(ok mild spoilers ahead) Really why! I enjoyed them both and I read Deepness in the Sky first. It was a bit of a shock about FTL for me but I kind of granted narrative license so he could explore the range of consequences there, like with FTLness being distributed over a field of sorts. But yeah the dogs were dope, their packs, the interaction of the technological bootstrapping with them. Yadda yadda. I can't say I am familiar with his philosophy either

Any essays or articles in particular you're thinking of in relation to his philosophy?

Vinge is a full-on anarcho-capitalist. This is most evident in the Realtime series, particularly The Ungoverned which is pretty much entirely about the Bad Statists vs the Good Libertarians with Nukes. But it's also fairly obvious in Deepness, and to a lesser extent in Fire.