Alexander Boyd

Literary/Critical theorist. Writing on Nietzsche, Deleuze, the Baroque.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

"A morality is valuable to the extent that it proposes to us that we put ourselves at risk."

Georges Bataille, ON NIETZSCHE

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

Seneca's Letter XC heavily implies that it is the introduction of property and money into the world that gives rise to philosophy - economy occludes what it means to live 'according to Nature' and we now need active discernment and teaching in order to acquire virtue.

[pete wolfendale @deontologistics]

@danhind @flying_rodent It’s not entirely unlike the regression of Rome from empire to papal city state, losing political authority but retaining centrality in a vast network of influence. Except London did it much faster, the religion is trans-national finance capital, and the indulgences tax evasion.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

@AE_Robbert Congratulations, Adam!

Been meaning to get your book as I've been reading a lot of Hadot recently, so I've gone ahead and purchased the paperback.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

@residentadviser Probably similar to the sort of things people said about Diane Abbott. Only the temperature is higher now than its ever been in my lifetime.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

@residentadviser I'll go further. They're well aware that MPs are liable to come under direct physical threat these days and knowingly painted a target on her back.

What do you think Reform supporters say about her in the pubs? What they want to do to her/have happen to her?

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

There are a lot of people like this around. Music does nothing for them. Films, novels, narrative of any kind. Completely unadventurous in food, genuinely prefers flavourless prison gruel to actual meals.

Complete dullards are all around us.

[The Good, The Bad & The Football @goodbadftblpod]

Paul Scholes NEVER listens to music! 😳🎶

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

@drumm_colin @winnie4prez I think it's also significant that videogames simulate competition. It presents an acceptable alternative to socioeconomic status games.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

There's a lot of risk involved in the possibility that your thinking will be transformed and your priorities changed in the reading of a single book.

Most people after their late 20s absolutely refuse to countenance this possibility. Part of me understands why.

[Alice Malone @alicirce]

At the start of university courses, I used to flip a few hundred pages into a textbook and it would be inscrutable to me.

I would be excited, maybe a bit awestruck, that in 12 weeks time it would all make sense to me — because I would have built up the knowledge piece by piece.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

AI broadly-construed could be, indeed is, an extraordinary tool. Its usefulness might solely be limited by our imagination.

It's unfortunate, then, that the activity of most commentators amounts to reducing on both sides of the comparison between LLMs and human thinking.

[Thomas Murphy @thomasmurphy__]

It is fundamentally reactionary (liberal humanism) to exempt creativity from being PRODUCTION, as Macherey noted in A Theory of Literary Production. Production has capital inputs: Joyce literally crossing out the resources he had collected in his Wake notebooks as they were used.

[Tom Gann @Tom_Gann]

I think this is important - there is a general popular class anti-police & anti-state instinct, the police are a class force, part of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The radical right have been able to polarise these sentiments to the right.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

See also grooming gangs scandal.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

Key difference is whether you think police are malevolent and incompetent due to inherent selective pressures or due to recent DEI training.

The right-wing, in this way, are not cynical enough.

[Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar]

The murder of Henry Nowak *should* prompt an interrogation of police practices – and the part which is going largely ignored is whether there's a pervasive culture of trying to secure an arrest at all costs, even if that means treating victims like criminals from the get-go.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

11 minute walk.

Sedentary bovines.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

@pachabelcanon Recall the passage on gender in Proust, and their normative criteria (transcendental unconscious). It all depends on the connection/selection with what feminine/masculine parts.

The effeminate neurotic selects poorly, and is on his way to incel.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

The bit in Epictetus' DISCOURSES (II.12.24-5) where he admits that he tried to behave like Socrates in Rome and got punched in the face.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

"Strong will, military virtue" he wrote for a few hours in the morning before spending most of the day hanging out, playing music, reading, taking long walks.

I did something similar through most of my 20s in grad school, it's a sublime way to live, but ... far from military.

[Aner @mephistophalic]

Nonsense, this routine is the product of a strong will, military virtue, a supreme capacity for self control (Nietzsche had a similar routine). A weak will can't ever commit itself to anything and thus it never becomes anything; they then call this "freedom".

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

Common thread I've noticed among Anglo/Analytic figures is difficulty with sarcasm and irony.

It's interesting in this respect that an Anglo (Austin) was the one to theorise performativity in language use.

[Matthew Cole @mattbencole]

Popper was a literal-minded crank who struggled with anything outside of Anglo/analytic-style philosophy. I mean, Open Society & It's Enemies - the whole broadside on Plato is just embarrassing. Takes every sentence of the Republic at face value and comprehends nothing.

[Alexander Boyd @AlexanderJBoyd]

I know it sounds obvious, but it's far from trivial - having servants/slaves to do things you don't want to do trumps every other modern appurtenance in life and it's not close.

Anyone who says poor people today live like the kings of history are omitting this for a reason.

[Kevin Carpenter @kejca]

Warren Buffett: "The bottom 2% in terms of income in the United States, the bottom 5%, and for sure the top 1% all live better than John D. Rockefeller was living when I was six years old."

"John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world and, today, you can get better medicine, better education, better entertainment, better transportation. You can do everything better than he could."

"When I was born, the dentist didn't use novocaine!"