Neither/Nor podcast · recorded 22 June 2026

Andrew Milward is an independent philosopher who, like me, came to philosophy through literature. For me it was a search for texts treating what matters in life and how to live it, which led me away from logic and towards Tolstoy at university. For Andrew it was Orwell’s 1984 in his early 20s: reading it as a critique of the Soviet Union led him to the Russian Revolution, then Marx, Hegel, and eventually Plato and the pre-Socratics. He too has followed his interests without the constraints, or the support, of any institution. We met on Mastodon, of all places; he’s now a regular in my London writing group, First Few Books. We spend the conversation on two of his works.

The Absent World (2017)

It starts from a question: how can we think and speak about things we can’t see? We talk about cities neither of us is standing in, essays neither of us is holding. Andrew names a gap between sense (everything belonging to language — speech, writing, thought) and referent (what language points at, whether that’s another piece of language, a physical thing, or a mix of the two). Language generalises: it leaves out whatever isn’t needed to communicate, and the gap widens the further the referent slips out of view.

At one end of the spectrum there’s no gap at all — in logic and mathematics, sense is self-referential, pointing at its own necessity rather than any outside object. At the other end Andrew creates a concept he calls depth: sense at its greatest possible distance from a referent, one that takes in everything. The payoff isn’t only philosophical. Depth should stop us flattening a person or a group into a conceptual label.

Wittgenstein and Deleuze (2025)

Here he sets out the method behind the essays and describes a non-epistemic philosophy. We usually recognise only two kinds: the epistemic kind that builds knowledge, and the sceptical kind that tears it down. He wants a third, which does neither. From Wittgenstein he takes “Don’t think, but look!” (Philosophical Investigations §66) — turning vision on our own thinking, with no attempt to grasp a hidden reality. From Deleuze he takes concept creation. The combination is the point: Wittgenstein alone left his early attempts flat, and the Deleuzian side was needed to build concepts that change thought. Depth is one of them — a fabrication that lives in language and claims to discover nothing out there.

Toward the end we find the overlap with Neither/Nor. My paper’s oscillation — loosen concepts through perception, then reform them into something usable — pairs with Andrew’s Wittgensteinian looking and Deleuzian creation. His sense/real duality maps onto my conceptual/experiential distinction: internal linguistic thought, external physical world. Both call for practices on each side — a life of thought and ideas, and a skilful embodied engagement with the physicality of living.

Andrew closes with a case for abstraction. Our abstract concepts don’t belong to a Platonic heaven, but their universal form lets them move fluidly in thought, and follow the path belonging to the idea itself. Each reader still has to apply it to a reality of their own.

Mentioned: Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men · Ellison, Invisible Man · Styron, Sophie’s Choice · Heller, Catch-22 · Orwell, 1984 · Marx · Hegel · the pre-Socratics · Plato, Republic · Nietzsche, The Gay Science · Kierkegaard · Frege · Lacan · Wittgenstein, Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations · Kripke, Naming and Necessity · Deleuze, Difference and Repetition and (with Guattari) What Is Philosophy? · Parmenides · Kant · Sextus Empiricus · Pyrrho · Badiou

Links

• Andrew’s essays and books: andrewmilward.net
• Support the podcast: Patreon
• The Neither/Nor paper (Kam & Granic, 2026): Nature / Humanities and Social Sciences Communications