In pursuit of smellosophy - using smell to pursue philosophical questions (more so than using philosophical tools to clarify the study of smell).
Smells tend to hint at something, the source of which needs to be sought out. You might have a sniff around if you’re suspicious. To get a whiff of, or be on the scent of something, is to have an intuition – to know, without quite knowing how you know what you know. Nietzsche and Derrida both had noses – an instinct – for philosophy: the sense of smell seems especially apt to describe the process of the creative philosopher seeking out original ideas or the sceptical one sniffing out lies. If clari…
In pursuit of smellosophy - using smell to pursue philosophical questions (more so than using philosophical tools to clarify the study of smell).
Smells tend to hint at something, the source of which needs to be sought out. You might have a sniff around if you’re suspicious. To get a whiff of, or be on the scent of something, is to have an intuition – to know, without quite knowing how you know what you know. Nietzsche and Derrida both had noses – an instinct – for philosophy: the sense of smell seems especially apt to describe the process of the creative philosopher seeking out original ideas or the sceptical one sniffing out lies. If clarity is the ideal output of philosophy, isn’t obscurity the ideal input? A realisation is something that dawns on you, and you are enlightened when it comes into full view. But it is smell that alerts you to what you don’t know you don’t know. The philosopher seeking to uncover something hidden from view must surely use their nose.
