Mowambi was breathing hard, panting like a wild animal, his leathery face wincing in the hot African sun. He had been hit cleanly through the side, the wound causing numbness in his abdomen.

You will appreciate that the title of my lecture is ironic. As yet, there has been no last philosopher, nor do I think there is likely to be one.

Where: the ninth floor of the Ritz Building, downtown in a median American city on the Southern side of the Mason Dixon Line, a city like Jacksonville, Savannah, or Montgomery, or none of them, or all of them.

We’re having the same argument before my sister and her kids come over for a barbecue. I’m running out of reasons he hasn’t heard before, so I tell him, “This morning I saw a woman at Stop & Shop with a bullet on her key chain.”