Courtesy of C. Hurst & Co.
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: Lund University
Samuel Pufendorf fumed that there is "not one iota of legitimate process" in the Roman trial of Jesus, which was "a public act of terror", & it's an honour to be talking about the trial at Pufendorf's old faculty at Lund University today. Register here.
Radnóti: “My words will yet ring out”
"I don’t concern myself with vengeance, my heart is free of rage, the world will be rebuilt – & though this ugly age has banned my words, they will yet ring out beneath new walls." - Miklós Radnóti, killed in the autumn of 1944
“Veins are like roots”: Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature
1,350 years before La Mettrie wrote his materialist L'Homme plante (Man a Plant), Nemesius reminded us that we're part plant: "The veins are like roots of the liver that draw the food from the stomach, as the roots of plants draw it from the earth..." For more on this: Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature… Continue reading “Veins are like roots”: Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature
Patočka: “An unselfconscious favour and grace”
"Truth means that being is open to understanding & explanation; beauty means that the emergence of being in the human world manifests the mystery of being as something perennially enchanting; goodness that the world includes an unselfconscious favour & grace." - Jan Patočka
Patočka on the wonder of being
"The wonder of being is no fable." - Jan Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History
Droll: Borges on the Nobel Prize
"The great Borges said that not giving him the Nobel was 'an old Scandinavian tradition'." Martin Amis, Inside Story, 9 (note)
“Love remained the only thing”: Houellebecq
"The outside world was harsh, merciless towards the weak, & hardly ever kept its promises, & love remained the only thing in which one could still, perhaps, have faith." - M. Houellebecq, Seratonin - which I'm rereading where much of the novel is set: in Normandie FRANCE - SEPTEMBER 01: The writer Michel Houellebecq in… Continue reading “Love remained the only thing”: Houellebecq
Now in print: “Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature” (Oxford, 2021)
"Nearly all the ancients disagree in their reasoning concerning the soul." Is it blood, water, fire, or breath? Is it a mixture, number, harmony, or substance? My new Oxford University Press book on Nemesius of Emesa's subtle, late-antique anthropology is now in print.
“Astounding, illuminating”: The Innocence of Pontius Pilate in First Things
A very generous review of my Pilate book, out this month with Oxford University Press, is up at First Things: "Dusenbury’s book would be worth a careful reading if it were no more than a monograph on a debate that flows, all but unnoticed, beneath the surface of European intellectual history. His range of reference… Continue reading “Astounding, illuminating”: The Innocence of Pontius Pilate in First Things
“Startlingly original”: The Innocence of Pontius Pilate in History Today
Thrilled to see a two-page review of my new book in the September issue of History Today. The University of Warwick's Kevin Butcher calls The Innocence of Pontius Pilate "startlingly original", & concludes: "Without Jesus' confession before Pontius Pilate, we cannot know how our notions of secularity & tolerance might have developed."
