In Appreciation, 8 - Philosophical Dictionaries
It is often said that philosophy dictionaries are worse than insufficient, but that they are downright misguided at their core; that to nail down terms in this manner is to render conceptual beauty in the way a lepidopterologist might pin a specimen to the board. Lovely, lifeless.
This is a common position, but such people who advance this idea likely hate themselves and are temperamentally unfit for menial labor, much less principled discourse on matters lexicographical. They are the sorts of people who are avoided at family functions, and while tolerated in mixed company, generally foster a spirit of reservation and polite detachment that further reenforces such peculiarities of opinion and dispositional malaise. Even children recoil from such people, and for reasons they have yet to find words for.
The technical dictionary is an object of sheer fascination and beauty, not unlike a sunset or a brush fire. Seldom are we offered so complete a world in language of such breadth and shallowness. If to name a thing is to kill it, then there is no better facilitation of a walk among the bones1 than a collection of truncated, half-formed ideas woven together like a summer camp friend bracelet and presented with the arrogance and pomposity of a debutante descending the spiral stair of a garish mansion.
Talk to her.