Ray Monk either. I've got all Ray Monk's stuff.
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So, today is my last day as Professor. Tomorrow, I start my life as Emeritus Professor. I feel old.
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I'm not usually a stickler for linguistic exactitude, but I do think it's important that "refute" does not mean the same as "disagree with".
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Why would anyone want to read a book about Shakespeare written by Boris Johnson when one could instead read one written by someone who knows what they're talking about and is a trustworthy scholar?.
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Did you know I was once the answer to a question on University Challenge? "Who wrote the biography of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein subtitled 'The Duty of Genius'". I knew that one!.
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Wittgenstein's emphasis on the use of expressions is helpful, I think, when considering "All lives matter". We need to understand how people are using that phrase - and it is *not* to express an obvious truth!.
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Just got an email from Academia with the subject heading "Mentioned by Ludwig Wittgenstein". Which was nice.
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Had a lovely cuddle with my gorgeous lil' grandson Milo this afternoon. Love him to bits.
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Previously unheard recordings of Bertie's unique voice! I hope they are all made available online.
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27 St John Street, Oxford, where Wittgenstein lived for a short while in 1951, a few months before his death. It was owned by his friend and student, Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband Peter Geach.
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They've pulled the final debate. They thought that these debates would give the public a chance to get to know the candidates better, but now they're realised that these debates will give the public a chance to get to know the candidates better.
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Well, that's it! I've taken up the university's voluntary severance offer & I'll be a man of leisure from 1 August this year! Looking forward to spending my time reading, taking photographs, walking, writing books & being with those I love.
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Had a great time tonight giving my talk on Oppenheimer at Jesus College, Cambridge. What an honour to have the questions chaired by Martin Rees, the greatest living British physicist. Here we are being introduced by the affable and very learned John Cornwell. Pic by Mark Hogarth.
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As a fit, healthy 63 year old, I would be happy to delay my vaccination if that meant that the life of a vulnerable person somewhere else in the world could be saved, and I am sure I speak for many of my contemporaries.
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"All opinions are equally valid." At times like these, this is not just a lazy falsehood, it is downright dangerous.
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"In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team." Surely one of Sartre's most penetrating insights.
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"The gold standard in the genre." I'm not above feeling rather proud to see that!
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"We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened." So says J. P. Morgan. Not Extinction Rebellion. J. P. Morgan.
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My latest article in Prospect, on quite possibly the most interesting person you've never heard of. via @prospect_uk.
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How would Wittgenstein have reacted if he had been asked to specify the "planned learning outcomes" of his course of lectures on philosophy?.
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Jeremy Corbyn has just produced documents that prove that Boris Johnson is planning to sell the NHS to US big pharma. Why isn't the whole country going nuts?.
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Today I had the pleasure of showing my friend and fellow Wittgensteinian Constantine Sandis round Salisbury Cathedral.
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For me, the BBC announcing to the world that it is now the vehicle for state propaganda is a much more significant event in our history than the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.
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Very honoured to be the author of one of Peter Hacker's top five books on Wittgenstein.
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Greta Thunberg's father Svante Thunberg is named after his distant relative Svante Arrhenius, who, in 1896, was the first person to realise that human-produced CO2 emissions were having a warming effect on the earth. Not a lot of people know that.
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I just received an email asking me what Wittgenstein would have thought about climate change. My answer might shock some people: I don't know and I don't really care. Far more important is what *we* do about climate change!.
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I was once asked, "Do you ever wake up in the morning and think, 'I can't be bothered with this Wittgenstein fella any more. I'm bored of him'?" Strangely, the answer is "no". Nearly fifty years after first being introduced to him, I still find him inexhaustibly fascinating.
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In addition to sadness, there's an uncanny aspect to grief, isn't there? I keep finding myself returning to the thought, "How can my dad no longer be here? How is that possible?" Those words don't quite capture the thought, but there is something unfathomable about death.
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My forgetfulness has reached a new level. I'm doing some co-writing, and my co-writer will say something about Wittgenstein and I will say: "Oh, that's interesting, I didn't know that. Where did you get that from?" And he will reply: "Your book".
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Just heard that my How to Read Wittgenstein is out in Chinese! Available from all good bookstores
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I know a lot of people don't like it when shop assistants address them as "love" or "darling", but I like it a lot. It makes the world seem a warmer, friendlier place.
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"She can't be a sex trafficker. I knew her at Oxford and she mixed with the very best people." A very British kind of bullshit.
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A question that has nagged me for most of my life is: why am I such a bad chess player?! It doesn't square with my image of myself. I should be at least average, surely? But, no, I am shockingly bad. I'm a disappointment to myself.
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The christmas tree in the library, University of Southampton. Very nice.
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Look what arrived today! Well done James and Alfred. That's Christmas sorted for y'all!
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Instead of talking about the "cost of living crisis", shouldn't we be talking about the "inequality crisis"? It's not that we as a country lack wealth, it's that this government has no interest in redistributing that wealth so that everybody can be fed and kept warm.
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The emperor isn't wearing no clothes. He's wearing Australian style clothes!.
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I see John Locke has got a new paper out, his first for about 300 years. The man's an REF liability. Perhaps he should switch to a teaching only contract?.
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Someone just wrote to me, apropos of nothing, that Wittgenstein was merely a "saloon philosopher". I attract a more highbrow kind of troll!.
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The BBC should just get Victoria Derbyshire to do all news and current affairs programmes. She does Question Time better than Fiona Bruce, Newsnight better than Kirsty Wark and Kuenssberg better than Kuenssberg.
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"The British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS." No we don't. We love it. We just hate what the Tories have done to it.
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"You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound." Jeeves giving Bertie Wooster the benefit of his philosophical judgment.
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America, how can it be this close? You're choosing between a narcissistic fascist hell bent on destroying US democracy and the planet and an uninspiring but basically decent guy who wants to do the right thing.
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To me, one of the most puzzling aspects of academia is the expectation that we will hand over copyright of our work in exchange for no remuneration at all. Now that I am retired, I have decided that I will no longer satisfy this expectation.
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This is the year in which I officially become an old age pensioner. Unfathomable. Inside I'm still a crazy kid with a head full of dreams.
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Just been asked who would win a dance off between Russell and Wittgenstein. The answer of course is Ludwig. Bertie would have had no sense of rhythm at all, while Ludwig, would have been the surprise revelation of the series. Craig: "Ludwig, my darling, you are fab-u-lous.".
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In the rush to "get the economy moving again", I can't help thinking we've missed an opportunity to re-think what kind of economy - and what kind of life - we want.
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I'm surprised so many people got into Prigozhin's private plane. If he'd said to me, "Ray, can I offer you a lift", I would have said, "Nah Yevgeny, you're all right, I'll make my own way there.".
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For me, the defining moment of 2020 was Dominic Cummings's press conference in the garden of No. 10. Not only was he obviously telling lies, he was given a platform by our PM to tell lies. That was the moment the government revealed its utter contempt for the British people.
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Just given a talk to the Jowett Society in Oxford, which was a historic occasion for me: the first time that I have ever addressed a body that was also addressed by Wittgenstein. Great fun it was too.
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I am 65 and have never known such a widespread sense of hopelessness, fear and despondency. The Tories have really ripped this country apart.
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"It's Bertrand Russell's 150th birthday today and with me to discuss his life and work is Professor Ray Monk."."Hello."."And now it's time for the news.".I was planning to say a bit more!.
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I am guilty of tweeting my Wordle scores but this still made me laugh.
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Dear BBC, "balance" does not dictate that for every sensible person you interview you also have to interview an idiot. That's not how it works.
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"A country in which you can’t see a GP for months and your mum can’t get an operation for years, where the beaches have been covered with sewage and the trains don’t work, is not one that can stand another round of spending cuts."
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We are systematically destroying the natural world in order to provide us with food that is killing us, transport that is overheating the planet and clothing and consumer goods that we do not need and which will end up in landfill in a year or two. It is utter madness!.
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Jo Johnson has just announced that he is quitting as Minister and as Tory MP. He wants to spend less time with his family, apparently.
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Finally had the result of the PCR test (the one that gets sent to a lab), and, unsurprisingly, it is positive. There is now no doubt about it: I have covid-19. And, frankly, I don't recommend it.
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Here's the discussion of the Tractatus at 100 I had with Monica Nadler Wittgenstein, Dawn Wilson and Juliet Floyd.
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When you look at the price we are paying for eating animals - in terms of pandemics, ecological damage, biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, systematic cruelty to sentient creatures - aren't you tempted to stop doing it?.
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So now Rees-Mogg has said it out loud. The point of Brexit was to provide an opportunity to "re-think the British state" so that it no longer provides "certain functions", you know like keeping us fed, educated, healthy or even alive. Scary.
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Don't Look Up is brilliant. It captures perfectly the sheer insanity of our age, in which world leaders, the media and business are in an unholy alliance to persuade us to ignore something - the reality of which we can all see with our own eyes - that threatens to kill us all.
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The reason the debates about whether this or that is or is not vegan are so tedious is this: the difference between eating lots of meat and almost no meat is far more important than the difference between eating almost no meat and absolutely no meat.
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Delighted to rediscover this. Jenny & I in March 1991, accepting the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for my Wittgenstein.
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