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One of the many curious things about Tertullian's Athens-Jerusalem binary, is that when Tertullian wrote Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?, Jerusalem was Aelia Capitolina. A 'pagan' city. De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 7.7–10 "Jupiter", by Henri van der Stok, d. 1932

I'm very pleased to be writing a lecture on a Romanian-Jewish philosopher, Benjamin Fondane, for a conference this week at the University of Florida. Fondane holds to what he calls (however strange it might seem to us) "the old existential philosophy of the Prophets, of Jesus, of Saint Paul."

“Social revolutions will never modify the deep structure of reality.” Benjamin Fondane, Paris 1936

Looking forward to Alexandre Kojève & the Specters of Russian Philosophy, out next month with Northwestern University Press. More here.

It's pretty wild that Leibniz's theory of providence & Voltaire's demolition are both inspired by Pierre Bayle's article, "Manichaeans". Voltaire's novella Candide hinges on a character, Martin, who says: "I am a Manichaean." "There are no Manichaeans left in the world", says Candide. "There is me", Martin replies.

Delighted to see that my TLS essay, "Data! Data! Data!" - on Sherlock Holmes, Carlo Ginzburg, & the Victorian roots of AI ideology - is out in Hungarian translation in the Budapest cultural mag, Országút. Read it here.

This is my first day as what Ernst Kantorowicz used to call an "American don". -- I'm delighted to be part of the University of Florida's exceptional new venture, the Hamilton Center, & very much looking forward to teaching my first course here (starting next week), "Romanticism: The Storm of Feeling".

Sunday morning in Turin - a cappucino freddo on the square where Nietzsche shuddered & broke. This evening - a mass in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, who lost his head but didn't lose his soul.

Such a pleasure to join Peter Leithart & James R. Wood this month to discuss The Innocence of Pontius Pilate & I Judge No One. Civitas Podcast is a notable new venture in political theology: their other guests include Yale's Samuel Moyn & Princeton's Eric Gregory. Listen here.

My recent Belgrade lecture on "Leibniz's I Ching, the Book of Genesis, & the Birth of Binary Code" is online here. Many thanks to the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy, the University of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Centre, the John Templeton Foundation - & above all, Prof. Ljiljana Radenović.