Ask the Author: Andrew Pessin
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Andrew Pessin
I'm a philosophy professor, fascinated in particular by the many strange ideas and creative ways of thinking about the world that some of the smartest philosophers have come up with. The 17th century philosopher René Descartes, the famous "I think therefore I am" guy, in fact had a bunch of these, and was so creative and original that he's earned the label "father of modern philosophy"--his perception of the world was so unique that it really amounted to starting philosophy "all over," and we've all been working within his framework for almost four centuries now. So one mystery in my life--an intellectual mystery--has been trying to really understand and make sense of his incredible thought processes. But that immediately led to another mystery, namely that surrounding his death. He was invited by the Queen of Sweden to become her "Court Philosopher," and soon thereafter died under mysterious circumstances, promptly giving rise to suspicions of murder. The mystery of understanding why someone might be motivated to murder a philosopher--his ideas were that radical--in turn gave rise to the mystery of understanding the life that LED to his producing those radical ideas. Thus was born my new novel "The Irrationalist"--an historical murder mystery based on real events, the sad life and very mysterious death of the world's most famous philosopher. The intellectual mystery I have been pursuing in my professional life for some years thus produced an historical murder mystery!
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