Simon Glendinning
@simonglend
Head of the European Institute and Professor of European Philosophy at LSE.
You’re absolutely right about the absurd “opt out”. Pathetic. However, the rejected (by the EU parliament) alternative drawn up by Cameron and Tusk was excellent. And could have swung the vote.
From the terrific “Derrida Today” conference in Paris this week, this is a slide from a talk by Elizabeth Weber on Derrida’s opinion on the future of Israel. Apologies for the faintness of the picture of the slide, but I think it is legible. I also think it is credible.
Father and his son (who is also a father). (The picture is from my inaugural lecture - in which I argued that his argument in his inaugural lecture [in which he argued for the abolition of inaugural lectures] was wrong.)
Britain getting its wealth by taking it from others is almost its basic state. Here is a typical case of which the nation itself is just another example: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
I have a new article out on this wonderful picture. I’m not the first. brill.com/view/journal...
I wasn’t reading “your neighbour” as referring only to a neighbouring country. But if you do look at the case in Scotland you should also note that the Remain vote was lower than London and the lowest regional turnout in the UK. On the other hand: by far the best campaign in the UK was in Scotland.
Sir John Major gave the Maurice Fraser Annual Lecture at LSE on Tuesday. He did not pull his punches on Brexit, calling it “an act of collective folly” and calling out the timidity of our political leaders who fail to speak out about the damage it has done to the UK, politically and economically.
He thought he could resolve a party conflict in a national way. It did not resolve that conflict and proved a disaster for the nation he played politics with. He reckoned on winning. Perhaps he could have if the image in Scotland (below) had been replicated nationally. He did not reckon on Corbyn.
Shame on the BBC. Who is the more dangerous? An overpaid racist who should be as invisible as his sense of decency - or the publicly funded news organisation that has utterly lost its sense of public service? #BBC get a grip or you will take our democracy down.
It’s Marx day for me. Starting here. But what essential element is missing from this picture? Wrong answers welcome - but the right answer wins a copy of my book, “Europe:A Philosophical History” vol 1, in which I set it all out.
Edwyn Collins leaves the London stage for the last time. What a night at a sold out Royal Festival Hall.
Reading Kroeber’s great book on world history. It’s intently empirical but draws heavily on Spengler’s philosophy. Given that influence, it is perhaps odd that he supposes modern European philosophy to have definitively ended by 1900, with Nietzsche the last. webfiles.ucpress.edu/coverimage/i...
It’s not only the players who are getting younger in the IPL this year. The crowd too. Spooky.
The number identifying as British only in this new poll is historically low. (People who think these fellow citizens don’t know where they live need to stop being so patronising btw.) Ignore the circled stats on this picture - it was prepared for a different point, which is also very telling.
This festive season, Nietzsche and I wish each of you as much independence as possible in your opinion, way of life and occupation.
Across Heidegger’s Ponderings texts is a running battle of sorts with Oswald Spengler - most of it pretty unconvincing and petty. At the end, on the penultimate page, he seems to settle accounts - more or less. (Apologies for screen photo.)
Anjali and I were both blown away by the amazing set put on by these musicians of note at the Brixton Academy last night. This is how it started - then the curtain fell and the place was a two-hour treat of magnificent light and sound.
I have just started this new book by Yuk Hui, which promises to be a wonderfully thoughtful meditation on the future of a distinctively European self-understanding - “beyond trivial criticisms of Eurocentrism”.