It is a common bromide and accepted truism that if one has nothing to talk about, then one can always talk about the weather. From office parties to high school reunions, from blind dates to cross-Atlantic airline flights, weather is the go-to conversation starter that rarely succeeds in starting the conversation. That makes it particularly strange that a philosopher, a person who generally has too much to say – indeed, who belongs to a class of intellectuals deemed so stuffy and smug as to pride themselves entirely on the alleged depth and meaning of the things they say – would stoop so low as to talk about the weather.