Starting to think you can’t trust that guy

That sounds plausible, and the book looks interesting! Leung’s discussion is more about the idea of thought being grounded in a way of living—that living precedes thought in an important way. This idea has religious and non-religious versions.

Yes to this. By the way, if you want to wow your “Continental” friends with your understanding of Heidegger, Arendt, Agamben, and Deleuze, King-ho Leung’s book is the ultimate cheat sheet. It gets across the “deep” points while being perfectly readerly throughout: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Why has the train sat at the platform for five hours? See it say it sorted.

The reverence for Roman philosophy is weird enough; I assume this is all to do with some fetishism about Latin.

Early modern philosophy is superior to contemporary philosophy in nearly every way, but one way that I think it _isn’t_ is the bizarre practice of treating Roman poets as philosophical authorities. Why dethrone Plato and Aristotle only to crown Virgil and Ovid?

The Antipope has entered the chat

Must be!

The difference between Descartes and other philosophers is striking. When his _Rules_ got too long and complicated, he abandoned the project to search for a simpler method. Most philosophers would instead have responded by adding two more volumes.

Definitely not by trying to do so (Zhuangzi).

Academics are wondering whether AI can replace peer review, but you don’t need fancy technology to generate a message saying: “2000 words should be cut. Three sections should be added to discuss issues not mentioned in the current draft. No existing content should be removed.”

Institute of Network Cultures | Identity, Mimesis, and the Escape from the Self: An Interview with Alexander Douglas

I had a very nice conversation with Mela Miekus in Network Cultures networkcultures.org/blog/2026/02...

天馬行大運 Happy Lunar New Year of Horse YouTube video by National Palace Museum國立故宮博物院

Happy year of the horse!

youtu.be/F5qCNpVO-kM?...

Since Jon Stewart got everyone excited about the justification of profit under capitalism, I’m posting my essay on why the risk-free return on wealth or rate of “normal” profit should be zero. philpapers.org/archive/DOUA...

Soon it will be published, and I’ll have to take it down.

Back to teaching at St Andrews. This semester I am teaching Philosophy of Law and new module Timely Topics in Political Philosophy,where topics include Inequality & Extreme Wealth, Poverty & Homelessness, Free Speech & Hate Speech, AI and Job Displacement, Migration, and War #PhilSky

But it does get easier.

Nope!

I was thinking that the problem with being insanely sentimental is the insanity rather than the sentimentality.

Yeah, but it could be like a collector of antiques rather than the national health service of a first-world nation.

Who says sentimentality is a failing?

For another example: the NHS is the world‘s leading purchaser of fax machines, and nobody proposes charging £10 for a GP visit, although this could save millions in missed appointments, because “free at the point of delivery” has too much nostalgia attached.

My alternative hypothesis is just that Britain is insanely sentimental—sentimental to the point of self-harm. It will drive itself into poverty and perhaps collapse, purely for the sake of holding onto institutions that remind it of the good old days.

But NI itself is a silly anachronism, so my question could also just be: why hasn’t it been eliminated?

It’s the lawyers, so another possibility is that the ones making policy are the ones paying less tax.

But then why have lawyers and bankers on identical salaries paid completely different rates of tax for decades now?

My new article, "Antitelic Essences in Spinoza's 'Mystical Atheism'" is available open access at Topoi:

rdcu.be/eZ5nA

Contra a Identidade – A Sabedoria de Escapar do Eu - Guerra e Paz Em Contra a Identidade – A Sabedoria de Escapar do Eu, Alexander Douglas explica-nos porque é que a procura da identidade não faz sentido e de que forma devemos escapar do eu.

A tradução portuguesa do meu livro já está disponível!

www.guerraepaz.pt/produto/cont...

Filosoof Alexander Douglas: ‘Als je zoekt naar jezelf, vind je een ander’ Het is een gevaarlijk verlangen om iemand te willen zijn, volgens Alexander Douglas. ‘Identiteit maakt ons kwetsbaar voor manipulatie.’

An interview with me in Filosofie Magazine: www.filosofie.nl/filosoof-ale...

Ugh, but good that you're in a better slot now. We're always given the 5pm slot, which clashes with dinner at student halls. It's the only way to avoid clashing with lectures in other subjects, but of course dinner is a much more formidable competitor than another lecture would be.