Iulian Apostolescu ed. The Play of Being: New Perspectives on Eugen Fink’s Phenomenological Project – Brill, October 2026
The aim of this collection of essays is to explore Eugen Fink’s legacy and the potentialities of his phenomenological project for contemporary phenomenology. Systematic and well-conceived, this volume will be an essential resource to the understanding of an influential and many-sided phenomenologist.
Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly has a “Reflections on Writing” Series – all pieces are open access
My contribution “Writing the ‘Sunday histories’ – an experiment in sharing short pieces on a blog” is now available.
My thanks to Mark Flear and Marie Selwood for asking me to be involved.
The Editors of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly are excited to announce the launch of a new opinion-style series of pieces: ‘Reflections on Writing’ (2025 NILQ 76) and Reflections on Writing (2026 NILQ 77).
We are inviting authors to think about their own writing practices. To ask, for example, why do I write? How do I write? Where do I write? How do I carve out the time and space to write? How do I improve my writing? How has my approach to writing changed? Who has influenced my writing practices? What is the value of writing in the contemporary scholarly context?
These are among the questions many scholars ponder wherever they are on their scholarly journey, but seldom articulate to an audience, let alone publish, or even have an opportunity to publish. This new series seeks to develop dialogue around these and other related questions.
The Editors of the NILQ believe that such a dialogue is all the more pressing given the very many constraints put on colleagues in academia at different points in their careers. So, we have invited scholars to write up their thoughts on these — and other — questions. Authors have been given the freedom to select their leading question or prompt for reflection, and to express their thoughts however they wish within the broad remit of the series.
Georges Canguilhem, Saggi di epistemologia e storia della scienze, ed. Giuseppe Sertoli, intro. Raffaele Grandoni – Edizioni ETS, September 2026
Pleased to see this collection published, one which Canguilhem himself originally conceived for an Italian audience, with an introduction by my former PhD researcher Raffaele Grandoni.
Il volume raccoglie una serie di saggi, quasi tutti inediti in Italia, di Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995), uno dei maggiori epistemologi e storici della scienza europei del Novecento. Successore di Gaston Bachelard sulla cattedra di Storia e filosofia delle scienze della Sorbona, Canguilhem è stato il maestro diretto o indiretto di un’intera generazione di filosofi francesi del secondo dopoguerra e la sua opera, varcati i confini della Francia, è oggi fatta oggetto di studi e ricerche sia al di qua che al di là dell’Atlantico. Anche in Italia, dove pure è rimasta a lungo in ombra, essa ha suscitato negli ultimi tempi un nuovo interesse a cui il volume che qui si presenta mira a portare un contributo tanto più significativo in quanto fu lo stesso Canguilhem a progettarlo, esattamente mezzo secolo fa, al fine di offrire al pubblico italiano un quadro del suo lavoro di storico ed epistemologo attraverso una serie di scritti su alcune grandi figure nella storia della scienza moderna (da Vesalio, Galileo e Cartesio a Comte, Darwin e Claude Bernard) e su alcuni concetti e problemi inerenti al rapporto tra sapere filosofico e sapere scientifico.
Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995), discepolo di Alain e successore di Gaston Bachelard sulla cattedra di Storia e filosofia delle scienze della Sorbona, è stato il maestro di un’intera generazione di filosofi francesi del secondo dopoguerra, da Michel Foucault a Michel Serres. Il suo lavoro di storico ed epistemologo della medicina e della biologia è diventato negli ultimi anni oggetto di studio e discussione da parte di un numero crescente di ricercatori tanto in Europa quanto in America. Le sue opere complete sono state pubblicate in sei volumi dall’editore Vrin (Parigi) tra il 2011 e il 2025.
Giuseppe Sertoli è professore emerito di Letteratura inglese presso l’Università di Genova. Oltre a numerosi lavori sulla cultura inglese tra Settecento e Novecento, negli anni ’70 del secolo sorso ha dedicato pionieristici studi alla filosofia francese del Novecento, con particolare attenzione alla figura e all’opera di Gaston Bachelard (Le immagini e la realtà. Saggio su Gaston Bachelard, La Nuova Italia 1972; Gaston Bachelard: La ragione scientifica, Bertani 1974).
Jean-Paul Sartre, Cours de philosophie de terminale pris sous la dictée par son élève Maurice Mermet. Lycée Condorcet, 1942-1943, ed. Jean-François Louette, Paris: Gallimard, September 2026
Maurice Mermet a seize ans à la rentrée scolaire de 1942. Venu de Lyon, il intègre la classe de terminale math élém du lycée Condorcet. Son professeur de philosophie est « M. Sartre », Jean-Paul Sartre — dont c’est également la première année dans l’établissement parisien. Aujourd’hui centenaire, Maurice Mermet garde un souvenir net de cette année de découverte de la discipline et surtout de cet enseignant passionnant, déjà auteur d’une Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions, de La Nausée et des nouvelles du Mur, qui invita ses quarante-quatre élèves, en juin 1943, à la première des Mouches, au Théâtre de la Cité.
Maurice Mermet était non seulement un très bon élément, mais aussi un élève consciencieux. Il a pris le cours sous la dictée de son professeur avec une application rare — en témoignent aujourd’hui les quatre cahiers qu’il a conservés, dont ce volume donne la transcription intégrale, enrichie de copies corrigées. Jean-Paul Sartre a déjà plusieurs années d’enseignement derrière lui quand il prend la suite de Ferdinand Alquié à Condorcet. C’est un professeur expérimenté et précis qui se révèle dans ce document exceptionnel et touchant — une année de cours qui éclaire la façon dont on pouvait enseigner la philosophie sous l’Occupation, mais également la culture et les intentions philosophiques de l’écrivain qui achevait alors l’écriture de L’Être et le Néant (1943).
Il faut ainsi se faire élève de terminale, et écouter Sartre nous brosser à grands traits, comme il était recommandé de le faire, une histoire de la philosophie, en nous parlant de vérité, de science, de beauté, de morale, d’émotion… et de liberté : « Une décision peut donc être considérée non comme une conséquence de faits antérieurs, mais comme un commencement premier. »
Imagine having something like this, and waiting until you are 100 years old to share it…
Giulia Bernard, Bojana Jovicevic and Karen Koch eds. Hegel and Feminism – Bloomsbury, October 2026
Whilst much previous writing on Hegel has focused on his social and political philosophy, this volume makes it clear that feminist issues are relevant to many, if not all, aspects of Hegel’s system.
With innovative close readings that place Hegel’s philosophy in dialogue with contemporary feminist debates and relevant issues such as: reproductive work, sexism, prejudice and discrimination against women, the essays in this collections reveal the gendered nature of Hegel’s oeuvre. Beginning with three sections that analyse the theoretical and abstract parts of his philosophy, the authors explore sexual difference and its implications in Hegel’s epistemology and logic, its relation to his mythology and aesthetics, as well as to social and political philosophy. Including examinations that focus, for example, on crime and punishment, and the notion of piety and the figure of the monarch, these articles delve into topics that have yet to be deeply discussed with regard to sexual difference. Concluding with a chapter that also outlines the practical ways in which this knowledge can be applied, Hegel and Feminism highlights the relevance of Hegel’s conception of sexual difference to contemporary issues, including its implications for other feminist-related, but transdisciplinary fields such as politics, education, and activism.
Andrea Bagnato, Terra Infecta: Disease and the Italian Landscape; Robert Mandrou, From Humanism to Science 1480-1700; Carlo Ginzburg, Fear Reverence Terror; David Puaud, Foucault avant Foucault: Archéologie d’une jeunesse, Jeanne Favret-Saada, L’impossible famille Rivière: Retour sur un triple meutre en 1835 and Richard Wilson, Shakespeare’s Fascist Followers.
Andrea kindly sent a copy of his book, and Shakespeare’s Fascist Followers was in recompense for review work. The rest were bought new or second-hand. I write briefly about Mandrou in relation to Foucault here, and about Ginzburg here and here. Richard Wilson’s book was the topic of a roundtable at the Shakespeare and British Inter-war Philosophy (1918-1939) event held at Garrick’s Temple to Shakespeare on 27 June 2026. My opening comments are here.
Bill Angus and Lisa Hopkins eds. Reading the Coastline in Shakespeare’s Britain – Edinburgh University Press, October 2026
Examines early modern English literary representations of ports, shorelines and littorals at home and abroad
- Discusses plays set in ports ranging from Dover to Milan and Tunis
- Is alert to ecological issues
- Attends to questions of race and slavery
When Regan in King Lear asks ‘Wherefore to Dover?’ she mobilises a number of early modern anxieties. Shores and coastlines are liminal spaces, subject to erosion, invasion and tidal flux. With their metaphorical mouths and their subjection to wind, wave and tide, ports were emblematic of instability, especially in the cases of once-thriving harbours which had silted up (Winchelsea) or coastal settlements claimed by the sea (Dunwich). Early modern plays and poems are drawn to such areas both within Britain (Southampton and Harfleur in Henry V, Scarborough and Bristol in Edward II, Harlech in Richard II) and further afield in Tunis, Alexandria, Algiers, Malta and other sites where cultures clashed, slaves were traded, and people of different faiths mingled. This edited collection draws together new research on early modern British representations of the lived environment of the coast at home and abroad.
Aristotle Kallis, Iconic Fascism: The Excess of Destruction and Creation in Interwar Radical Right-wing Politics – Bloomsbury, February 2026
In Iconic Fascism, Aristotle Kallis uncovers the paradox at the heart of fascist politics: the simultaneous obsession with destroying and creating powerful symbols. This book demonstrates how fascists were simultaneously some of history’s most passionate icon-lovers and most ruthless icon-breakers, wielding symbolic excess as both weapon and worship in their revolutionary project. Through a sweeping comparative analysis, Kallis reveals how fascist movements and later regimes were driven by a relentless battle of absolutes, seeking not only to eradicate the icons and reclaim the spaces of their enemies, but to saturate public life with their own emblems, rituals, and myths; and to make the political visceral. Kallis demonstrates that fascist violence was never merely blind or indiscriminate. Instead, it was a meticulously choreographed struggle for symbolic dominance, in which the destruction of enemy ‘false’ icons was inseparable from the performative creation of new, sacred icons of fascist power. He traces how this constant pursuit of “destructive creation” evolved from street-level partisan warfare to state-sponsored spectacles of monumental architecture and mass liturgies. Kallis argues that fascism’s ‘iconic compulsion’ – its need to condense moral absolutes into visible, emotionally potent symbols – remained constant whether fascists operated as fringe insurgents or totalitarian regimes, fuelling its cycles of rupture and rebirth. Spanning street-level violence, mass spectacle, and monumental urban planning, Iconic Fascism challenges us to rethink the role of symbols in the making-and unmaking-of political communities.
New Books Network discussion with Joe Williams – thanks to dmf for the link
Sander Verhaegh, Logical Positivism: An American History – Oxford University Press, September 2026
Logical Positivism: An American History tells the remarkable story of a group of European philosophers and scientists who fled fascism and reshaped American philosophy. Drawing on extensive archival materials, it traces the conflicted reception of their ideas—at once hailed as a model of scientific clarity and yet condemned as a sterile and reductive approach to philosophy.
Rather than treating logical positivism as a purely European export, this book argues that it was a product of transatlantic exchange. It reconstructs the rise of an American network of scientists and philosophers whose ideas were defined by twentieth-century revolutions in logic and modern physics; and it shows how their encounters with European émigrés helped shape a new ‘analytic’ style of philosophy that has dominated the field ever since.
Combining narrative reconstruction with innovative digital humanities methods, this book illuminates the intellectual, institutional, and cultural conditions that enabled logical positivism’s ascent. It offers a fresh perspective on the history of U.S. philosophy, showing how a movement defined by global crises and intellectual controversy became engrained in American thought and philosophical practice.
It’s worth noting that the letter from Foucault is only one page, with an introduction by Ange Pierraggi on the other side of the two-page spread. The Instagram picture and another of Foucault at Münsterlingen are on these pages.
On the visit Foucault, Jacqueline and Georges Verdeaux made to Münsterlingen in 1954, see the remarkable book Foucault à Münsterlingen, edited by Elisabetta Basso and Jean-François Bert (EHESS 2015).
