The way that politicians are questioned by the television and radio media in the UK is intended to ensure neutrality on the part of the interviewer and media organisation.  It is clear that this is the intention and yet we need to look at the terms in which such neutral ground is set out.

Politicians are questioned in terms of the possible reality of their policies and plans.  This comes first.  Policies and plans must fit into a predetermined sphere of possibility.  What can be achieved, ...

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I've just enjoyed attending this year’s SEP/FEP conference at Regent's University London.  Very pleasant to find that the university is located in the middle of Regent’s Park, the tranquility of which is enhanced by its location in a dense and crowded metropolis.  I found the papers rigorous and stimulating.  I heard a number on Heidegger that focused upon the rigorous nature of his thought, distilling the problems that animate his texts.  One, by Elena Bartolini of the University of Mi...

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Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is a difficult read.  It is well known that the surviving corpus of his works comprises rough drafts or lecture notes. These are known as his esoteric works while the finished, polished, crafted and accessible exoteric works are lost.  Yet there is a sense of clarity and purpose in the attempts made in this rough and disjointed prose to found, to ground and to establish.  There is a determination to mark out clearly how a science or discipline is formed and c...

Continue reading ...

Of late I have been exploring Aristotle’s thought.  Common approaches to this thinker – familiar in introductions, courses and elsewhere – focus upon Aristotle’s ethics and his teleological conception of nature.  His Four Causes also feature prominently as a source for proofs of God’s existence by much later thinkers.  These appear in the context of age-old and well-established debates about the nature and value of virtue ethics, and the problems of maintaining a teleological concep...

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A review I wrote of Heidegger's The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpetation of Anaximander and Parmenides (Indiana University Press, 2015) has just appeared in Philosophy in Review.  In my previous blog post I talked about some of the problems and questions that arise in these lectures from 1932.  There is a danger of seeing here only an anti-scientific and mystical leaning here.  Yet Heidegger is self-aware and responds to concerns about his method of interpreting other thinkers.  Gen...
Continue reading ...

A reading of Heidegger’s The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (trans, Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 2015) raises some important questions about the role of science in his thought.  I am concerned with evaluating the apparently negative and unproductive role science seems to have in Heidegger’s work. 

Heidegger seems to dismiss science in his interpretation of Anaximander:

‘Indeed, what is not decisive is the magnitude in number o...

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I've been working on a reading of Aquinas' architectonic which is now among the online texts section of this website. Principles for constructing an architectonic emerge as Aquinas thinks through the nature of disciplines.   
Continue reading ...

Having just attended a conference on medieval physics I am struck by the difficulty in defining the activities of these thinkers.  On the one hand universities in this era insisted on a training in physics, informed by classical texts and Aristotle in particular, before students could study theology.  The medieval physics that developed sought a rational understanding of nature and thus distinguished itself from inward looking  Augustinian and Platonic notions of study.  A drive to mathematic...
Continue reading ...

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I have just reviewed Claudo Romano's There Is: The Event and the Finitude of Appearing for Phenomenological Reviews. This was an engaging read and encounter with this rigorous exploration of phenomenology. Romano is really insightful in his commitment to phenomenology and resolute in seeking to find answers here to contemporary problems.  Rather than a turn to the pre-critical era of philosophy or to natural science we find a thorough engagement with phenomenology that reveals its vital and l...

Continue reading ...

Alarming news about the future of Heythrop College has emerged.  The loss of its undergraduate philosophy and theology courses always means that years of work creating a community of students and scholars exploring a subject together is sacrificed.

I first came into contact with Heythrop College as a sixth form student.  I attended a couple of events where Heythrop’s Peter Vardy was speaking in his engaging and enlivening way. He managed to inspire us with the power of philosophy to account ...

Continue reading ...

A recent issue of Consciousness, Literature and the Arts features an article which charts the history of the concept of sublimation in order to reveal its transdisciplinary dynamics. In so doing it offers a way of understanding how transdisciplinarity comes about and functions. In his exploration entitled ‘On the Transdisciplinarity of Freudian Sublimation’ Jonathan Michael Dickstein highlights the cooperation of different disciplines.  He argues that this is the result of their mutual de...

Continue reading ...

An article on the Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ website responds to the AQA exam board’s proposals for a new A-level philosophy specification. Under the title ‘Philosophy is not religion. It must not be taught that way’ Charlie Duncan Saffrey raises major problems with the changes.  I agree with the thrust of his argument which is the need to distinguish philosophy at A-level. The author has taught the current specification and values its breadth and depth of engagement with philosophy...

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The British Philosophical Association has posted a statement on its website concerning the proposed changes to the AQA A-level Philosophy specification.  In my last post I criticised the proposals for the restrictions they place on the areas of philosophy that can be studied and their similarity to the religious studies A-levels.  The BPA offer a defence of the proposed changes which refers to urgent problems with the current specification.

Many concerns have been raised about the clarity of...

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The mailing list Philos-l brings alarming news about The Future of A-level Philosophy.  In a previous post I sought to defend this qualification and to question the increasing move towards the philosophical aspects of the religious studies A-level in school sixth forms.  Rather than going into either subject in sufficient depth and breadth there is a tendency to focus on the areas these two subjects have in common.  Now AQA are planning changes to A-level philosophy which bring it much closer...

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Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? (Penguin, 2012) is a book that it is difficult to ignore.  It has been prominently displayed in bookshops and has caught my eye as I wandered past in search of the philosophy section.  Writing a book on a current and pressing problem which has real depth and critical force is a difficult thing to do.  Problems like this are generally staged in over-determined spaces of public debate where the alternatives, the language and the very being of the pr...

Continue reading ...

Is being ‘interdisciplinary’ an entirely practical thing?  Conferences and books that cross disciplines aim to practice interdisciplinary.  They do not theorise but engage in interdisciplinary activities.  They find places where disciplines meet or can potentially meet in tackling a problem or thinking about an object.

There are interdisciplinary centres which seek to represent this work and challenge the pressure of specialisation which creates ever higher boundaries and exclusive dom...

Continue reading ...

“I am not exaggerating when I say that this flood [of academic publishing] is eroding academic intellectual life. It has become impossible for anyone to maintain an overview of a single, even fairly narrow subject - let alone a discipline as a whole.  When I began work on a PhD on the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the late 1970s, it was possible for me to keep up with almost everything new that was being published on Hobbes in Britain, the US and western Europe, while devoting most of my t...

Continue reading ...

Lately I have been considering the current state of the teaching of philosophy at A-level.  There is a philosophy A-level offered by AQA.  This is an excellent course because it requires students to develop significant subject knowledge and to tackle core problems in philosophy.  However, increasingly schools are offering the subject of ‘philosophy and ethics’ at A-level when this refers to certain modules on the various A-levels in religious studies offered by OCR, AQA and Edexcel.

My...

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I have just returned from a trip to the ETH in Zurich where I was talking to academics and Masters degree students working in computer-aided architectural design and the theory behind it.  This was a very enjoyable and productive interdisciplinary discussion.  I gave a talk on the history of architectonics in philosophy and how the ‘crisis of foundations’ lead to a re-thinking of architectonics.  Our discussions explored the relations between the disciplines and how these can be articul...

Continue reading ...

My book is published today.  I am keen to gage reactions to the book because it was intended to intervene in current debates including those concerning the way we read Kant, transcendental arguments and the nature of Deleuze’s thought.  I cannot help wondering what the response will be to my approach.  I give a close reading of parts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in an attempt to ‘return to basics’, trying to understand the starting point of this book and the nature of the ‘ar...

Continue reading ...

I am currently working on an introductory lecture on architectonics which I will be delivering in Zurich next week.  I am always struck by the way in which this subject makes one return to the basics of philosophy.  A concern with the foundation, or lack of foundation, of knowledge is refreshing.  One has to think about whether philosophy has, or should have, solid ground beneath its feet.  It may be argued that this is too simple and naïve in its approach given the advances made in philosop...

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In my recent posts I have expressed my frustration with teaching theory and the discipline of education in general.  However, there is a depth of scholarship in this field that I am in danger of overlooking.  One has to spend the time to look into this rather than being rushed by the requirements of a course.  Sarah Benesch has looked at the role of classrooms as space or arenas of social change (‘Critical Praxis as Materials Development: Responding to Military Recruitment on a U.S. Campu...

Continue reading ...

An obsession with measuring activity means that it needs to be obvious and unmistakable.  This is the only way we can be sure about it and calm our fears.  When it comes to teacher training, such as course I am currently undertaking, it is often assumed that one is passive when one is listening.  ‘Lecturing is the least effective form of teaching’, we assume.  It is supposed that we retain the least information if we are listening.  We must ask ‘Are my students active?’  We must prove...

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The mire of teacher training in which I am currently submerged brings a number of things into focus.  Whilst psychology dominates in education theory there is some use of philosophy.  The discipline of education or teaching emerged relatively recently and it is made up of elements from other disciplines.  However, the philosophy used is often half-digested and the terms of the debate too limited.  The reason given for this is that we need to be practical and focused upon what applies and wo...

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A very interesting debate has been taking place between different bloggers over the way we should read philosophy.  The issue is whether thinkers like Kant, Husserl or Derrida can be presented as realists in order to meet the challenges posed by speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy.  The notion that such philosophies are caught in the ‘correlationist circle’, as Quentin Meillassoux argues, has been challenged by those seeking to establish the realist credentials of these phi...

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This news story about some unseen Kafka manuscripts points to a real problem: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10682482 .  An expert is being allowed to look at this unpublished work in order to help a judge rule over the ownership of the manuscripts.  It seems very wrong that privately owned manuscripts can be kept secret.  Even if the documents belong to a private individual the writings contained could surely be made public.  Scholars may have no access to potentially important work ...

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I am trying to write about something that has preoccupied me for a number of years.  This is the relation between Deleuze and Badiou.  Their differences have been a major focus for recent debates over the future of philosophy.  Their have been sustained and sometimes polemic treatments of Deleuze’s work which follow Badiou in alleging the neglect of the actual in favour of the virtual, the political and scientific in favour of the artistic, and the spatial in favour of the temporal.  Resp...

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The challenge posed to transcendental philosophy by forms of naturalism has been a theme of philosophy since Kant.  However, the challenge today is particular strong and its arguments persuasive.  The emerging movements of speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy continue to gather momentum.  Transcendental philosophy is charged with being limited by the correlation between thought and being or consciousness and reality.  It suffers from a lack of ambition, a modesty that makes it a...

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The recent activity on the internet in response to Middlesex University’s decision to close its philosophy courses reflects the importance of the work done in this department.  It is strange to have attended a conference a couple of weeks ago organised by the Middlesex philosophers, held at the Institut Français in South Kensington and featuring international speakers of great renown, and then to find that Middlesex University wants to close this department.  It has a towering record in ...

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A recent post at object-oriented philosophy puts the case for naiveté.  It seems that naiveté forms part of the method of an ‘object-oriented philosophy’.  This makes a comparison with Deleuze’s methodological naiveté interesting.  Deleuze’s philosophy of difference called for naiveté because difference was considered to be real rather than a structural, textual or linguistic difference that defers or masks any direct grasp of the real.  Differential Ideas are realised in sensatio...

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In my last post I put forward some thoughts about how disciplines are defined.  An article in the current issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement contributes to the debate when it offers a critique of aspects of business studies and business schools.  This is not an attack on the importance of studying business but rather a questioning of the way this discipline is organised, managed, taught and distinguished from other fields.  A change is traced in the history of business studies.  A...

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Thinking about the relations between the disciplines and about the problems surrounding the specialisation of knowledge leads again and again to a pressing question.  How do we define a discipline?  This is not a fashionable question given that if any discipline tries to define other disciplines it opens itself to the accusation that it is setting itself above those other disciplines.  This would work against the equality of disciplines and the assemblages that result from disciplines relatin...

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Over at Infinite Thought the growing cuts to philosophy provision at new universities in the UK, those formed since 1992 when polytechnics were granted university status, is the subject of an important post.  The argument is made that this forms part not of a response to student demands or needs but of a new conception of what new univerities should be.  They should no longer bring the subjects studied for centuries at older universities to more and more people but are instead heading towards...
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Edward Carr’s article ‘The Last Days of the Polymath’, published recently in Intelligent Life, raises questions that are of fundamental importance today.  My interest in architectonics stems from the same concerns but draws upon the history of philosophy to find resources to challenge the reign of specialisation that Carr is also keen to question.  He ends the article by referring to Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between ‘foxes’ who know many things and ‘hedgehogs’ who know one ...

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I am currently working on a paper that begins with the notion that philosophers seek to ‘clear the ground’ – to avoid presupposing what they are seeking to account for – and then seek to walk upon the cleared ground.  They must feel that they ‘walk upon solid ground’ or are ‘in touch with reality’.  This might seem to be a statement of the obvious but if philosophy begins at all it must find the zero-point and then set forth while feeling confident that the system building ...

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I have been ruminating on an issue I raised in a recent post that considered Badiou’s reading of Hegel.  This concerns a theory of problems that is positive and effective rather than problems being things that are always destined to be solved.  The other danger is that they become so established that they structure social space, as the Oedipus Complex does, and thus over-determines and stifles thought and practice.  Different theories of problems may make them insignificant or it may make t...

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I first met Joe shortly before the start of the MA in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick that we both took in 2002-03.  He was reading a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in the corner of the Virgin and Castle public house in Kenilworth which I had just entered with a couple of other Warwick students.  Hearing us talk about philosophy he introduced himself and almost immediately was engaging us in the most scintillating conversation.  The basis of his erudition and skill as a racont...

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At page 170 of Being and Event Badiou ends his reading of Hegel’s philosophy by locating a ‘fragile verbal footbridge’ at its heart.  The unity of his system is said to depend upon a fragile construction which aims to span a gap that for Badiou must be treated very differently.  I am interested in the history of philosophy which runs throughout Being and Event.  The assessment of Hegel here (in Meditation 15) echoes his treatment of Spinoza (in Meditation 10) which I puzzled over in a p...

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I often listen to BBC Radio 4 and recently enjoyed a program on conservatism and the philosophy behind it (the program formed the last fifteen minutes of The Westminster Hour on 4th October 2009).  The point was made that conservatism seems to avoid philosophy because of its dislike of state control and interference, and of abstract theories.  However, what was interesting was the philosophy that has been developed by conservatives.  Naturally, Roger Scruton was a contributor and argued tha...

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I am currently reading volume 2 of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  A very rich commentary on this work has been in progress over at Object-Oriented Philosophy and this prompted me to return to this text after some years.  The refreshing nature of Gibbon’s history, his humour and scepticism, makes it a joy to read.  The influence of Montesquieu is something I recently learnt about and this adds a great deal to my understanding of this ‘philosophi...

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When considering the current debate over the role of public libraries one is constantly aware of the danger of being a reactionary.  I hear debates on Radio 4 where one side talks about the need for equality and for more inclusive libraries that are less stuffy and provide room for ‘coffee and conversation’.  On the other side the ‘traditionalist’ comes across as out of date or elitist in their concern with silence, musty smells and ambience.  The point is made that people don’t rea...

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An ongoing and vital debate is touched upon by Robert Eaglestone's review of Alex Danchev's On Art and War and Terror in the Times Higher Education Supplement:

While academics are frequently exhorted to aspire to interdisciplinary work, this often boils down to tacking a discussion of a novel on to a piece of historical writing, or making reference to a few events to contextualise a picture.  Real interdisciplinary work goes on when there is something unique and unifying beyond, or perhaps be...
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Being and Event is comprehensive and systematic in its engagement with the history of philosophy.  Badiou seeks the void in the work of great philosophers and shows how it is both developed and suppressed in their works - Christopher Norris calls this a 'diagnostic' method for reading philosophical texts in his guide to Being and Event.  In part 1 Plato and Aristotle are the two poles of the debate over fullness and the void.  In part 2 Spinoza appears and is shown to locate the threat of the...

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A recent request for information on courses being taught on 'meta-philosophy' on philos-l (the philosopher's mailing list) gave rise to a number of responses.  I found this interesting because of philosophy's singular concern with the foundations of other disciplines but also with its own - this is the job of philosophy if it is concerned with architectonics.  For Kant philosophy must provide an account of knowledge as such (propaedeutic) and then provide an organon of principles for other di...
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A debate is going on in the Times Higher Education Supplement over the value of teacher training in Higher Education.  It is a debate that is of course always going on but a letter in response to a recent article is particularly striking.  I have heard teacher training described as ‘self-perpetuating’ by some.  It is a criticism also levelled at management theory and seems to concern disciplines that have emerged relatively recently and whose claims to importance conflict with those of ol...

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I recently attended a paper and discussion concerned with the teaching of philosophy at which the notion was put forward that philosophy has everything to do with abstraction and the abstract.  This is one of those notions that seems obvious but then suddenly appears to be really a big assumption.  If we consider the work of Gilles Deleuze, in the 1975 book on Kafka that he wrote with Felix Guattari and also in their other joint works, the concrete comes to define philosophy.  One notion or p...

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I would like to put forward some reflections in response to the Speculative Realism movement and its challenges to Transcendental Philosophy. In chapter 4 of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude we find a critique of arguments from probability. The basis for this is the rejection of the notion that we can totalise reality and then argue on the basis of probability or chance. This opens the way for making contingency ‘absolute’ because we don’t have to secure either a metaphysical abso...
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I am reading The Age of Reconnaissance by J. H. Parry (Cardinal, 1973) and this has led me to think about the ways in which different historical ages are named.  I recently heard a historian point out that the Middle Ages were in fact the final or end days for those who lived in them.  They saw so many things we seek to understand in naturalistic terms as signs of God's work and of the impending end of the world.  This refers us to very concrete details of an age, to what was seen to be at w...

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The way that politicians are questioned by the television and radio media in the UK is intended to ensure neutrality on the part of the interviewer and media organisation.  It is clear that this is the intention and yet we need to look at the terms in which such neutral ground is set out.

Politicians are questioned in terms of the possible reality of their policies and plans.  This comes first.  Policies and plans must fit into a predetermined sphere of possibility.  What can be achieved, ...

Continue reading ...

I've just enjoyed attending this year’s SEP/FEP conference at Regent's University London.  Very pleasant to find that the university is located in the middle of Regent’s Park, the tranquility of which is enhanced by its location in a dense and crowded metropolis.  I found the papers rigorous and stimulating.  I heard a number on Heidegger that focused upon the rigorous nature of his thought, distilling the problems that animate his texts.  One, by Elena Bartolini of the University of Mi...

Continue reading ...

Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is a difficult read.  It is well known that the surviving corpus of his works comprises rough drafts or lecture notes. These are known as his esoteric works while the finished, polished, crafted and accessible exoteric works are lost.  Yet there is a sense of clarity and purpose in the attempts made in this rough and disjointed prose to found, to ground and to establish.  There is a determination to mark out clearly how a science or discipline is formed and c...

Continue reading ...

Of late I have been exploring Aristotle’s thought.  Common approaches to this thinker – familiar in introductions, courses and elsewhere – focus upon Aristotle’s ethics and his teleological conception of nature.  His Four Causes also feature prominently as a source for proofs of God’s existence by much later thinkers.  These appear in the context of age-old and well-established debates about the nature and value of virtue ethics, and the problems of maintaining a teleological concep...

Continue reading ...

A review I wrote of Heidegger's The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpetation of Anaximander and Parmenides (Indiana University Press, 2015) has just appeared in Philosophy in Review.  In my previous blog post I talked about some of the problems and questions that arise in these lectures from 1932.  There is a danger of seeing here only an anti-scientific and mystical leaning here.  Yet Heidegger is self-aware and responds to concerns about his method of interpreting other thinkers.  Gen...
Continue reading ...

A reading of Heidegger’s The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (trans, Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 2015) raises some important questions about the role of science in his thought.  I am concerned with evaluating the apparently negative and unproductive role science seems to have in Heidegger’s work. 

Heidegger seems to dismiss science in his interpretation of Anaximander:

‘Indeed, what is not decisive is the magnitude in number o...

Continue reading ...

I've been working on a reading of Aquinas' architectonic which is now among the online texts section of this website. Principles for constructing an architectonic emerge as Aquinas thinks through the nature of disciplines.   
Continue reading ...

Having just attended a conference on medieval physics I am struck by the difficulty in defining the activities of these thinkers.  On the one hand universities in this era insisted on a training in physics, informed by classical texts and Aristotle in particular, before students could study theology.  The medieval physics that developed sought a rational understanding of nature and thus distinguished itself from inward looking  Augustinian and Platonic notions of study.  A drive to mathematic...
Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

I have just reviewed Claudo Romano's There Is: The Event and the Finitude of Appearing for Phenomenological Reviews. This was an engaging read and encounter with this rigorous exploration of phenomenology. Romano is really insightful in his commitment to phenomenology and resolute in seeking to find answers here to contemporary problems.  Rather than a turn to the pre-critical era of philosophy or to natural science we find a thorough engagement with phenomenology that reveals its vital and l...

Continue reading ...

Alarming news about the future of Heythrop College has emerged.  The loss of its undergraduate philosophy and theology courses always means that years of work creating a community of students and scholars exploring a subject together is sacrificed.

I first came into contact with Heythrop College as a sixth form student.  I attended a couple of events where Heythrop’s Peter Vardy was speaking in his engaging and enlivening way. He managed to inspire us with the power of philosophy to account ...

Continue reading ...

A recent issue of Consciousness, Literature and the Arts features an article which charts the history of the concept of sublimation in order to reveal its transdisciplinary dynamics. In so doing it offers a way of understanding how transdisciplinarity comes about and functions. In his exploration entitled ‘On the Transdisciplinarity of Freudian Sublimation’ Jonathan Michael Dickstein highlights the cooperation of different disciplines.  He argues that this is the result of their mutual de...

Continue reading ...

An article on the Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ website responds to the AQA exam board’s proposals for a new A-level philosophy specification. Under the title ‘Philosophy is not religion. It must not be taught that way’ Charlie Duncan Saffrey raises major problems with the changes.  I agree with the thrust of his argument which is the need to distinguish philosophy at A-level. The author has taught the current specification and values its breadth and depth of engagement with philosophy...

Continue reading ...

The British Philosophical Association has posted a statement on its website concerning the proposed changes to the AQA A-level Philosophy specification.  In my last post I criticised the proposals for the restrictions they place on the areas of philosophy that can be studied and their similarity to the religious studies A-levels.  The BPA offer a defence of the proposed changes which refers to urgent problems with the current specification.

Many concerns have been raised about the clarity of...

Continue reading ...

The mailing list Philos-l brings alarming news about The Future of A-level Philosophy.  In a previous post I sought to defend this qualification and to question the increasing move towards the philosophical aspects of the religious studies A-level in school sixth forms.  Rather than going into either subject in sufficient depth and breadth there is a tendency to focus on the areas these two subjects have in common.  Now AQA are planning changes to A-level philosophy which bring it much closer...

Continue reading ...

Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? (Penguin, 2012) is a book that it is difficult to ignore.  It has been prominently displayed in bookshops and has caught my eye as I wandered past in search of the philosophy section.  Writing a book on a current and pressing problem which has real depth and critical force is a difficult thing to do.  Problems like this are generally staged in over-determined spaces of public debate where the alternatives, the language and the very being of the pr...

Continue reading ...

Is being ‘interdisciplinary’ an entirely practical thing?  Conferences and books that cross disciplines aim to practice interdisciplinary.  They do not theorise but engage in interdisciplinary activities.  They find places where disciplines meet or can potentially meet in tackling a problem or thinking about an object.

There are interdisciplinary centres which seek to represent this work and challenge the pressure of specialisation which creates ever higher boundaries and exclusive dom...

Continue reading ...

“I am not exaggerating when I say that this flood [of academic publishing] is eroding academic intellectual life. It has become impossible for anyone to maintain an overview of a single, even fairly narrow subject - let alone a discipline as a whole.  When I began work on a PhD on the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the late 1970s, it was possible for me to keep up with almost everything new that was being published on Hobbes in Britain, the US and western Europe, while devoting most of my t...

Continue reading ...

Lately I have been considering the current state of the teaching of philosophy at A-level.  There is a philosophy A-level offered by AQA.  This is an excellent course because it requires students to develop significant subject knowledge and to tackle core problems in philosophy.  However, increasingly schools are offering the subject of ‘philosophy and ethics’ at A-level when this refers to certain modules on the various A-levels in religious studies offered by OCR, AQA and Edexcel.

My...

Continue reading ...

I have just returned from a trip to the ETH in Zurich where I was talking to academics and Masters degree students working in computer-aided architectural design and the theory behind it.  This was a very enjoyable and productive interdisciplinary discussion.  I gave a talk on the history of architectonics in philosophy and how the ‘crisis of foundations’ lead to a re-thinking of architectonics.  Our discussions explored the relations between the disciplines and how these can be articul...

Continue reading ...

My book is published today.  I am keen to gage reactions to the book because it was intended to intervene in current debates including those concerning the way we read Kant, transcendental arguments and the nature of Deleuze’s thought.  I cannot help wondering what the response will be to my approach.  I give a close reading of parts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in an attempt to ‘return to basics’, trying to understand the starting point of this book and the nature of the ‘ar...

Continue reading ...

I am currently working on an introductory lecture on architectonics which I will be delivering in Zurich next week.  I am always struck by the way in which this subject makes one return to the basics of philosophy.  A concern with the foundation, or lack of foundation, of knowledge is refreshing.  One has to think about whether philosophy has, or should have, solid ground beneath its feet.  It may be argued that this is too simple and naïve in its approach given the advances made in philosop...

Continue reading ...

In my recent posts I have expressed my frustration with teaching theory and the discipline of education in general.  However, there is a depth of scholarship in this field that I am in danger of overlooking.  One has to spend the time to look into this rather than being rushed by the requirements of a course.  Sarah Benesch has looked at the role of classrooms as space or arenas of social change (‘Critical Praxis as Materials Development: Responding to Military Recruitment on a U.S. Campu...

Continue reading ...

An obsession with measuring activity means that it needs to be obvious and unmistakable.  This is the only way we can be sure about it and calm our fears.  When it comes to teacher training, such as course I am currently undertaking, it is often assumed that one is passive when one is listening.  ‘Lecturing is the least effective form of teaching’, we assume.  It is supposed that we retain the least information if we are listening.  We must ask ‘Are my students active?’  We must prove...

Continue reading ...

The mire of teacher training in which I am currently submerged brings a number of things into focus.  Whilst psychology dominates in education theory there is some use of philosophy.  The discipline of education or teaching emerged relatively recently and it is made up of elements from other disciplines.  However, the philosophy used is often half-digested and the terms of the debate too limited.  The reason given for this is that we need to be practical and focused upon what applies and wo...

Continue reading ...

A very interesting debate has been taking place between different bloggers over the way we should read philosophy.  The issue is whether thinkers like Kant, Husserl or Derrida can be presented as realists in order to meet the challenges posed by speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy.  The notion that such philosophies are caught in the ‘correlationist circle’, as Quentin Meillassoux argues, has been challenged by those seeking to establish the realist credentials of these phi...

Continue reading ...

This news story about some unseen Kafka manuscripts points to a real problem: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10682482 .  An expert is being allowed to look at this unpublished work in order to help a judge rule over the ownership of the manuscripts.  It seems very wrong that privately owned manuscripts can be kept secret.  Even if the documents belong to a private individual the writings contained could surely be made public.  Scholars may have no access to potentially important work ...

Continue reading ...

I am trying to write about something that has preoccupied me for a number of years.  This is the relation between Deleuze and Badiou.  Their differences have been a major focus for recent debates over the future of philosophy.  Their have been sustained and sometimes polemic treatments of Deleuze’s work which follow Badiou in alleging the neglect of the actual in favour of the virtual, the political and scientific in favour of the artistic, and the spatial in favour of the temporal.  Resp...

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The challenge posed to transcendental philosophy by forms of naturalism has been a theme of philosophy since Kant.  However, the challenge today is particular strong and its arguments persuasive.  The emerging movements of speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy continue to gather momentum.  Transcendental philosophy is charged with being limited by the correlation between thought and being or consciousness and reality.  It suffers from a lack of ambition, a modesty that makes it a...

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The recent activity on the internet in response to Middlesex University’s decision to close its philosophy courses reflects the importance of the work done in this department.  It is strange to have attended a conference a couple of weeks ago organised by the Middlesex philosophers, held at the Institut Français in South Kensington and featuring international speakers of great renown, and then to find that Middlesex University wants to close this department.  It has a towering record in ...

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A recent post at object-oriented philosophy puts the case for naiveté.  It seems that naiveté forms part of the method of an ‘object-oriented philosophy’.  This makes a comparison with Deleuze’s methodological naiveté interesting.  Deleuze’s philosophy of difference called for naiveté because difference was considered to be real rather than a structural, textual or linguistic difference that defers or masks any direct grasp of the real.  Differential Ideas are realised in sensatio...

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In my last post I put forward some thoughts about how disciplines are defined.  An article in the current issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement contributes to the debate when it offers a critique of aspects of business studies and business schools.  This is not an attack on the importance of studying business but rather a questioning of the way this discipline is organised, managed, taught and distinguished from other fields.  A change is traced in the history of business studies.  A...

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Thinking about the relations between the disciplines and about the problems surrounding the specialisation of knowledge leads again and again to a pressing question.  How do we define a discipline?  This is not a fashionable question given that if any discipline tries to define other disciplines it opens itself to the accusation that it is setting itself above those other disciplines.  This would work against the equality of disciplines and the assemblages that result from disciplines relatin...

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Over at Infinite Thought the growing cuts to philosophy provision at new universities in the UK, those formed since 1992 when polytechnics were granted university status, is the subject of an important post.  The argument is made that this forms part not of a response to student demands or needs but of a new conception of what new univerities should be.  They should no longer bring the subjects studied for centuries at older universities to more and more people but are instead heading towards...
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Edward Carr’s article ‘The Last Days of the Polymath’, published recently in Intelligent Life, raises questions that are of fundamental importance today.  My interest in architectonics stems from the same concerns but draws upon the history of philosophy to find resources to challenge the reign of specialisation that Carr is also keen to question.  He ends the article by referring to Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between ‘foxes’ who know many things and ‘hedgehogs’ who know one ...

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I am currently working on a paper that begins with the notion that philosophers seek to ‘clear the ground’ – to avoid presupposing what they are seeking to account for – and then seek to walk upon the cleared ground.  They must feel that they ‘walk upon solid ground’ or are ‘in touch with reality’.  This might seem to be a statement of the obvious but if philosophy begins at all it must find the zero-point and then set forth while feeling confident that the system building ...

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I have been ruminating on an issue I raised in a recent post that considered Badiou’s reading of Hegel.  This concerns a theory of problems that is positive and effective rather than problems being things that are always destined to be solved.  The other danger is that they become so established that they structure social space, as the Oedipus Complex does, and thus over-determines and stifles thought and practice.  Different theories of problems may make them insignificant or it may make t...

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I first met Joe shortly before the start of the MA in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick that we both took in 2002-03.  He was reading a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in the corner of the Virgin and Castle public house in Kenilworth which I had just entered with a couple of other Warwick students.  Hearing us talk about philosophy he introduced himself and almost immediately was engaging us in the most scintillating conversation.  The basis of his erudition and skill as a racont...

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At page 170 of Being and Event Badiou ends his reading of Hegel’s philosophy by locating a ‘fragile verbal footbridge’ at its heart.  The unity of his system is said to depend upon a fragile construction which aims to span a gap that for Badiou must be treated very differently.  I am interested in the history of philosophy which runs throughout Being and Event.  The assessment of Hegel here (in Meditation 15) echoes his treatment of Spinoza (in Meditation 10) which I puzzled over in a p...

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I often listen to BBC Radio 4 and recently enjoyed a program on conservatism and the philosophy behind it (the program formed the last fifteen minutes of The Westminster Hour on 4th October 2009).  The point was made that conservatism seems to avoid philosophy because of its dislike of state control and interference, and of abstract theories.  However, what was interesting was the philosophy that has been developed by conservatives.  Naturally, Roger Scruton was a contributor and argued tha...

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I am currently reading volume 2 of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  A very rich commentary on this work has been in progress over at Object-Oriented Philosophy and this prompted me to return to this text after some years.  The refreshing nature of Gibbon’s history, his humour and scepticism, makes it a joy to read.  The influence of Montesquieu is something I recently learnt about and this adds a great deal to my understanding of this ‘philosophi...

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When considering the current debate over the role of public libraries one is constantly aware of the danger of being a reactionary.  I hear debates on Radio 4 where one side talks about the need for equality and for more inclusive libraries that are less stuffy and provide room for ‘coffee and conversation’.  On the other side the ‘traditionalist’ comes across as out of date or elitist in their concern with silence, musty smells and ambience.  The point is made that people don’t rea...

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An ongoing and vital debate is touched upon by Robert Eaglestone's review of Alex Danchev's On Art and War and Terror in the Times Higher Education Supplement:

While academics are frequently exhorted to aspire to interdisciplinary work, this often boils down to tacking a discussion of a novel on to a piece of historical writing, or making reference to a few events to contextualise a picture.  Real interdisciplinary work goes on when there is something unique and unifying beyond, or perhaps be...
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Being and Event is comprehensive and systematic in its engagement with the history of philosophy.  Badiou seeks the void in the work of great philosophers and shows how it is both developed and suppressed in their works - Christopher Norris calls this a 'diagnostic' method for reading philosophical texts in his guide to Being and Event.  In part 1 Plato and Aristotle are the two poles of the debate over fullness and the void.  In part 2 Spinoza appears and is shown to locate the threat of the...

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A recent request for information on courses being taught on 'meta-philosophy' on philos-l (the philosopher's mailing list) gave rise to a number of responses.  I found this interesting because of philosophy's singular concern with the foundations of other disciplines but also with its own - this is the job of philosophy if it is concerned with architectonics.  For Kant philosophy must provide an account of knowledge as such (propaedeutic) and then provide an organon of principles for other di...
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A debate is going on in the Times Higher Education Supplement over the value of teacher training in Higher Education.  It is a debate that is of course always going on but a letter in response to a recent article is particularly striking.  I have heard teacher training described as ‘self-perpetuating’ by some.  It is a criticism also levelled at management theory and seems to concern disciplines that have emerged relatively recently and whose claims to importance conflict with those of ol...

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I recently attended a paper and discussion concerned with the teaching of philosophy at which the notion was put forward that philosophy has everything to do with abstraction and the abstract.  This is one of those notions that seems obvious but then suddenly appears to be really a big assumption.  If we consider the work of Gilles Deleuze, in the 1975 book on Kafka that he wrote with Felix Guattari and also in their other joint works, the concrete comes to define philosophy.  One notion or p...

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I would like to put forward some reflections in response to the Speculative Realism movement and its challenges to Transcendental Philosophy. In chapter 4 of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude we find a critique of arguments from probability. The basis for this is the rejection of the notion that we can totalise reality and then argue on the basis of probability or chance. This opens the way for making contingency ‘absolute’ because we don’t have to secure either a metaphysical abso...
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I am reading The Age of Reconnaissance by J. H. Parry (Cardinal, 1973) and this has led me to think about the ways in which different historical ages are named.  I recently heard a historian point out that the Middle Ages were in fact the final or end days for those who lived in them.  They saw so many things we seek to understand in naturalistic terms as signs of God's work and of the impending end of the world.  This refers us to very concrete details of an age, to what was seen to be at w...

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