Books I've summarised and reviewed

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In Search of All Souls

I recently sat the All Souls Fellowship exam, called by some the " world's hardest exam ". It requires you to write twelve essays for four papers over two days; the breadth and novelty of the questions make it a fascinating experience. Two of the papers were "general papers" and two were in a humanities subject of your choice (in my case, philosophy); most papers had around 25 questions. I've summarised my answers below, as well as noting some of the other particularly interesting questions. General paper I: 1. How should you prepare for the end of the world? I started off with a somewhat emotional argument about the badness of death on an individual level. I referred to Epicurus' argument that we have nothing to fear from death because when we are dead, we will not have any preferences about it at all - but argued, in response, that having preferences about future states of the world is a foundation of our lives. In terms of the end of the
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25 poems

After about a decade of collecting and appreciating poems, I’ve decided to put together an anthology of my favourites, along with some commentary on what I like about each. My tastes lean towards short poems, and ones with an immediate poignancy or beauty to them - with a few notable exceptions which you’ll see below. I’m now 25, so it seemed appropriate to include 25 poems, in three sections. In general, poems are only ever about love or loss, and usually both, so the first two sections deal with those two themes. The third section consists of those rarest of creatures: non-romantic poems which are actually (mostly) happy. I hope you enjoy all of them as much as I have. Love poems: since feeling is first, by e e cummings No second Troy, by William Butler Yeats Marrysong, by Dennis Scott How do I love thee, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning A quoi bon dire, by Charlotte Mew La figlia che piange, by T. S. Eliot He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, by William Butler Yeats Jenny Ki
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Moral strategies at different capability levels

Let’s consider three ways you can be altruistic towards another agent: You care about their welfare: some metric of how good their life is (as defined by you). I’ll call this care-morality - it endorses things like promoting their happiness, reducing their suffering, and hedonic utilitarian behavior (if you care about many agents). You care about their agency: their ability to achieve their goals (as defined by them). I’ll call this cooperation-morality - it endorses things like honesty, fairness, deontological behavior towards others, and some virtues (like honor). You care about obedience to them. I’ll call this deference-morality - it endorses things like loyalty, humility, and respect for authority. I think a lot of unresolved tensions in ethics comes from seeing these types of morality as in opposition to each other, when they’re actually complementary: Care-morality mainly makes sense as an attitude towards agents who are much less capable than you, and/or can't make decision
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