Latest Posts
Eating the tompouce
There are some things that resist being done neatly. I am fond of sweet pastry-related offerings—to put it mildly. So, on my many trips to Groningen, when I saw something that looked (and largely behaved) like a vanilla slice, I had to give the tompouce a go. But unlike the vanilla slice eating of my…
I Taught Philosophy for 20 Years. Here’s What I Learned.
[Apologies for the clickbait title!] I taught philosophy for at least 20 years. Long enough to become reasonably confident in what I was doing and then realise that at least some of that confidence was misplaced. We tend to think we are teaching philosophy when we explain arguments, optimistically set readings, and guide students through…
Against Nihilism, For Appetite: Why Teaching Still Matters
Cross-posted from my LinkedIn posts, where I mostly put stuff these days.. “In these troubled times” is a phrase we hear often, sometimes in a darkly humorous, sarcastic-not-sarcastic tone. At other times it feels like mere rhetorical habit. And yet it persists, because the underlying feeling it gestures towards persists too. The nihilism that Nietzsche…
Dead University Theory?
This is a short LinkedIn post that I’ll post here as a reminder to expand! You’ve heard of ‘dead internet theory’?* Which seems to get more persuasive every day. The idea that the internet is now largely driven by bots and algorithms interacting with each other, and as the automations and AI take up more…
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Dave Webster 