Posts & Reflections
Thoughts on philosophy and theology; helpful advice on teaching, learning, and coding.
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French Philosophy Today: Summary of Chapter 2 – Meillassoux
This is the second in a series of posts providing short summaries of the chapters in my latest book, French Philosophy Today: New Figures of the Human in Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Serres and Latour. For further chapter summaries, please see here. Chapter 2 continues exploring the contemporary permutations of the host capacity account of humanity
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French Philosophy Today: Summary of Chapter 1 – Badiou
Over the coming days I will be posting brief summaries of the argument of French Philosophy Today: New Figures of the Human in Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Serres and Latour, chapter by chapter. Here is the main argument of Chapter 1, on Badiou. This first chapter probes the limits of Badiou’s “formalised inhumanism”. It argues that it
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In this Sunday’s Age and Sydney Morning Herald I’m quoted talking about robots, consciousness and Descartes
With the publication of my book on contemporary limits and transformations of humanity coming out next month I had the chance this week to talk with John Elder of The Sunday Age about the future possibility of rights for robots. John’s article came out today in The Sunday Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, with the title “What happens
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Michel Serres’s The Parasite: A Reader’s Guide. 148 page document to download
Over the past few weeks I have been working my way through Michel Serres’s 1980 Le Parasite: a dense, poetic, brilliant text that seeks to tear down and rebuild the way we think about everything. In reading the book I kept a running list of intertexts to which Serres refers, a document that runs to some
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Third Derrida Podcast: Derrida, Atheism and Theology
The third of the podcasts on Derrida and Reformed theology has now been released. The first considered questions of metaphysics and the second focused on Derrida’s ethics; this final podcast discusses Derrida’s engagement with theological themes. I begin by discussing Derrida’s cautious affirmation that “I rightly pass for an atheist”, and try to dismantle the myth that, for
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Second in the Derrida and Reformed Theology Podcast series: Derrida’s Ethics
In this episode I talk very briefly about the growing willingness to accept, from the mid 1990s onwards, that deconstruction is indeed ethical, before tackling the myth that Derrida is a relativist. I unpack the phrase “tout autre est tout autre” (“every other is wholly other”) from Derrida’s reading of Kierkegaard on Genesis 22 and
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Cover proofs of French Philosophy Today, and endorsement by Clayton Crockett
Here are the newly minted cover proofs for French Philosophy Today, with the blurb and an endorsement by Clayton Crockett: ‘In this important book Christopher Watkin shows us the transformations of the human in the work of five contemporary philosophers who exceed the limits of post-structuralism. His treatments of Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Serres and Latour
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A diagrammatic snapshot of French philosophy from Magazine Littéraire, September 1977
Today I was given a copy of this edition of the Magazine Littéraire from September 1977 (thank you Philip). Its centrefold is a diagram seeking to represent flows of influence between contemporary philosophers. The table provides a fascinating snapshot… Marx is top and centre, flanked by Freud and Nietzsche. Influences are split between the two poles of
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French Philosophy Today: New figures of the Human, low-res cover
Today I received the first low resolution mock-up of the cover for my new book: French Philosophy Today. New Figures of the Human in Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Serres and Latour. Many thanks to Rebecca Mackenzie and Julien Palast for your wonderful work.