A brilliant new biography of #Schopenhauer from @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social

Every year for the past decade, our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton, has picked his best five philosophy books of the year. Here are all his choices -- from Buddhism to utilitarianism and Hannah Arendt to Zhuangzi: fivebooks.com/category/phi...

Victorian shampoo was something else. I mean, probably literally, something else: camphorated rhubarb rub; inspissated egg caudle with arrowroot sharpener; Guinness, cockles and garlic.

Perfect reading matter for the festive period. @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social

Beauvoir, gripped by the fear of death, turns to Schopenhauer

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

🎉Warmest congratulations to Dr Jessie Munton on the publication of her book, Priority and Prejudice: The Epistemology of Salience and Attention (OUP) 📘 @jessiemunton.bsky.social @oupphilosophy.bsky.social @stjohnscollege.bsky.social @leverhulmetrust.bsky.social global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Schopenhauer doing a bluesky thread about his failed tenure track job Search

The holiday reading for xmas trip to the big smoke (London obvs, not "Dublin").

Delighted to learn a reader has taken my book to Cafe Schopenhauer in Vienna. These are the names of the dishes.

My favorite 14 books published this year that I read: x.com/robsica/stat...

The best philosophy books of the decade? My choices for @fivebooks.com fivebooks.com/category/phi...

“Socrates Change Maker”

🥳🥳🥳

Browse all our 'best books of 2025' lists (both fiction and nonfiction): fivebooks.com/books/best-b...

I mean.. hairstyle choices aside.. he ain't wrong.

‘Nothing could be more obvious to Schopenhauer than the fact that it would be infinitely preferable if the world did not exist at all – that the whole project was a ghastly mistake which someone should have had the common sense to put an end to a long time ago.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Schopenhauer came into vogue as despondency did. Conrad, Kafka, Beckett and Borges all owe him a debt.’ Terry Eagleton on Schopenhauer’s philosophy. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Would you look at that - @nigelwarburton.bsky.social’s column on my book is the most popular article on @thenewworldmag.bsky.social website. Schopenhauer - better than Radiohead (@emilyherring.bsky.social)?

A privilege of the job that this morning I got to introduce a class of Year 6s (ages 10-11) to Philosophy as part of the Warwick Bright Stars programme. We did a bunch of classic thought experiments and they were fizzing with ideas.

Calling all Kantians! An alumnus has brought my attention to the following passage from a BBC article on the difficulty of the English comprehension section of the South Korea school leavers’ exam. The alumnus points out that the answer could also be (4), and I can see what they mean. Do you agree?

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a feature not a bug.

it's me! on the radio!

At least fifteen people are dead in a shooting targeting a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. In September, Ian Buruma traced the origins of the term antisemitism. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

An eagle-eyed grad student spotted the Dutch translation of my book in a Rotterdam bookshop

I’ve joined Substack! I haven’t written a full post yet, but I’m working on it. Subscribe or follow for posts on books I’ve been reading, TV I’ve been watching, thoughts I’ve been thinking, and - of course - Schopenhauer.

Every year this makes me laugh. Truly one of the masterpieces of posting.

Someone has written quite an entertaining response to the review of my book in the LRB.

Exciting times at UoM: we are hiring up to 15 postdocs. See below www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

For the pessimist on your list. What to give the guy or gal who knows 'there is nothing to be got in the world anywhere', etc.? www.redbubble.com/i/greeting-c...

‘There are those for whom art is all about subjectivity, but for Schopenhauer art is all about escaping from it. When we encounter a work of art, desire drops away and we are able for a blessed moment to see a piece of the world as it really is.’ Terry Eagleton: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

“At the heart of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy, [Bather Woods] argues, is a belief in universal solidarity. We are all fellow-sufferers in this absurd unchosen world of pain, and so should feel compassion for one another.” @nigelwarburton.bsky.social @thenewworldmag.bsky.social

‘Generally speaking, he preferred dogs to human beings, even though they, too, were emanations of the pitiless Will.’ Terry Eagleton on Schopenhauer’s philosophy. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Schopenhauer wrote, “but what is acquired through one’s own thinking resembles the natural limb, and it alone truly belongs to us.” Therapists have always known that people are more likely to have convictions if they’re only aided, not formed, by others. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...

“At the heart of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy, [Bather Woods] argues, is a belief in universal solidarity. We are all fellow-sufferers in this absurd unchosen world of pain, and so should feel compassion for one another.” @nigelwarburton.bsky.social @thenewworldmag.bsky.social

Talking Schop. On a new biography of a famous pessimist… www.thenewworld.co.uk/nigel-warbur...

“Schopenhauer wrote, 'but what is acquired through one’s own thinking resembles the natural limb, and it alone truly belongs to us.'” Regardless of if you disagree with Schopenhauer, he expressed something meaningful about how gifted people think. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...

Surprisingly amusing, given the subject, guess who Terry steers it towards in the final paragraphs?

‘His mother told him that he was irritating, overbearing and insignificant, which makes you wonder what his enemies thought of him.’ Terry Eagleton on Schopenhauer’s philosophy. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Dit is de Nederlandse vertaling van mijn boek! (It’s the Dutch translation of my book!)

Gillian Rose - a few links for the thirtieth anniversary progressivegeographies.com/2025/12/09/g...

Livraria Trama gifted me this in thx for my talk... back to the PhD I quit? (i.e. looking fwd @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social)

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche’s Earthbound Wisdom: The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Sage – @uchicagopress.bsky.social, May 2025 press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

"It is misleading to call Schopenhauer an anti-natalist w/o any further qualification. He certainly holds that never-existing would have been preferable to existing as a human individual. But he may think that best of all is to come in2 existence, suffer, & reach redemptive knowledge of that truth."

Thanks @philosophybites.bsky.social I've so far read two of the other four. Schopenhauer by @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social is next

Chris Janaway has published a brilliant paper on Schopenhauer and anti-natalism and it’s open access 👇 Was Schopenhauer an anti-natalist? The answer is more complicated than you’d think!

‘There are thinkers like Hegel for whom history is essentially over, and others like Schopenhauer for whom it doesn’t matter much whether it is or not, given the immutable nature of human wretchedness.’ Terry Eagleton on Schopenhauer’s gloom: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

One cannot go to Hannah Arendt’s work for comfort, Jennifer Szalai writes of the German-born political thinker. What she offers instead is “the company of someone who had direct experience of the horrors of the 20th century yet never relinquished what she called amor mundi, or ‘love of the world.’”

Thrilled to be included in this list of the best philosophy books of 2025 @fivebooks.com @nigelwarburton.bsky.social