2024 is here, the year of the election. As the world begins to tune in to the greatest show on X, the question on everyone’s lips is: Why the hell is everybody so old?? In the summer of 2022, I published a book predicting this: elite electoral politics will see a clear and extremely high-profile generational […]
Academia
In a recent post about unfair epistemic authority, Macarena Marey suggests that In political philosophy, the centre is composed of the Anglophone world and three European countries… One can think of “the center” in terms of people or of topics. Although Marey’s post is clearly about philosophers not philosophies, and I agree with her, one […]
It’s still New Year’s Day in places, but the world of academia seems to be back to work, and sending me a variety of gifts, some more welcome than others. Coincidentally or otherwise, it’s also the day I’ve moved to semi-retirement, a half-pay position involving only research and public engagement. Most welcome surprise: an email […]
Geopolitics of knowledge is a fact. Only few (conservative) colleagues would contend otherwise. Ingrid Robeyns wrote an entry for this blog dealing with this problem. There, Ingrid dealt mostly with the absence of non-Anglophone colleagues in political philosophy books and journals from the Anglophone centre. I want to stress that this is not a problem […]
Happy 2024 everyone! May there be no more wars, no more avoidable suffering, and justice for all. That’s a steep wish-list, but then I am one of those who thinks that giving up is not an option, and that [almost] everyone has opportunities to contribute to make us move into that direction. In that spirit, […]
I only had an oldish iPhone on me, unfortunately
I tend to read a novel a week (53 this year). Academic friends sometimes appear amazed by that, but if I don’t read 20 or 30 pages at night, I’m not going to sleep. Add 10 pages here or there during the week, and it’s four a month. Here were my 10 favourites during 2023: […]
I don’t know about you, but my relationship to dentistry is somewhat infantile. I went this week. I go every six months (hygienist too) but though I brush twice a day with an expensive electric toothbrush, I’m very bad at all that interdental work you’re supposed to do. But then when I notice that the […]
I can’t write about Gaza because to write about Gaza would be to devise some premises, arguments and conclusions, when all I want to say is stop. I can’t write about Gaza though too many civilians have been killed. How many would be enough? I can’t write about Gaza without making mentioning all the bad […]