With speaker Helena De Bres (Department of Philosophy, Wellesley College)

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"Style: On Not Putting it in Afterwards" is a chapter from a short book de Bres has been writing called Philosophy in the First Person, which is essentially a set of philosophical personal essays about writing philosophical personal essays. The book is part memoir, part theory, part critique of academic philosophy, part writing guide, all in aid of her mission to make contemporary philosophy more personal and fun to write/read. Each of the four central essays in the book focuses on one of four core elements of personal essay writing—emotion, style, narrative and humor—that academic philosophical writing suppresses. In each case, the essay talks about professional philosophy’s uneasy relationship to that thing and tries to rehabilitate it as a respectable and desirable part of philosophy’s mission. And each essay does so personally, through an account of her own fraught relationship to these things across the course of her relationship with philosophy. The final chapter switches from manifesto/demonstration mode to advice mode, offering tips for how philosophy students and professors can begin writing philosophical personal essays of their own. "Style" is the third chapter, which follows an introduction to the book/project and an essay that’s partly about her first encounters with philosophy as a kid/teenager and partly about the role of emotion in philosophy.

Helena de Bres is Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. She works on philosophy of literature and moral philosophy, with a focus on personal narration, memoir and meaning in life.