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Like Spinoza's Ethics, Leibniz's Monadology ends with love. Leibniz closes his text by rising to the thought that "pure, true love... finds pleasure in the happiness of those who are loved" (pur amour veritable... fait prendre plaisir à la felicité de ce qu'on aime) (section 90).

Hegel's Holy Roman Empire: "Such an empire seems destined to last forever, especially if it also embodies the principle of subjective satisfaction, even in its religion, as was the case in the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the Holy Roman Empire came to an end two decades ago." "Ein solches Reich scheint für die Ewigkeit zu… Continue reading Hegel’s Holy Roman Empire — →

Very pleased to see a Hungarian translation of my Los Angeles Review of Books ssay, "Machine Drama" - on Ernst Jünger, Philip K. Dick, Nick Bostrom, & the cultural logic of AI - in the pages of Budapest cultural magazine Országút. Read it here.

Very pleased to be joining Princeton's Robert George & the Angelicum's Philip-Neri Reese in Bratislava, later this week, for a roundtable on Christianity & the future of Europe. Do come by the Hanus Days Festival if you can. More here.

Seicho Matsumoto's A Quiet Place (1975) is one of the moodiest, best-plotted mysteries I've read. A suspicious death which is not a murder leads to an unpremeditated killing & a failed police investigation. & everything turns on the highly civilized, yet dangerous compulsion to thank one's benefactors ...

François Jullien sees a Confucian moment ("Could there have been an influence?", he asks) in the post-Robespierrian 1795 Declaration of Rights & Duties of Man & Citizen, where we read: "No one is a good citizen unless they are a good child, a good father, a good brother, a good friend, a good spouse." This… Continue reading Confucius in post-Robespierrian France? →

Very pleased to be returning to the University of Belgrade to talk about "Freedom and Sexuality in the First Christian Anthropology", as part of a three-day workshop hosted by Prof. Ljiljana Radenović & "Science, Faith, & Superstition" - her excellent research project supported by Oxford's Ian Ramsey Centre & the Templeton Foundation.

After three good years in Budapest, at the Danube Institute, I'm delighted to be moving to Wallace Stevens country ("Oh! Blessed rage for order") to join the University of Florida's exceptional new venture, The Hamilton Center, in August. ????????????????????????????

Delighted to see a new review by Anna Usacheva (Université de Lille) of my book, Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature. She finds it a "refreshing reconstruction" that advances "the philosophical interpretation and historical contextualization of Nemesius' work". Read here.

Vale David Martin Jones. - My column for The Spectator Australia on the life of a brilliant friend who died last week. David gave us the concepts of "illiberal democracy", "surveillance state", & very much else. A realist, but never a cynic. Read here.