The Shade of Kenneth

3rd year Philosophy DPhil (PhD) @PhilFacOx | Researching Spinoza, Bayle, and Enlightenment atheism | Also Deleuze, Weil, and Italian Marxism | 27 | He/Him

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

Anyone who believes in the concept of the 'axial age' need to be picked up and shaken violently. There are no uniquely decisive moments in human history: those that seem like they are, build on decades or centuries of labour and decisions.

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

JME McTaggart was right, and analytic philosophy was invented by Russell and Moore as cope

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

@DevinGoure You know sometimes I miss Hubert Dreyfus

[Avi Lifschitz @Diderotesque]

Why was the 18th century the heyday of prize contests on virtually everything? Many answers in this new book, now available with a discount from @LivUniPress:
https://t.co/egkvCsgb2P

[Verso Books @VersoBooks]

Out today - Workers and the World: Fighting Ecological Crisis from Within by Lorenzo Feltrin

"A handbook and treatise, this is a treat for trade union organisers, militant environmentalists and connoisseurs of operaismo alike."
- Andreas Malm
https://t.co/jMAdaLKyxS

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

@moonbeeaam If your university has access to this resource, I've found it immensely helpful in my own research https://t.co/RGizS2J5PU

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

I'm feeling puzzled about the role of formal causation in Spinoza's philosophy. Why does he need it? It really looks to me like efficient causation is doing all of the heavy lifting.

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

I’m guessing the joke that Spinoza ‘makes a virtue of necessity’ has been made at least a hundred times by now

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

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 Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

Do counterpart theorists have a good way of arguing from 'although I do not φ, in some possible world I have a counterpart who φs,' to 'it is possible for me to φ'? I'm struggling to agree that it's possible for me to φ just because I have a counterpart who φs.

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

I picked up this book from a charity shop yesterday. Googling this Antonio Rosmini guy, it sounds like he might be a big deal among Catholics?

[pagliacci rossi @PagliacciRossi]

Keeping up with this exciting project over the last year or so has been really inspiring & informative - read & listen online at https://t.co/fHfIo30V2R now!

[Red May Seattle @redmayseattle]

Wednesday, May 27, 11:00am PDT
PAOLO VIRNO: Materialist Philosophy in Counter-Revolutionary Times
with @Alberto63137378 , Jason Read, @E_Stimilli , Arianna Bove
https://t.co/VNj47h1tQ6

[Alberto Toscano @Alberto63137378]

Registrations are closing for the BISR course on politics and language I'll be teaching from June 3 - syllabus will include J. Butler's Excitable Speech, P. Virno's When the Word Becomes Flesh, F. Moten's In the Break and G. Agamben's What is Philosophy?

https://t.co/QHgRGbrbya

[Henry Somers-Hall @HenrySomersHall]

I had a chat with Brent Adkins about my new monograph, Reading A Thousand Plateaus, for Edinburgh University Press's blog - they edited it down, but you can read the full discussion here:

https://t.co/QkBcQQ5r7u

[King-Ho Leung @kingholeung]

Looking forward to this discussion tomorrow!
(Let me know if anyone outside of KCL wants to come along!)

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

@14JUN1995 That all seems fair to me! The point to my eyes is that situating his religious beliefs historically like this opens up some other interpretations of his ideas, not that it matters as a final description of his system.

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

While we do regularly debate today whether Spinoza was really an atheist, I always find it informative to look at how that word was actually used in his own time. By the standards of the early modern period, Spinoza was very obviously an atheist, even paradigmatically one.

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

@JoshuaLWatson I’m definitely sympathetic to that. I’m invested in this just because it helps motivate a part of my own interpretation of him (that he doesn’t think any specific theological commitments are necessary preconditions of virtue)

[The Shade of Kenneth @saditious]

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