AutoBioPhilosophy: An intimate story of what it means to be human

AutoBioPhilosophy: An intimate story of what it means to be human
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AutoBioPhilosophy is an astonishingly frank and original autobiography that explores the fundamental question of what it means to be human.Robert Rowland Smith’s life story involves a love triangle, office politics, police raids, illegal drugs, the academic elite and a near-death experience. It sees him grappling with the tragic fate of his father, going through a double divorce and encountering a living divinity. We witness him confronting his demons but also looking out for angels.A former Oxford don, Robert uses these deeply personal experiences to generate philosophical insights that will resonate with everybody. What are the recurring patterns, unconscious motives and social forces that govern our behaviour? Through his experiences, and referencing writers from Shakespeare to Freud, he offers new models and ways into human psychology.As we are led into Robert’s private world, we gain an understanding of what it means to be human that is relevant to all.

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Robert Smith Rowland. AutoBioPhilosophy: An intimate story of what it means to be human

Copyright

Foreword

Author’s Note

1. Blood and Water

Mutiny in the body

Institutionalised

Trouble in paradise

The axe falls

Man’s character is his fate

Our parents are foreigners in time

Performance versus belonging

The madness of decision

The contribution sextant

Soul knowledge

Frenemies

What’s in a name?

Incurable souls

Happiness

2. The Dream of Three Daughters

Down and out in Oxford and Croydon

Haunting

Sex: more recreation than reproduction

Self-sabotage

Pomegranate in a shoebox

A staircase without stairs

Too much freedom

Red voice, green voice

The dream

C’est une fille

Secret motives

The future of the past

The importance of doing nothing

A pint of Guinness

3. The Keys to the Tower

On purpose

French intellectuals

The purpose star

The golden arch

The shape of a trilby

AutoBioPhilosophy

Praying for all the souls of the Hundred Years’ War

Parfit nominat Smith R. R

How a cat can be an angel

The Lord Mallard

Integration

Paternal and maternal purpose

Human lefts

Disintegration

4. A Love Quadrangle

Miteinandersein

The curious Maddison

Three: that’s the magic number

Big Brother

World-forms

The logic of emotion

The splitting of the ice sheet and the end of the Ice Age

Fallout

Guilt is good

Lovesick

Pause before re-beginning

Second-hand news

5. Going to California: a case of aller-retour

At the Randolph Hotel

Twinkle, twinkle

Fish, water

Respect vs. engagement vs. control

Capital

1 August 1997: Day one

Beneficial harm

28 October 1997

White space, yellow pages

Adaptive fantasy

A tale of two tales

Boomerang Schadenfreude

2–14 January 1998

15 January 1998

Fireflies

The ring cycle

11 April 1998

June 1998

8 July 1998

16 September 1998

The happiest day of my life

October 1998

October 1998

January 1999

9 February 1999

February 1999

June 1999

Identity Jenga

Graham, the accountant from Purley

6. Office Politics

A cloud of gnats beneath a pine tree

Them and us

Divided by the same language

The cultural thermostat

An abortive attempt at cloning

The miracle of multiples

The mystical foundation of authority

A cure for deafness

The butterfly effect

COMPARTMENTS

Inside the Map Room

A single ball of wax

Shade-loving plants

The infinite tuning-fork

The spectral beauty of the West Pier

Il faut cultiver son jardin

7. Near Death

The one-way dolphin

Improbable origins of the double divorce

The semi-stranger

Three visits to a country house and one excursus on death

Half in love with easeful death

I look up, I look down

Two white lines

In the mountains, there you feel free

The animus cake

Adamantine™ and the chronic emergency

Two important phrases: ‘Release its grip’ and ‘I will live’

Kindertotenlieder

The invention of zero

8. The Forms of Things Unknown

Planets of knowledge

Real Imaginaries

Why the spirit is no spade

The Thing

Meditation ≠ mediation

Handing over your sunglasses

A feather tied to an anvil

Blood of gold

A free lottery ticket

The sheep dip

The gift of grace and how not to avenge it

A sigil stamped on wax

Fibre-optic

Spiritual but not religious

The cloud of unknowing

That oceanic feeling

9. Portraits of Love

Perfect symmetry

Seashells near the seashore

A broken plate

Abandon all hope

The artist’s way

High windows

Overdetermined

Weird artefacts of attraction

Monochrome paint-balling

The pink whiteboard

The ‘solus’

Creatures of love

Suppose the man should fall asleep

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Epitaph

Illustration Credits

Footnotes. 1. Blood and Water

2. The Dream of Three Daughters

3. The Keys to the Tower

4. A Love Quadrangle

5. Going to California: a case of aller-retour

6. Office Politics

9. Portraits of Love

By the same author

About the Publisher

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Cover

Title Page

.....

So tricky are such genuine dilemmas that reason can take us only so far towards resolving them. That is why the Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida, for example, writes about the ‘madness of decision’.fn2 Whatever the logical steps involved in the run-up to it, the decision itself marks a leap into the dark. That leap is the point at which reason can no longer help, because now it’s a matter of acting. You close your eyes and jump.

That’s what Rowland did. He acted with the unavoidable madness of all action. By not ducking the decision, he was, for good or for ill, accepting accountability. Was this something that he had learned in wartime? He had won an OBE for his actions. If Colin was the poorer performer, keeping him on might have put the business at risk. That would have impacted everyone. We can choose to see Rowland’s decision not as the cold-hearted rejection of his firstborn, but as a judicious move for the greater good. After all, the gravity of the decision can’t not have affected him.

.....

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