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For a second I was curious to have a look for myself, but then I realised: no I'm not

It is reassuring to see that there is more work finally being done that takes seriously the idea that Spinoza could have been an atheist. But there's only so much that can be said there! Especially if, per Mori, we are only having this debate now because we define 'God' vacuously.

tbh I'd say they're still turning - they are significantly a majority analytic department now, and nobody there works on French philosophy (De Beistegui, Ansell Pearson and Lorenzini are all gone). There are some German idealists left, but it's a far cry from what Warwick used to be.

That’s good to know! Although I faintly recall that their philosophy department is also in a spot of trouble right now

When I was an undergrad we had a week on feminism in the philosophy of science, and we read The Egg and The Sperm by Emily Martin (and something by Sandra Harding, although I can't remember what anymore)

Interesting - even if you don’t think that Spinoza was an atheist (as I am inclined to), don’t his denial of universal final causation, his critique of superstition, his denial of free will, and his denial that anything supernatural exists, count in favour of seeing his world as disenchanted?

For the lectures on Spinoza I gave at my university last term I made this image, the idea being that Pascal inhabits an enchanted world with an all-loving designer God, but is miserable despite this. However, Spinoza's world is radically disenchanted, and yet he sees this as a source of immense joy.

The Union is a hideous group of conservative careerists. With that said, everything they do is just to get attention, and they gain more memberships than they lose from stunts like this (membership costing £343 a year).

I'd say it depends on the institute and the way that you engaged with it. Even hardcore analytic departments are taking existentialism seriously nowadays (in their own weird way). And for smaller unis/colleges, because existentialism is so popular it's seen as a good thing to be able to teach.

Some versions have things in common with religions. But Simone Weil's reminder is a good one here: dogmatism dies when we let ourselves use the phrase 'insofar as.' Marxism is a religion, *insofar as*, for example, its proponents consider themselves unified (but do we?)

As far as I can tell, they'll say that, if we want to make possibility claims, then we should diminish them into claims about possible counterparts, and I suppose that works if you are willing to agree that 'it is possible for me to φ, even if I don't φ' is false on its face.

The screenshot is from Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopedia (first published 1728)

(Sorry, terrible grammar, I'm sitting outside and can't really see my screen!)

I suspect she also thinks we can extrapolate from everyday experiences to miracles, since she regards anytime someone does the non-maximally cruel thing to someone else, it is also a literal miracle. For her, we know there are such supernatural laws because we see them operate sometimes.

I like that, but I don't think Weil would accept it, just because she thinks that real miracles occur within the laws of physics, based on as-yet-undiscovered laws. So unless we think that physics is uncompletable, I don't think she'd say we can learn one without possibly learning the other.

That is, if there existed some law of physics which, for example, made faster-than-light travel possible, although we haven't yet discovered it, would Weil have to accept that ftl-travel is fundamentally the same sort of thing as the biblical miracles are?

So for Weil, a miracle is something we do not understand and, unlike for philosophical naturalists, it is something real. But here's a question: does that mean that alien technology belongs to the same explanatory category as Jesus walking on water or resurrecting the dead?

From Hardt and Negri, The Labour of Dionysus

Thank you! I'm presenting at 3:30 in KCL right across the road

I think that’s actually me you’re referring to, and I can proudly confirm that this is very much a gay little jumper (I didn’t want to be that guy who says ‘hi, I know you from Bluesky’)