New essay on Bernard Williams, moral relativism, and the culture wars with nods to Herodotus, Sally Rooney, Judith Butler, Christine Korsgaard, Richard Rorty, Derek Parfit, Kant, Nietzsche, Wilde and @pameladruck and @holland_tom and @StephanieCoontz aeon.co/essays/bernard-willi…

Paperback publication day. Cheaper, more portable, and with fewer typos. Thanks to @PrincetonUPress

“In the early 1960s, German cinema was in a sorry state”: Sukhdev Sandhu explores the life of filmmaker Alexander Kluge, who died in March prospectmagazine.co.uk/cultu…

'Drochon poses an ancient question: who really rules? He answers it with a clarity that feels, just now, like a form of intellectual resistance' Fun to be reviewed in @theartsfuse!🎉 artsfuse.org/328411/book-rev…

What makes the coming contest so dangerous, however, is that neither side in this struggle can accept the victory of the other. To the Labour right, Angela Rayner is a Liz Truss-style crisis-in-waiting — an existential threat to the party and the country, who would open the door to bond market turbulence and a Nigel Farage victory. To the Labour left, however, Wes Streeting is viewed in similarly apocalyptic terms: a Rishi Sunak-style status-quo candidate who represents the very politics that has led the party to the precipice. One side sees calamitous risk, the other calamitous continuity. ✍️ @TomMcTague newstatesman.com/politics/we…

Will capitalism's last forever? Corey Robin in @booksandthearts on the history and future of capitalism thenation.com/article/societ…

"Writers dig deeply to put their words to paper, but only the act of reading—quivering movements of the eyes across the page—can bring those fixed marks to life." Jhumpa Lahiri on Thomas Hardy. yalereview.org/article/jhump…

"Williams’s work manifested the tension that one sees in the larger culture wars over values: between the desire to acknowledge what seem like universal and indisputable evils, and the desire to leave behind the legacy of universalism." aeon.co/essays/bernard-willi…

I've a review of Adam Phillips's The Life You Want out next week, in the summer issue of @NewHumanist

Pleased to have Mark Greif with us for his @NewStatesman debut - one of the finest essayists of his generation on one of its finest novelists: Ben Lerner newstatesman.com/culture/boo… If you want more writing like this, subscribe! Mark will be writing on the critic Leslie Fiedler soon

Here's my concise @Lit_Review piece on Ben Lerner's pretty fascinating new novel Transcription, with references to various other books and writers: literaryreview.co.uk/putting…

An FT correction for the ages...

I shall be taking part in this event about Iris Murdoch's poems and her legacy at @TheLondonLib on Wednesday Tickets details here londonlibrary.co.uk/whats-on…

Worth listening: open.spotify.com/episode/0a8… What can we learn from Bernard Williams? @PPFIdeas

I am happy to share my most recent academic contribution. I bring Bernard Williams’ internalism about reasons into constitutional theory. Please feel free to email me for access and discussion! journals.sagepub.com/eprint/…

"Bernard Williams on Law and Jurisprudence: From Agency and Responsibility to Methodology", co-edited with @MurataDaniel & Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, is finally published! (@hartpublishing, Law & Practical Reason series) All the information about the volume and contents, here👇

For those of you that have been enjoying the new BBC series, 'Waiting for the Out', come and meet @AndyWPhilosophy on Saturday 21st February at 11am and here him discuss the book with @philosophybites Register here eventbrite.co.uk/e/197889846…

Coming in April 2026: Centenary special issue of #Philosophy, with papers inspired by Bernard Williams's essay, ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’. Watch this space! cambridge.org/core/journals/…

The only time Freud mentions Rilke, he calls him “the great poet who was a little helpless in facing life”

My first Substack post. It’s a tale of murder and intrigue! Please share. open.substack.com/pub/davidb…

The world ends--TS Eliot wrote a hundred years ago in one of his most famous poems--"not with a bang but a whimper." What do Eliot's frightening premonitions (which inspired the film Apocalypse Now) mean today? My @NewStatesman essay on "The Hollow Men" newstatesman.com/culture/boo…