[Discussion paper for Philosophy as a Method of Thinking Practices: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism in the Light of Pragmatism, Università degli Studi di Milano, 10 Feb 2021] The argument of this paper is a tautology: To be fantastic, pragmatism must be fantastic But tautologies are vulnerable to the multiple and…
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First Principle of Pragmatics: Everything Evolves Amidst a Shared Problem
This is an edited text from the Pragmatism and the Analytic-Continental Split Conference, University of Sheffield, 09/08/17 – 11/08/17. I’d held it back, partly due to my reservations about the idea of a split, but I’m returning to it here, since its definition of pragmatics prepares for a later post…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (II)
Drawing on his philosophy of time, we can deduce Deleuze’s logic of events as processes. Taken fully, this logic is also the logic of his metaphysics, when it is considered as a system about the creation, encounter with, relations between, and changing of events. To develop this metaphysics, Deleuze doesn’t…
Continue ReadingRisky Signs: Philosophy and Covid-19
In an earlier post, I discussed the politics of the restrictions of freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic in Tom Sorell’s new interpretation of Hobbes. Here, I consider the risks involved in the use of signs during the pandemic. Communication about Covid-19 and political responses to the pandemic have been dominated…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (I)
Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy can accommodate any number of logics in a subspace of its metaphysics. By accommodate, I mean that any given logic can be observed, operated and considered for consistency within that subspace. The fact that we can isolate part of Deleuze’s system and consider its logics does not…
Continue ReadingIs There a Virtual Sublime?
[Text and images for a talk on the virtual sublime at Ulster University, April 29, 2020. The talk itself became virtual due to global pandemic] A virtual sublime? Why ever not? The second question should guide any response to the confident dismissal of this or that as sublime, but it…
Continue ReadingSigns and Democracy
In this post I argue that signs are necessarily democratic. My reasoning depends on the definition of process signs from A Process Philosophy of Signs. It expands the meaning of democratic beyond a narrow political sense, before returning to the interdependence of two types of democracy: democracy of intervention and…
Continue ReadingLanguage and Process: Words, Whitehead and the World by Michael Halewood
If you are interested in process philosophy and language, I recommend Michael Halewood’s new book on Language and Process. The book is the first in my new series as editor (with Jeffrey A. Bell and Paul Livingston) for Edinburgh University Press, Intersections in Continental and Analytic Philosophy. We have other…
Continue ReadingThe Nostalgic Sublime
There is a strong argument against the idea of the nostalgic sublime. If the sublime leads to a drive to act in new ways, due to the enthusiasm released by simultaneous feelings of terror and attraction to a strange and inexplicable event, then the backward looking and stultifying qualities of…
Continue ReadingMessi is not sublime (nor is Ronaldo)
My book on the egalitarian sublime has almost no sport in it. I avoid it for political and philosophical reasons. Politically, as entertainment, sports are the bread and circuses of our age, culminating in the sportswashing beloved of kleptocrats, monopolies and repressive governments. The problem with sport runs deeper than…
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