Books and journal articles have become the dominant modes of presentation in contemporary philosophy. This historically contingent paradigm prioritises textual expression and assumes a distinction between philosophical practice and its presented product. Using Socrates and Diogenes as exemplars, we challenge the presumed supremacy of the text and defend the importance of ways of life as modes of practiced presentation. We argue that text cannot capture the embodied activity of philosophy without remainder, and is therefore limited and incomplete. In particular, we (...) contend that a static text is essentially alienated from our practices of philosophising, words cannot unambiguously represent lives, and practiced presentation enriches our understanding beyond words alone. After discussing some pedagogical implications, we conclude with a plea for a pluralistic approach that recognises lives as legitimate and valuable modes of philosophical presentation. (shrink)

The topic of standing to blame has recently received a lot of attention. Until now, however, it has focused mainly on the blamer's perspective, investigating what it means to say of blamers that they lose standing to blame and why it is that they lose this standing under specified conditions. The present paper focuses on the perspective of the blamees and tries to explain why they are allowed to disregard standingless, more specifically hypocritical, blame. According to the solution proposed by (...) the paper, while hypocritical blamers present themselves as caring about justice or about the moral or material good of the blamees—and they themselves half‐believe this presentation—their real motivation in blaming is less respectable. It is this problematic motivation that explains why blamees are permitted to disregard hypocritical blame. Ill‐motivated blame is often unreliable, and readiness to even consider it often involves a compromise on the self‐respect of the blamees. (shrink)