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Kenneth Novis

@saditious.bsky.social

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · Aug 4

There's a new website for the Boycott Watkins campaign: www.boycottwatkins.com (Watkins is the company that owns Zer0 and Repeater books, as well as several other imprints).

If you support BDS, please also add your name to the list at the bottom of the page!

Boycott Watkins

www.boycottwatkins.com

Reposted by Kenneth Novis

Muhammad Velji @myhamismad.bsky.social · 4h

Are you interested in affordances? What about Iris Marion Young's "Throwing Like a Girl"? What about autonomy? I'm super happy to have this paper accepted by Ergo. It's sort of the centre piece in the new direction my work is headed
philpapers.org/rec/VELERA-2

Muhammad Velji, Extended Relational Autonomy: Affordances, the Meso-Level and the Internalist-Externalist Debate - PhilPapers

Catriona Mackenzie in a recent essay, Relational Equality and the Debate Between Externalists and Internalist Theories of Relational Autonomy (2022), takes a look back at an intractable debate within ...

philpapers.org

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 8h

I find it hard not to admire how committed Bayle was to annoying people and provoking controversy at every point in his life

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 3d

I've just received news that the University of Oxford's Philosophy department is giving me the opportunity to teach a 4-week course for undergrads on Spinoza's philosophy in Hilary term!

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Reposted by Kenneth Novis

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 3d

Front page of Scottish newspaper The National today.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 3d

I'm heading to Groningen tomorrow for this - it'll be the first non-UK conference that I attend in person. I don't travel abroad much, so I'm a little nervous.

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 6d

It looks like the schedule for the Gröningen Spinoza Fest has now been finalised - I look forward to meeting all the other Spinozists there!

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 5d

When I first heard him present this research, my initial response was 'well of course!' I'd always been taught that GG was sheer fabrication, comparable to Nietzsche's Will to Power. But there are many Weil scholars who still lean on GG, despite its major issues.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 5d

A podcast episode featuring Benjamin Braude is now available, laying out his argument that Simone Weil *should not* be seen as the author of Gravity and Grace, and that this book should be seen as a work of forgery and fraud: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnaA...

Benjamin Braude, "Who Wrote Simone Weil's Books?," March 5, 2025

YouTube video by Boston College Ctr for Christian-Jewish Learning

www.youtube.com

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 6d

“The question of Spinoza’s atheism is singularly lacking in interest insofar as it depends on arbitrary definitions of theism and atheism. The question can only be posed in relation to what most people call “God” from a religious viewpoint”. - Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 6d

It looks like the schedule for the Gröningen Spinoza Fest has now been finalised - I look forward to meeting all the other Spinozists there!

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 7d

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino comes to mind

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 7d

The brief explanation of my research that my college asked me to write has now been published in the annual St Hugh's Chronicle:
online.fliphtml5.com/uwbnc/dqef/#...

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 10d

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 10d

From a broader perspective, all forms of consumer agency could do with being subsumed under political agency. When a company does something outrageously immoral, strikes and boycotts are a better device than the usual avenues of consumer complaint.

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Reposted by Kenneth Novis

Caleb Ward @calebw.bsky.social · 10d

US-style neoliberalism interpellates everyone as a customer, which means consumer agency replaces any other form of political agency.

👇Here I’m being congratulated for successfully booking a passport appointment. Like, no need for that. Literally just exercising my rights here.

Email from US Visa Scheduling

Appointment Confirmation

Congratulations, you have successfully scheduled an appointment. Your appointment details are below.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 11d

Getting set up back in Oxford

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 11d

At a local mop fair with my little sister

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 13d

Diderot's a hard one to pin down. He's definitely a materialist. But I've corresponded a little with Michael Della Rocca about him, since in the Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature §11 Diderot seems to even propound the parmenidean ascent.

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 13d

Great to see Diderot getting some attention! One of my favourite philosophers of all time.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 14d

I miss getting to read Marxism and critical theory, all of my reading time now gets eaten up with scholarly commentaries on Spinoza, Bayle and other early modern philosophers

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 14d

Then again, if any university is going to make people feel alienated, it’s Oxford. No other university puts as much time and energy into maintaining and propagating an image of itself that is false to so great an extent.

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 14d

People describe the amazing times they had at this university. Admittedly a lot of that I’ve chosen to avoid because it’s unbearably pretentious. But I still feel like something’s just passed me by.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 14d

I know we always talk about how all-consuming academia is, but I feel regret over the fact that I’m about to enter potentially the last year of my PhD at Oxford with relatively little personally to show for it. It’ll have been three years of reading and writing, and almost nothing else.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 16d

It's especially frustrating given that, for lots of us, the Confirmation deadline is in late October. This means that anyone (like me) who spent the summer ironing out a 5,000 word essay for the interview now has to rewrite the piece with another 3,000 words of length in mind.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 16d

Loving the world of endlessly shifting expectations that is modern academia. To be accepted into the final year of the Philosophy DPhil at Oxford, you used to have to submit a 5,000 word essay for the Confirmation interview. This year, without telling anyone beforehand, they've changed it to 8,000.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 17d

Steve Nadler's latest book on Spinoza has now been officially announced on the Princeton University Press website. I'm admittedly biased towards it already, as I do think Spinoza was an atheist. But it'll be interesting to see how he deals with this at book-length press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Spinoza, Atheist

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Steven Nadler, a fascinating historical and philosophical narrative that unravels the mystery of whether Spinoza was an atheist

press.princeton.edu