Video & Audio
Lectures, interviews, panel discussions, and recorded appearances.
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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
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Stob lecture 2025 Video. The Human Remains: Fragility and Fulfilment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Here is a video of my 2025 Stob lecture, exploring the philosophical and theological implications of AI. My title was “The Human Remains: Fragility and Fulfilment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. I set out to argue that this is a very exciting time to be a philosopher or theologian, because AI is forcing on…
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Armitage Lecture 2025: “Custodians of the Common Good: Christian Education in a Post-Christian World”
In June I had the honour of delivering the annual Isaac Armitage Lecture at the Shore School, Sydney. My title was “Custodians of the Common Good: Christian Education in a Post-Christian World”. The video is now available: More information about the lecture can be found here.
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The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Introduction
An introduction to the book The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Tracing the Roots of Colonialism, Secularity, and Ecology, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2025. In this video, the first in a new series and rather longer than the others, I read the book’s Introduction, entitled “The State…
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Video: Panel on Biblical Critical Theory at ETS Conference
This panel, held to explore themes raised in Christopher Watkin’s book Biblical Critical Theory, was held at the 2023 conference of the Society for Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion, in San Antonio, Texas. The session was the Kirby Laing Centre’s Scripture and University Seminar. Welcome: Dr. Jonathan Arnold, (Cedarville University) Panelists: Dr.…
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Video: Panel on Biblical Critical Theory at ETS Conference
This panel, held to explore themes raised in my book Biblical Critical Theory, was held at the 2023 conference of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio, Texas. Moderator: Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt (Wheaton College) Panelists: Dr. Kristen Deede Johnson (Western Theological Seminary) Dr. Malcolm Foley (Baylor University) Dr. Greg Forster (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)…
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AUDIO TALK: Michel Serres and the Parasitic Unmaking of Modernity
This is the audio of a talk I gave at the International Philosophical Seminar (IPS) in June 2022. It begins by showing how Michel Serres rethinks the foundational modern moment of the state of nature, and it then sketches a way of understanding modernity in terms of three recurring moments: a flattening, a division and…
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Podcast: “Renewing our Mental Models With Michel Serres”
In June 2022 I had the privilege of giving a keynote address for the NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract conference at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, with the title “Renewing our Mental Models with Michel Serres”. The talk is now available as a podcast below. Abstract: As our understanding of the world changes over…
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VIDEO: Towards a General Theory of Figures
This is a video of a paper I gave to the The Research Unit of Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics, part of the Institute for Architectural Sciences in the Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP at Vienna University of Technology, at the invitation of Prof. Vera Bühlmann. In the talk I bring…
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Video: Our fractured state of nature: environment, emancipation, ecnonomy
This is a recording of a paper given at the Australasian Society of Continental Philosophy Conference, December 2021. Paper title “Artificial state of nature: how an aporia of myth shapes our experience of emancipation and the market” Abstract This paper argues that there are two contradictory modern Western understandings of nature, vividly captured in the…
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Video: Where is Rousseau’s state of nature?
This is a recording of a paper I gave at the 2021 Australian Society of French Studies Conference. Paper title: Siting Rousseau’s state of Nature Abstract: Rousseau’s account of the social contract relies, both logically and rhetorically, on his reconstruction of the so-called “state of nature”, a supposed pre-contractual condition of human life. There is…
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SPEP 2020 video and paper: Remembering and Thinking with Michel Serres
This September I had the privilege of taking part in a panel at SPEP 2020 (postponed until 2021) alongside Marjolein Oele and Brian Treanor. “Remembering and Thinking with Michel Serres” ranged over issues related to Serres’s contemporaneity, his natural contract idea, and the distinctiveness of his thought. Here is a recording of Brian’s paper and…
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Video: Advice on securing a large academic grant
I have been asked a few times in recent months what advice I would give to colleagues applying for competitive grants and fellowships, such as the Australian Research Council Discovery Project or Future Fellowship schemes. While my expertise is limited to my own experience and my one-time success in the Future Fellowship scheme, I’m more…
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TALK Rewriting the Social Contract – the Role of Christian Social Institutions
This guest lecture was delivered at Parliament House, Canberra, on 22 February 2021, at the invitation of the Church Community Restoration Project, an alliance of Christian community organisations committed to partnering government, individuals and communities as they face the challenges of a COVID-19 recovery in Australia. The lecture draws on research from the Australian Research…
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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…