a phd

Me: "I think my new philosophical project is more fun than what I've been doing previously." My wife Emma: "I think you're stretching the word 'fun' beyond its natural boundaries."

My response to anything over the next two weeks

Oh the vibes, the vibes… I’m in Café Schopenhauer, editing a proposal on the Crisis of Philosophy in the 1930s. A guy next to me is reading this:

Academics telling each other how busy they are is so lame. Let’s tell each other we’re feeling indolent, or have ennui.

Barbara Day's The Velvet Philosophers (1999) dives into the history of Czecholovakian underground universities during the Socialist regime. Incredible stories and facts - from Derrida's imprisonment to the amount of leaders (e g. Havel) who studied UG so to speak... A great read!

I am happy to share my talented friend Henriikka Hannula's talk @hhenriikka.bsky.social on "Existential Historicism: The Rise and Fall of a Sense-Making youtu.be/QVZPBG__-Fc?...

New video on our Youtube channel! Watch the talk "Existential Historicism: The Rise and Fall of a Sense-Making Framework" that @hhenriikka.bsky.social gave two weeks ago in our joint research seminar here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZP.... Happy watching!

A friendly reminder: Tomorrow (30.10, 16h/17h, Central European/Finnish time), @hhenriikka.bsky.social will give the talk "Existential Historicism: The Rise and Fall of a Sense-Making Framework" in our joint research seminar. More info and the Zoom-link: www.oulu.fi/en/events/ex.... All welcome!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if an academic sets out to finally concentrate on writing for a few hours somewhere nearby loud roadworks must commence.

In a week, I’ll be referencing Dilthey, Ranke, Burckhardt, Heidegger, Troeltsch and Benjamin, all in one talk! From historical contemplation as existential consolation to history as a source of existential Angst. Do join!

That's right! There's one talk this Thursday (23.10) and one talk next Thursday (30.10, both 17h Finnish time) in our research seminar. Come and join us for both if you can!

After Marilynn Johnson's talk this Thursday, our research seminar will already continue next week (30.10) with @hhenriikka.bsky.social's online talk "Existential Historicism: The Rise and Fall of a Sense-Making Framework". More info and the Zoom link: www.oulu.fi/en/events/ex.... All welcome!

I spend a year plotting a mystery novel and then this happens.

Celebrating the publication of Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre (1847). “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings?" #English #Literature #film

monday again is it

This @yalereview.bsky.social Krasznahorkai short story is a nice entry point for anyone curious about the new Nobel Laureate yalereview.org/article/kras...

I have a lot of thoughts about Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl but even more about the discourse about the album! Why are people so worked up? Read my thoughts! When Intimate Publics Shift: Understanding the Discourse around Taylor Swift's New Album thereluctantamericanist.com/2025/10/06/w...

Very cool to see this! Aviezer Tucker and I just spoke about Schlick's idea of non-territorial states at a conference. More generally, this political theory is also known as panarchy; see: www.routledge.com/Panarchy-Pol.... And we are working on an English translation of Schlick's text.

I'm calm, I'm calm, I'm perfectly calm. Indifferent to tensions and shocks.

La santé mentale

We proudly present the autumn edition of PHO2, the research seminar on the philosophy of history that we run together with @cpshoulu.bsky.social. From October to January, we will have 5 talks. More information below and then also closer to the individual dates. All welcome and save the dates!

Very happy to have been part of this project. I wrote the entry on Universal History, see: philpapers.org/rec/GANUHS. Come and join us on September 30 to celebrate the publication of The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Philosophy of the Historical Sciences and Big History, either online or in person!

the thrust of the idea (minus the platonic stuff) was, to me, very reminiscent of zadie smith's wonderful essay 'joy', specifically the climactic paragraph (but it is very much worth reading in full) www.are.na/block/13912203

I cycle back and forth between theories explaining fascism, on one end are complex philosophical and sociological theories with a long historical and intellectual tail and on the other end it’s ’they’re resentful idiots that want to kill everyone different from them’

Simply miserable time trying to get into writing headspace today, so I wrote down some rules for brutally pragmatic drafting. There is space for more -- what should go on here?

Hivemind what are classic (philosophical) histories of early positivism (Comte, Mill, Mach)?

Sickening. Shameful. And in the end, useless. Those were the words that came to mind when we watched the Alaska Summit unfold.

Back to my comfort zone (19th c. sadbois) "I now see that the aim of life is to bear existence as best one can, and to try to do as much as possible for others. I have given up all thought of high endeavour and every sort of ambition (believe it or not)." Jacob Burckhardt, letter from 1838

Never ask postdocs what they'll be doing next year, that's considered terribly offensive in their culture.

Monthly reminder: Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

"reverence is concurrently both the virtue that Nietzsche uses to distinguish between people and determine their ultimate value and the virtue that allows the different types and ranks to accomplish together an aesthetic unity that can be called a culture"

how it feels to be asked about your research

One thing philosophy has right is how we do conferences. Fields where 10,000 people pay $1000 each to go to conferences (where like Bono plays at the afterparty) are dumb. Philosophy correctly says: "Here are 8 talks by some little freaks no one cares about. Now let's blackout drink for 10 hours."

It does all smack of Gender: the right are only ever sad little boys who can't help doing as they do, while all the onus of agency is put on the left who must appease and coddle them - and all this even while actual formal power is, after all, actually in the hands of right wingers.

was writing/editing a text, wrote a paragraph that I liked, scrolled down and saw I had written the same paragraph - almost word for word - a week ago.

I live in a small town in France now. Just bought cheap champagne from the local pétanque club at the Bastille Day celebration. Life is strange, but it brought me here and that’s nice.

reading my draft

German idealism rocks bc Kant said 'we should probably relax with all these claims about the nature of reality' and everyone was like Omg so true bestie anyway this proves that the World-Soul is the externalization of the infinite I which is one side of the Absolute Idea's self-unfolding in History

🚨 New publication alert! 🚨 ‘The Opium of the Lasses: Beauvoir’s Revaluation of Love in The Second Sex’ academic.oup.com/aristotelian...

My neighbor reading a book called ”The Human Mind. A Brief Tour of Everything We Know“ while I’m reading about the „Inaccessibility of Human Consciousness“ in Cassirer. Let us fight?

Nicht verpassen: Die Ausstellung zum Wiener Kreis in der Wienbibliothek im Rathaus – den Sommer über zu sehen! 👀 📅 Kostenlose Kurator:innenführung mit Bernhard Hachleitner am 16.7.2025 Kuratiert mit Friedrich Stadler (Philosoph & Historiker, Uni Wien). 🗣 Führungen auf Englisch auf Anfrage! Mehr: ⤵️

young Heidegger muses about struggles with history, performing a full avoidance of apophatic experience to reach his "platonic" tactic.

Fascinating talk this morning at @uksartresociety.bsky.social - was very keen to get to this one given the topic. Kiki Berk on De Beauvoir and the End of the World

A Kim's ch on neokantian ides of history is a really nice overview www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

When Hans-Georg Gadamer (just starting out at his hometown university) first encountered Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the young German literature student "derived not a single intelligible thought from it."

I am sitting at a table with 10 friends all drinking black coffee, the sight of it gives me a feeling of happiness. Franz Kafka, 1913.

anybody on zoom, or in Boston this summer, with an interest in such things will want to know about this summer school on Franz Rosenzweig's "Hegel and the State." for sure, any project associated w D Kretz is bound to be fantastic. scholarships still open! 36learningmatters.com/course/2025-...