Jonathan Webber

@jonathanwebber.bsky.social

400 followers 280 following 160 posts

Half victim, half accomplice, like everyone

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Philosophy 37%

Political science 17%

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 9

Coming soon ––

The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy
edited by me

:: available now to pre-order from all good bookshops (and that bad one) ::

–– contents pages are in the thread below.

#philsky

Image is book cover with the release date beneath: 13 November 2025.

Artwork on the book cover is Marie Raymond's painting Arabesques ou Variations sur la volute, 1948, oil on canvas, 91 x 72.5 cm, © ADAGP, Paris, banque d’images de l’ADAGP – an abstract painting in yellows, greys, whites, and black.

Book is published in Penguin Classics.

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 12d

Also: congratulations!

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 12d

Suspect that’ll be surprising news to both @jonathanbirch.bsky.social and @birchlse.bsky.social

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 13d

Superb! Congratulations!

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

Cardiff Philosophy @cardiffphilosophy.bsky.social · 15d

🎈Book launch!

The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy
edited by Jonathan Webber

Wednesday 12 November 2025 : 18:00 - 19:30
Oat & Bean, 26 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BA

Everyone is welcome! No need to register. Just turn up!

Reposted by Ernesto Priego, Jonathan Webber, Iris Murdoch

The Existentialist Offensive @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 18d

24 October 1945:

Sartre gives a lecture on existentialism in Brussels and one Iris Murdoch is in the audience.

From her notes, this was clearly a version of the now rather famous lecture he was to give in Paris five days later.

Page from Iris Murdoch's notebook. Thank you to Lucy Bolton and the Iris Murdoch archive at the University of Kingston for the photo.

The page reads:

Notes on a lecture given by
Jean Paul Sartre.
Brussels Oct 24 1945.

There is a christian & a nonchristian variety of existentialism. They have in common a certain theory of subjectivity. For the subject, essence is not existence. Each man is a "projet". He trancends himself.

There are however "universals." There is no "human nature " (in the sense of qualities X Y or Z in every man) but there is a universal "human condition."

Existentialists are not relativists in the ordinary sense. Their theory of liberty is crucial.

Liberty is not a quality of man. It is a form of act, of being. A transcendence.

Man is defined from without

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

Anon Opin @anonopin.bsky.social · 19d

Books. No cookie preferences. No cookies. No GDPR. No pop ups. No bots. No floating videos. No AI. No ads. No trackers. No misinformation. No fascist techbros. No distracting animations. No paywalls. No influencers. How good are these things? Books are frickin awesome

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 20d

Nationalise

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

Michael Bench-Capon @mikebenchcapon.bsky.social · 20d

Surprised to learn that this is illegal www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Kew woman fined £150 for pouring coffee down drain in Richmond

Burcu Yesilyurt says the fine is

www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 21d

Post 16 White Paper is out at last
www.gov.uk/government/p...

Post-16 education and skills white paper

Post-16 education and skills reforms to develop a skilled workforce and break down barriers to opportunity.

www.gov.uk

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 24d

I think it's excessive to remove all his titles. He should have just been downgraded to The Marquis Of Granby, or maybe The Slug And Lettuce.

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 24d

“We should support universities. We should cherish the value of what they do and recognise that if we run them down for sport we will not realise what we’ve lost until it’s gone. And, just once in a while, we should give students a break.”

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 24d

“the accumulated knowledge of generations … is stored in universities as it is stored nowhere else, and it continues to be produced there, patiently and as far as the wide world goes almost anonymously, by generations of scholars in communion with each-other”

The joy of university

For those who are privileged to go to university, they get three years suspended between childhood and the adult world

www.spectator.co.uk

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 25d

Snap!

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Oct 11

With the comma in a different place it could be a native of Sheffield explaining to any one person that their affections cannot be won over by gifts.

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

fesshole 🧻 @fesshole.bsky.social · Oct 9

I appeared on University Challenge years ago. I didn't actually attend the university in question. I used to take short cuts through the campus and saw the notice for the try outs. Went along for a laugh and made the team. No one ever checked if I was actually a student there.

Reposted by Steve Peers, Marina Jirotka, Roger Luckhurst , and 3 more Steve Peers, Marina Jirotka, Roger Luckhurst, Julian R. Betts, Jonathan Webber, Vaughan S. Roberts

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · Oct 8

Calling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Oct 8

The same is true in chess. Best way to disguise your mistakes there is to play as noisily as you can.

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Oct 4

British monarchy encloses 150 acres of public land for their private use.

‘I think it’s selfish’: William and Kate face backlash over Windsor Great Park no-go zone

Royal couple’s desire for more privacy means 2.3-mile perimeter exclusion zone and less public land for walkers

www.theguardian.com

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Oct 3

Yes! Especially as it’s about three times the length of Philosophical Fragments.

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Scott L. Greer, Philip Nel , and 7 more Dorothy Bishop, Scott L. Greer, Philip Nel, Yannis Hamilakis, Joni Lovenduski, Scott A. Imberman, Jonathan Webber, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Nelson Flores, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Hunter Walker @hunterw.bsky.social · Oct 2

UPenn professors have responded forcefully to the Trump administration's that colleges sign a "compact" in order to secure funding:

"When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact a threat, not an invitation." aaup-penn.org/statement-by...

Statement by the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education | AAUP–Penn

October 2, 2025 We have received reports that Penn has been “invited” to sign a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” by the federal government, and that failing to do so wou...

aaup-penn.org

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 27

I do wonder how many people who want Joy Division’s Atmosphere end up with Russ Abbott’s.

Reposted by Jonathan Webber

Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · Sep 27

Anyway, you do have to wonder what this means for "growth": yesterday's ID proposals are *designed* to make access to work more difficult for people on low incomes, and they come with the side effect of potentially squashing a growing domestic technology sector.

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 26

Thank you!

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 26

“After nearly a decade of mutilating the country to address the ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration, we’re still being told the precise same nonsense we were told in 2016, or in 2005.”
— @iandunt.bsky.social

ID cards are a terrible, terrible idea

Many people I admire believe firmly in ID cards, or have grown to accept them. This is why they're wrong.

iandunt.substack.com

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 25

“Either we have copyright law or we don’t. Either plagiarism and the theft of intellectual property are anathema to higher education or they aren’t. We’re either modeling academic honesty and integrity to our students or we aren’t.”

Advice | Sometimes We Resist AI for Good Reasons

Why higher ed needs to listen to the contrarians in setting policies on using tools like ChatGPT in faculty work.

www.chronicle.com

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 23

The paper itself is here:

Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia

Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these col...

zenodo.org

Reposted by Andrew Thacker

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 23

“AI has turbocharged the spread of bullshit and falsehoods. It is not able to produce actual, qualitative academic work, despite the claims of some in the AI industry. As researchers, as universities, we should be clearer about pushing back against these false claims by the AI industry.”

‘Opposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessary’ | Radboud University

Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm – including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...

www.ru.nl

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · Sep 18

“Assuming scrubbing-brush man wasn’t Banksy himself, though, he inadvertently produced a new work of protest art. The silhouette of the image has seeped into the stone of the court buildings and is at least as powerful as the original image. This could well have been Banksy’s intention”

Everyday philosophy: The irony of erasing Banksy

The street artist’s work leaves an indelible trace in our memories and it will last long after authorities scrub away the paint

www.thenewworld.co.uk

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Andrew Scott, Andrew L. Whitehead , and 5 more Anna O. Law, Andrew Scott, Andrew L. Whitehead, Brian Keegan, Jonathan Webber, Mark Rice, Ann Bartow, Nicole Guenther Discenza

Shacknews @shacknews.com · Sep 18

LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Anna O. Law, Dorothy Bishop , and 25 more Joanna Bryson, Anna O. Law, Dorothy Bishop, David M. Schultz, Philip N. Cohen, Martin Paul Eve, Judith N. Shklar, Ingo Rohlfing, George McKay, Melanie C. Green, Andrew Jacobs, Christine Kooi, Rob Boddice, Suzanne de Cheveigné, Julia M. Wright, Aoife O’Donoghue, Jonathan Webber, Erin O’Donnell, Brian Weatherson, Stuart White, Nelson Flores, Marcus Credé, Urška Demšar, Thessa Jensen, Kirstin Drenkhahn, Mary McAuliffe, Annette Yoshiko Reed, David Spurrett

Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.bsky.social · Sep 17

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose???

This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

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