Posts & Reflections
Thoughts on philosophy and theology; helpful advice on teaching, learning, and coding.
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The Archive
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Interview with Aidan Tynan about his new book The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy
Recently I interviewed Aidan Tynan about his book The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy, an excellent new addition to the Edinburgh University Press Crosscurrents series. Chris Watkin: What first drew you to contemplate the desert? Was there one book or encounter that originally led you to the importance of this motif? Aidan Tynan:
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The natural contract: four objections answered
Abbreviations CN Le Contrat naturel Bi Biogée Bio Biogea GB Le Gaucher boiteux Hom Hominescence In L’Incandescent Inc The Incandescent NC The Natural Contract P Le Parasite Par The Parasite RH Récits d’humanisme TDC Temps des crises TOC Times of Crisis TU ‘Temps, usure : feux et signaux de brume’ In the previous
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How a contract with the natural world can help us address the climate crisis
Since the publication of Michel Serres’s Le Contrat naturel (The Natural Contract) in 1990, the thesis that our social contract needs to be complemented and extended by a contract with the natural world has come in for sustained, and predictable, criticism. In this new mini-series of posts I want to clarify the natural contract idea,
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The social contract is imaginary. That’s why it’s so powerful
What is the point of a national anthem? Does it accurately portray the history of the nation it adorns? Seldom. Does it reflect current values and priorities? Hardly. Is it set to a rousing melody? Almost never. Is it achingly repetitive? In the case of the British national anthem, most certainly yes. And yet anthems
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What are the conditions of a strong social contract? Ricoeur on Rawls
To adapt a popular meme from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, “One does not simply… rewrite the social contract”. It isn’t something we can change at will. It doesn’t drop from the sky fully formed. And, as we know, it wasn’t simply “written” in the first place. The codified aspects of the social contract—the
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Christianity and the social contract: preliminary reflections
The paper below was prepared for the Jubilee Centre taskforce on the role of the state in the post COVID-19 world. Its intention is to provide a brief overview of classic social contract theory and then identify some ways in which the social contract paradigm relates to Christian theology. Enjoy! Christianity and the social contract
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COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter: The apocalypse of the social contract
In a previous post I began to consider how the COVID-19 pandemic stress tests our fragile social contract. I now want to pick up that thread again and ask why we are so willing to give up our natural freedom for the sake of the common good, and what the current crises reveal about the state
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António Guterres, Jean-Luc Nancy, and the new social contract
On July 18 this year the U.N. Secretary General António Guterres added his voice to the ranks of those calling for a new social contract, entitling his 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture ‘Tackling the Inequality Pandemic: A New Social Contract for a New Era’. But what does that mean? What do we want when we
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COVID-19 and the social contract
Man is born free, and everywhere today he in self-imposed chains, locked down under COVID-19 regulations. The term “lockdown” is of course a misnomer. With some notable but very infrequent exceptions, no-one is locking our doors and forcing each and every one of us to stay within our four walls. It is relatively trivial to
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An experimental video lecture on Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape
Can students really not concentrate for 50 minutes any more? Is constant interactivity really the only way to hold attention today? Might it be that resisting the commodotisation and commercialisation of attention requires modes of resistance that are deeper than simply cutting with the grain of addictive modes of engagement? It was in part in