Where Philosophers Write
Where do you like to write?
Via Jason Kottke, I learned of a recent article in Wallpaper with photos of the favored writing spaces of a dozen authors longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. Some write outside on benches, some at desks, at least one at the kitchen table.
How about you? In this post, I invite people to share photos of where they like to write. They can be first-person shots—the view from where you are now, perhaps—or photos of the whole set-up, or even selfies, if that works best to convey the environs.
One photo per person. Caption optional. To include a photo in a comment, click on the photo icon in the lower right corner of the comment box.
Having a 9-5 job, I get a lot of my writing done on the subway commute to and from it. (That’s not as much time as I’d like for scholarship, but in that regard I always say better 9-5 than 4/4.)
What, you can’t balance a computer on your lap on a moving train amidst jostling crowds in order to take a photo?
🙂
When I was working as a law clear to a judge and writing my disseration, I did a lot of my reading on my subway commute, but didn’t write there. The first draft of my dissertation was hand written on little note pads from my then-work, the Court of International Trade. I still have a big stack of them. A non-trivial amount of it was written at the laundromat a block or so away from where I lived at the time, on those note pads, while I was doing my laundry in the evenings.
Editing Hijab’s memoir.
I like the window and its position, like illumination is rising right out of the writing.
I have a rotation of coffee shops I write at. Each cafe has moreorless become “the” place to write for each area I’m writing in: one for prepping my classes and grading, one for research, one for prepping for Dungeons and Dragons, …
Sounds like your work is a crucial part of the local coffee economy.
Here, mostly. (At least it feels that way sometimes!)
I always suspected you operated on a higher plane.
This is just awful. (Congrats)
In bed
I often joke to people – or, rather, I say to them jokingly, as it is simply true – that I virtually immediately become stupid as soon as my body goes somewhat horizontal: I start having all sorts of worries about supposed problems and difficulties in my life that I later recognize to be totally overblown. I’ve had to teach myself that lying down time is not thinking time. In fact I seem to be doomed to forever trying to teach myself this, for this idea, too, is one that loses its evident status as I recline. This applies to “philosophical” thinking as well for me. This post makes me wonder again how unusual this is.
In fact I believe that this to a lesser extent applies to sitting down, too, and that I think my best thoughts on walks. I’m pretty sure I’d get more out of and contribute more helpfully to philosophy talks if they were held while walking through a forest. I think even just pacing around the room might actually help me. Sadly this is, to my knowledge, frowned upon in most places. I’ve actually even played around with the idea that it is a kind of (relatively minor) injustice/inequality that things such as philosophy are so overwhelmingly institutionalized in such a “sedentary”/”inactive” manner. (But I also feel semi-ridiculous even typing that.)
To actually answer the question in the original post: I in fact do almost all of my writing sitting down in the university library.
In bed, first thing in the morning, after everyone leaves for school/work
My humble office space
Nice art!
That’s Kandinsky?
In a small red plastic chair in the beach in front of my house in Liguria
You must have a very bright screen. And amazing willpower.
Currently between Christian Thomasius and Pierre d’Ailly
Nice
My house in Viladesuso, Spain
We will all be right over.
anytime! here’s the reading spot in my backyard
I do a lot of writing at a home office with two big monitors, which is great. But I also love writing (and reading) from the grounds of the National Cathedral, which is around the corner from my apartment. I recommend it if you are ever in DC.
There are both benches and a nice cafe with views of the Cathedral.
Yeah, that’s one
hell of anice view.Not the most inspired, but from my home office – (ethernet cable gets best reception in the house here).
uh nothing wrong with the view (bit blocked by fence) but you do know right that ethernet cables have nothing to do with wifi reception? and so if there is a better view in the house, you could in principle move away from that window (as long as you have another ethernet hub or an extension for your existing cable)
MCP, your fans think you should have a view to match your stature. You are no longer entry-level.
Entry level…? No one?
(In my defense, I am a dad.)
Next to the very tall window in my office looking out onto the Lawn at UVA.
Maybe the photo didn’t attach.
So tall it couldn’t fit in the photo!
Memorial Union Terrace, overlooking Lake Mendota.
Is the idea something like, “if I write three more pages, then I can go sailing”?
I love to write and work in cafes of all stripes and types. Here’s a photo of my table at the Finnish Sauna and Hot Tubs in Arcata, Humboldt County, near where I currently live (Eureka, CA). There is, of course, a long tradition of philosophers, poets, and artists thinking and writing in cafes from 18th-century Enlightenment figures like Voltaire and Diderot at Paris’s Café Procope to the 20th-century existentialists (Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir) at Café de Flore and, more recently the founding of modern Cafés Philo or Philosophy Cafés in the 1990s.
I don’t think my laptop could survive all the sweating.
My name is Karol Wysocki, and I’m a graduate student in philosophy at Politechnika Gdańska. This is the view from my student flat. It’s a fitting backdrop for my current research on the little-known Polish phenomenologist Marek Zieliński, whose early writings explored how urban architecture shapes lived experience. My days are spent drafting chapters on Zieliński’s concept of “structural solitude,” which I argue anticipates later debates about social alienation. From this window, I often pause to reflect on how philosophy and place intertwine—sometimes bleakly, sometimes beautifully.
Often on the dining table next to our kitchen. I have an actual desk downstairs in my room and yet somehow all of my books end up on the dining table.
Have always enjoyed writing/thinking here. Amazing light and the atmosphere is perfect
My view while writing. It has inspired many productive writing sessions.
A corner in my living room, at Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria.
That’s a lot of devices out of battery at the same time!
For me, it depends on the stage of writing.
I do most of my writing at this desk at home, mostly because it’s convenient, or on a couch with my laptop. Not much to look at, except for a bird house and feeder out the window—which is fine since it minimizes distractions when I need to focus.
Sometimes I’ll turn on the lava lamp and have background music on for premium vibes. It’s like a writing cave, at least when it’s not a cattery for my wife’s foster kittens (like Yukio pictured here from a couple years ago).
But if it’s early in the writing process and I’m sketching out ideas or an outline, then I don’t want to be at a desk but anywhere else, though typically still not around crowds of people, like in a cafe.
The view still doesn’t matter. It can be on the beach, in a car or plane, in front of a TV, wherever inspiration strikes me and I have some dedicated time. And I don’t like to do this sketching-out on a laptop but with paper and pen. (Pencils are too wishy-washy.)
One place I cannot get serious work done is at my university office. I wish I could, but there’s too much going on over there. I just mostly have meetings there and try to get small things done in between classes, etc.
Sonipat, Haryana, India
I love writing at this table in the central common space in Virginia Tech’s philosophy department. There’s great lighting, my small garden, and chats with my colleagues passing through. In general, I enjoy spaces with occasional pleasant distractions. It helps keep up my enthusiasm, especially while writing difficult sections.