Philosophy
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YouTube videos of ‘Ends of Autonomy’ colloquium papers: surveillance, neoliberalism, climate
This week my Warwick colleague Prof Oliver Davis and I co-hosted the second ‘Ends of Autonomy’ colloquium, eqploring how freedom is changing today in the light of new technologies, climate change and neoliberalism. Where presenters gave their consent, sessions were recorded and uploaded to the Ends of Autonomy Colloquia YouTube channel. Below are the videos
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From Plato to Postmodernism: Introduction
Here is the Introduction from my 2011 book From Plato to Postmodernism: The Story of Western Culture Through Philosophy, Literature and Art. The Introduction is entitled “To the man with a hammer …” human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but […] life
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Translation from Michel Serres’s thesis on Leibniz: “we must enrich our models of thinking which are, generally speaking, lamentably poor”
At the moment I am working my way through Michel Serres’s monumental Le Système de Leibniz et ses modèles mathématiques. I am struck by how many of the ideas that have come to be thought of as characteristically Serresian are already present implicitly or (more often than not) explicitly in this 800 page doctoral thesis. If it
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Michel Serres: “There are two kinds of philosopher: there are philosophers who shackle you and philosophers who free you”
Peter Hallward: Heidegger’s works on language, and on being-with, did they have any value for you? Michel Serres: I was so busy with sciences and techniques that it was very difficult to throw myself into an author who refused them wholesale. There are two kinds of philosopher: there are philosophers who shackle you and philosophers
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Paul Ricœur: Philosophy must have a foot outside philosophy, and must not end its dialogue with science
Je crois que la philosophie doit avoir un pied hors de la philosophie ; si on cesse ce dialogue avec les sciences, on produit alors une philosophie de la philosophie qui est répétitive d’elle-même, et prend par là même conscience de sa vanité. Paul Ricœur, ‘De la volonté à l’acte. Un entretien de Paul Ricœur
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Paul Ricoeur and the Autonomy of Philosophy: A Reappraisal
My article “Ricœur and the Autonomy of Philosophy: A Reappraisal” has just been published online in Philosophy Today. Abstract: Paul Ricœur repeatedly maintained that his philosophical reflection was autonomous from theological influence. Those who seek to contest this view have hitherto sought to deny the autonomy of philosophy from theology, but this article makes a