I'm opening up this journal again because I'm trying (again) to do a book, but I don't yet have a clear enough idea of the structure to actually get started properly, and I need somewhere to write while I am getting to that point.

This isn't really an entirely new project, its a rolling together of all the book ideas I have had over the past ten years. The aim of the work is distinct however, and that will determine how much of the previous material might possibly be relevant (though I don't plan to re-use any of it).

This is a philosophical book project. The single most important impediment to me getting anywhere with philosophy so far has been that, on the one hand the definitely philosophical projects have not seemed to me to be important enough, and the closest I had to something important was the utopian ideas, which on the one hand were not really sufficiently philosophical and on the other hand I didn't really have clear enough ideas about how to write on that topic.

Also, as far as practical philosophy is concerned, ethics and politics, I didn't feel that I had a good enough grounding. Not that I feel I need much of a grounding! So I have done a certain amount of reading to improve that situation a little. That has been mainly Isaiah Berlin