Your complimentary articles
You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please
If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.
To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.
If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.
Books
On Not Being Someone Else by Andrew H. Miller
Alexandre Leskanich looks wistfully at all the lives he and we haven’t led.
“Nothing is of greater moment than the knowledge that the choice of one moment excludes another, that no moment makes up for another, that the cost of one moment is the cost of what it forgoes.” This quote by Stanley Cavell closes a book of admirable insight and sensitivity, attuned to an apparently simple, yet haunting, idea: that my life, or yours, could have been completely different. Perturbed by this thought Andrew Miller, who is Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, reflects on the ability of art to approach lives we’ve never led – lives that, nevertheless, may help us reflect upon who we are.
Our lives are lived constantly forwards, each moment a point at which something else – or someone else – could have happened. Each choice I make forecloses on another.
…