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Brice Cummings

@abcummings.bsky.social

2.6K followers 930 following 420 posts

Peripatetic (adjunct) instructor of philosophy and history renaissanceanimal.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Jun 2

My book's publisher recently joined the
@bloomsburyacad.bsky.social family, so here is an updated link for Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre.
www.bloomsbury.com/us/baudelair...

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 1d

C'est tellement vrai!

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 1d

“'Higher' education shouldn’t be higher just in its cost or in years—like it’s your thirteenth or fourteenth year of school. No, we should be thinking in terms of your highest aspirations as a human person."

- Jennifer Frey over at @thepointmag.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/thepoint...

Can the Humanities Be Saved?

A conversation with Jennifer Frey and Anastasia Berg

open.substack.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 1d

Following Rowman & Littlefield's acquisition by Bloomsbury, Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics is now available to read online at any university library subscribed to Bloomsbury Collections.
If that describes your library, you can access the book here:
www.bloomsburycollections.com

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 4d

"If there is something comforting--religious, if you want--about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long."

Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (p. 441)

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 9d

So writes Arnaud Orain, in his latest book, Le monde confisqué: Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIᵉ - XXIᵉ siècle) [The Confiscated World: An Essay on Finitude Capitalism, 1500-Present]. For more, see my review, at
renaissanceanimal.com/2025/10/07/b...

Book Review | A Confiscated World: Arnaud Orain on Finitude Capitalism Resurgent

Arnaud Orain. Le monde confisqué, Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIe-XXIe siècle). Paris : Flammarion, 2025. [English quotations below are my translation.] In 2020, a book by Andrew…

renaissanceanimal.com

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 9d

because they are not (really) merchants. Their interests lie in becoming sovereigns within a specific ‘space,’ then in forcing ‘taxes’ on their ‘subjects’ who use or live in these spaces... also forced labor, forced prices, unavoidable subscriptions, obligatory publicity, etc.”

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 9d

“[C]ontrary to what [Adam] Smith thought, the goal of Company-States is not to enrich their subjects in order later to tax them [as a national government might], because they are not [pure] States. Nor do their interests lie in buying from and selling merchandise to them,

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 9d

The Crow Museum of Asian Art at twilight, when the skateboarders roam

Reposted by Brice Cummings

Geoff Bowden @geoffbowden.bsky.social · 10d

Just spent 50 minutes trying to convince college freshmen that the university will take your money and give you a degree AND let you cross that stage completely unprepared for what is coming next. The learning and shaping who they want to be is really up to them. Professors are here to help.

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 12d

The destination isn't bad, though

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 12d

On the trail, it's not about the destination, it's about the snakes along the way

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 24d

"A surprising amount of G.W.F. Hegel’s letters to friends and family touch on the subject of coffee."

(Marie Louise Krogh)

www.jhiblog.org/2025/09/22/h...

Hegel’s “Brown Rivulet of Coffee”: Colonies, Commodities, and Context

by Marie Louise Krogh This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”

www.jhiblog.org

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 25d

Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 25d

The western edge of the Ouachita Mountains, in southeastern Oklahoma

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 27d

Update: the dog retained none of the knowledge she inhaled, instead vomiting up her newly acquired wisdom all over the floor multiple times during the night

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 27d

My German shepherd hasn't eaten many classic books, but when she does, she always chooses a German one...hmm...
So far she has eaten an Albert Einstein and a Meister Eckhart. She's eating the big questions.

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 28d

Arnaud Orain's book The Confiscated World, at once a genealogy and exposition of the current geopolitical mood of aggressive "finitude capitalism" (as opposed to a growth-oriented [neo]liberalism of "infinite horizons") is a timely, and, I think, important one. I'll be writing about it soon.

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Sep 13

Cooper Lake State Park, enjoying the second wind of wildflowers that arrive at summer's end across northeastern Texas

Reposted by Brice Cummings

Stuart Elden @stuartelden.bsky.social · Sep 8

Aaron Brice Cummings, Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre - @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social, September 2024
www.bloomsbury.com/us/baudelair...

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Sep 6

Hazel

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Reposted by Brice Cummings

David Bather Woods @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social · Mar 28

It lives!

You can now preorder my philosophical biography of Schopenhauer.

Out in November.

Arthur Schopenhauer

An engaging biography of one of the most influential Western philosophers and a thought-provoking exploration of how to live with Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) almos...

press.uchicago.edu

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 28

😂

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 28

English is a cursed language. In a perfect world, I would have written this monograph in the language of scholarship: Latin! 😀

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 28

On the Bloomsbury Academic website, my book is currently on sale for 30% off the regular hardback price.

Come for the conversation about the problem of nihilism in the face of fascism; stay for the detours into tortoises, geometry, and world-historical ennui.
www.bloomsbury.com/us/baudelair...

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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