"The Beginning Comes Later" — How Philosophy and Comic Books Rewrite Their Own Origins

Opening Claim

We often think of the traditions of our lives as having their own lore and developments that we can study from the beginning, from philosophy with its rich and extensive schools of thought to music and its near-infinite genres and sub-genres. Historical study itself may seem to have a beginning that a scholar may start with before progressing along a set chronological curriculum.

Interestingly, comic books can help to show us that this isn’t exactly the case. Philosophy, comic books, and even history often seem to move forward by repeatedly returning to their beginnings. The past remains fixed in occurrence, but unfinished in meaning.

So I claim that what count as our origins, historically and personally, are retroactively constituted by the stories of our lives as they develop. New ideas and thinkers inherit and interpret an accumulated history that changes how the first stories are understood. This can give us insight into our own lives and into the paths we follow through education.

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Alessandro Cappuccio’s incredible new Wolverine #26 cover, inspired by FromSoftware video games that were themselves inspired by comics.

Where Are You Supposed to Start?

As I work on this project and the development of my own philosophy through my writing, as well as reflecting on how I want to teach philosophy to my kids, the question of where to begin appears to me often. I’ve written about the idea that explaining something’s origin is not the same as explaining the thing itself. For example, explaining that our feelings emerge from biological processes does not mean those feelings are unreal or invalid.

However, what does explaining the origin of something do? How do we do that? What about for philosophy itself? I began thinking about these things throughout the past few weeks and a comparison became apparent. The shared difficulty of entering the world of philosophy and that of comic books.…