Jonathan Webber
Half victim, half accomplice, like everyone
- Reposted by Jonathan Webberredactio ad absurdum
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberEvery year for the past decade, our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton, has picked his best five philosophy books of the year. Here are all his choices -- from Buddhism to utilitarianism and Hannah Arendt to Zhuangzi: fivebooks.com/category/phi...
- “Existential phenomenology, far from being an esoteric philosophical discipline, has crucial political importance in helping people collectively see themselves as agents of change.” Excellent short article from Tris Hedges —
- #philsky 30-minute interview with me on Dublin City FM about The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy ::
- I'm giving an online talk on Saturday morning with the Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling :: Bad Faith, Bullshit, and Belonging :: mainly Beauvoir and Sartre with some Kierkegaard and Heidegger Everyone is welcome! Booking is here: bit.ly/SAPCbfbb
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber“When faced with greed, envy, calumny, perfidy, or lies, people […] say indulgently, ‘That's human!’ With an excuse like that, they clearly show that they are renouncing any expectations of generosity or greatness from man.” —Simone de Beauvoir In this new 🐧 📕 ed. @jonathanwebber.bsky.social 👏 👇
- ✨✨ The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy edited by me is published today in the UK! (Australia and North America publication is next February.) ✨✨
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber🎈Book launch! The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy edited by Jonathan Webber Wednesday 12 November 2025 : 18:00 - 19:30 Oat & Bean, 26 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BA Everyone is welcome! No need to register. Just turn up!
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberBooks. No cookie preferences. No cookies. No GDPR. No pop ups. No bots. No floating videos. No AI. No ads. No trackers. No misinformation. No fascist techbros. No distracting animations. No paywalls. No influencers. How good are these things? Books are frickin awesome
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberPolice officer, running up to me: "Stop, what's that brown liquid you're pouring into the drain?" Me: "It's 1,000 gallons of untreated sewage" PO: "Phew, I thought for a minute it was a few dregs of coffee"
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberPost 16 White Paper is out at last www.gov.uk/government/p...
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberI think it's excessive to remove all his titles. He should have just been downgraded to The Marquis Of Granby, or maybe The Slug And Lettuce.
- “the accumulated knowledge of generations … is stored in universities as it is stored nowhere else, and it continues to be produced there, patiently and as far as the wide world goes almost anonymously, by generations of scholars in communion with each-other”
- “We should support universities. We should cherish the value of what they do and recognise that if we run them down for sport we will not realise what we’ve lost until it’s gone. And, just once in a while, we should give students a break.”
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberCalling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.
- British monarchy encloses 150 acres of public land for their private use.
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberUPenn professors have responded forcefully to the Trump administration's that colleges sign a "compact" in order to secure funding: "When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact a threat, not an invitation." aaup-penn.org/statement-by...
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberAnyway, you do have to wonder what this means for "growth": yesterday's ID proposals are *designed* to make access to work more difficult for people on low incomes, and they come with the side effect of potentially squashing a growing domestic technology sector.
- “After nearly a decade of mutilating the country to address the ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration, we’re still being told the precise same nonsense we were told in 2016, or in 2005.” — @iandunt.bsky.social
- “Either we have copyright law or we don’t. Either plagiarism and the theft of intellectual property are anathema to higher education or they aren’t. We’re either modeling academic honesty and integrity to our students or we aren’t.”
- “AI has turbocharged the spread of bullshit and falsehoods. It is not able to produce actual, qualitative academic work, despite the claims of some in the AI industry. As researchers, as universities, we should be clearer about pushing back against these false claims by the AI industry.”
- The paper itself is here:
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberFinally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
- “Assuming scrubbing-brush man wasn’t Banksy himself, though, he inadvertently produced a new work of protest art. The silhouette of the image has seeped into the stone of the court buildings and is at least as powerful as the original image. This could well have been Banksy’s intention”
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber"Uh, I think it's the wifi..."
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberI'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber#philsky A Sad Philosophy Workshop GRIEF, HEARTBREAK, & HALLUCINATIONS Pilar Lopez-Cantero (Antwerp) Becky Millar (Cardiff) Lucy Osler (Exeter) 13:30-17:30, Friday 26 September 1.57 John Percival Building Cardiff University Free! All welcome! Register here: bit.ly/CdfGHH#philsky
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberIn Vienna for the Railway Aesthetics conference, which takes place in and around trains, including several night-trains on the trajectory Vienna – Bucharest – Istanbul. Program includes a panel at the Royal Salon in Bucharest & visit to the Energy Museum in Istanbul lievenameel.hypotheses.org/2605
- Coming soon –– The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy edited by me :: available now to pre-order from all good bookshops (and that bad one) :: –– contents pages are in the thread below. #philsky
- For more about the book over the next few months, follow @rethinkexistent.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber“It is important to get this right,” said Vallance. “We must not get bound down on measuring things that we cannot.” www.timeshighereducation.com/news/patrick...
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberPublic First has found higher education is in the top 3 for exports in 102 constituencies demonstrating the essential role universities & international students play. Public First has also found that international students raise living standards in every UK constituency.
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberI see Simon Jenkins has written his universities article again.
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber“A legitimate PhD-level expert in anything,” they said. “Show me a diagram of the US presidents since FDR, with their names and years in office under their photos,” I said.
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberSome photos of former participants in these cultural colloquia: a very young (pre-Beauvoir) Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricœur, and Gabriel Marcel
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber. . Happy *100th* birthday, Frantz Fanon! . . To celebrate, here is Rethinking Existentialism Chapter 8 –– Black Skin, White Masks –– free to download for one week only :: bit.ly/RethExistFan... . . #philsky
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberTo celebrate the 100th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, we’re sharing this archive Essay on the existentialist philosophies of Fanon and Simone de Beauvoir, which offer important insights into the nature of prejudice #FrantzFanon @jonathanwebber.bsky.social buff.ly/HhoUcNp
- Reposted by Jonathan Webber"People must see themselves as the authors of their own emancipation." Excellent new open-access article on the dangers of externally induced regime change with particular reference to Iran –– –– coauthored by Cardiff philosopher Patrick Hassan.
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberSuperb keynote lecture from Betty Cannon to round off #UKSS2025
- Reposted by Jonathan WebberSuperb keynote lecture from :: Kate Kirkpatrick :: @philosofemme.bsky.social on the influences of various readings of Hegelianism and responses to it in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. #ukss2025
- Kierkegaard on why you need to actually do the work rather than, say, have an AI write your essay for you —
- Fear and Trembling, since you ask. Preamble From The Heart. Hannay translation (always best), p. 75.
