Honored, & sobered, to be at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna next month to give a lecture on the dark phenomena of war & "the will to war" in the last of Jan Patočka's Heretical Essays (Prague samizdat, 1975).
Author: David Lloyd Dusenbury
David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher, historian of ideas, Times Literary Supplement contributor and senior fellow at Budapest's Danube Institute. The author of I Judge No One and The Innocence of Pontius Pilate (published by Hurst and Oxford University Press), he is also Chair for Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Antwerp.
Innocence of Pontius Pilate on Hermitix (London)
Very pleased to be talking to Hermitix this afternoon about Pilate & Jesus & "fringe philosophy". It takes a lot of work to find a place on the fringe. More to come --
Second lecture on Jan Patočka’s dissident philosophy of history
Here's a recording of my second lecture on Jan Patočka, "Philosophy & the Experience of History" -- with glances at the writing cultures of Egypt & Babylonia, the first pages of Genesis, the first democratic cities, & "the wonder of being".
Jan Patočka lecture at Belgrade’s Institute of European Studies
Honoured - & sobered - to be returning to Belgrade this week, to give a lecture at the Institute of European Studies on “War & the Fate of Europe in the Underground Writings of Jan Patočka”. Watch the lecture in its first iteration, at the Danube Institute in Budapest, here.
“The Innocence of Pontius Pilate”: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Very pleased to be giving a public lecture, "The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: Notes on an Unnoticed Theme in Judaic and Islam", at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest next Monday, 6 p.m., as part of a series of lectures, "The Faces of Writing: A History of Bible Interpretation and Culture".
Derrida’s strongest line
"If things were simple, word would have gotten around." via The TLS
“Arresting & erudite”: Alexander Faludy reviews The Innocence of Pontius Pilate
Thrilled to see a very generous review of my Pilate book, on the cusp of Holy Week. "Arresting & erudite", writes Alexander Faludy. "Inquiry into the interpretation history of Jesus’s Roman trial cannot be the same after Dusenbury’s work." Read here.
How a philosopher toasts a god
How a philosopher toasts a god he's drinking with -- "One of the gods shall fall by the hand of mortal man." - Anaxarchus of Abdera, offering a dark (& ironic) toast to the "divine" conqueror, Alexander - per Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers IX.60
“Victims of a transitional period”: Osamu Dazai
"[We are] victims of a transitional period of morality ... [but] however much the waves on the surface of the sea may rage, the water at the bottom, far from experiencing a revolution, lies motionless." - Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun, 1947
Matthias Corvinus Collegium – Debrecen: “War & the Fate of Europe”
Honoured, & sobered, to be giving a lecture next week at Matthias Corvinus Collegium in Debrecen, Hungary, on "War & the Fate of Europe". We'll reflect on the causes of world wars & prospects for peace in Jan Patočka's Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History.
D. L. Dusenbury 