After a nearly sleepless night, and after having to face my children this morning, I have no words of my own to describe what I'm feeling, and besides, others have already said it better than I ever could.

Van Jones: "How do I explain this to my children?"

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "Today this former nation sent a message to the political establishment - and the nation's nonwhite populations - by electing Donald Trump. Instead of 30 years of leadership, we have a political neophyte who saw a gap in the political marketplace and sold himself as a racist who would avenge eight years of an African-American in the Oval Office. Instead of a former secretary of state, we have a man who knows little about foreign relations. Instead of a commander in chief, we have a man who insults our troops past and present, and a man so impulsive his campaign had to take his phone away from him to stop his destructive tweeting, as though he were a child. 

I feel great sadness and trepidation for America tonight. We are better than this. Our task as citizens will be to let Donald Trump know it, in the strongest possible terms." 

From CNN: "FBI: Review of New Emails Doesn't Change Conclusion on Clinton." 

I wonder if the media will spend as much time and energy trumpeting this headline as they did buzzing about Comey's irresponsible announcement concerning the new emails. Doubtful. The 'nothing to see here' headline isn't nearly as sexy as vague insinuations stoking the fires of distrust. 

The plan for this volume was hatched five years ago over sandwiches at Panera in Lafayette, Indiana, with my good friend, Nicolae Morar. We wanted to bring together all the major pieces of the famous 'cogito' debate between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, in a volume that also included several new pieces from leading scholars in continental philosophy. At long last, it is my tremendous pleasure to see it in print! 

Besides the Foucault/Derrida pieces, there are new contributions by Edward McGushin, Amy Allen, Ellen Armour, Fred Evans, Leonard Lawlor, Paul Rekret, Arkady Plotnitsky, Jeffrey Nealon, and Peter Gratton. In addition, the volume includes a detailed chronology by Alan Schrift, an excellent introduction by Christopher Penfield (one of the co-editors of the volume), and a newly translated piece by Jean-Marie Beyssade. I am so proud to have been involved with this volume, (and proud of my nephew, Kurtis Sanders, who sketched the images for the back cover). Thank you to my co-editors and thank you to Edinburgh University Press for their unwavering support!

Order the volume here!

I just returned a few days ago from this year's Faith, Film, and Philosophy Seminar, hosted by Gonzaga University's Faith and Reason Institute. This year's theme was "Saving Private Ryan and other Love Stories," and focused on questions concerning love, and different types of love, in films having to do with conflict. 

I heard some very stimulating papers, watched a few excellent movies, and learned of a few more that I need to see. It was great to have the opportunity to connect with old friends, and to make a few new ones as well. 

Looking forward to future interactions between the FFP and the GCPFS!

I am delighted to report that the keynote address for the 2017 session of the Gettysburg College Philosophy and Film Seminar - "Cinema and the Thought of Gender" - will be delivered by Professor Michele Schreiber. Professor Schreiber is director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of film and media studies at Emory University, and is the author of American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance, and Contemporary Culture (Edinburgh, 2015). 

An open Call for Abstracts will be posted soon!

"Art is the great stimulus to life: how could it be thought purposeless, aimless, l'art pour l'art?" 
 - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (1889)

This is apparently the final volume of unpublished Fitzgerald stories, titled, I'd Die for You, due from Simon and Schuster in Spring 2017.  

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/07/f-scott-fitzgerald-id-die-for-you-unpublished-stories-scribner-the-great-gatsby

Here's an interesting piece by Spinoza scholar Steven Nadler about the importance of Spinoza in today's world.

https://aeon.co/essays/at-a-time-of-zealotry-spinoza-matters-more-than-ever

More than any other philosopher of his time (or most since), Spinoza's is a philosophy concerned from beginning to end with the question of freedom. His analyses of the mechanisms by which people can be compelled to 'fight for their servitude as if for salvation...' are no less relevant today than they were in 17th century Europe. This servitude assumes myriad forms - superstition, ignorance, nationalism, indifference, racism, sexism, religious prejudice, cisgender normativity, resentment, and fear of every stripe. His work from beginning to end concerns the human liberation from the sway of the 'sad passions,' in the direction of becoming truly 'active' individuals. Little wonder that philosophers as politically radical as Deleuze and Guattari would say of Spinoza's Ethics that it is 'the great book of the BwO [Body without organs]' (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 153).