Kenneth Novis
@saditious.bsky.social
3rd year Philosophy DPhil @ox.ac.uk | Researching Spinoza, Bayle and the French Enlightenment | also French and Italian Marxism (Weil, Althusser, Deleuze and Operaismo) | Ultraleftist Metalhead | 26 | he/him
https://linktr.ee/saditious
https://linktr.ee/saditious
I’m just over halfway through God Owes Us Nothing by Leszek Kolakowski
November 12, 2025 at 5:09 PM
I’m just over halfway through God Owes Us Nothing by Leszek Kolakowski
At Historical Materialism last weekend, I got to speak with Michael Hardt a little bit about the history of Italian Marxism (picture taken candidly by a friend!)
November 12, 2025 at 12:06 PM
At Historical Materialism last weekend, I got to speak with Michael Hardt a little bit about the history of Italian Marxism (picture taken candidly by a friend!)
I'm thinking in particular of this footnote in Kant's Idea for a Universal History:
November 7, 2025 at 5:04 PM
I'm thinking in particular of this footnote in Kant's Idea for a Universal History:
One of my friends got some photos of me during my presentation in Cambridge yesterday
November 4, 2025 at 7:38 PM
One of my friends got some photos of me during my presentation in Cambridge yesterday
One of my coolest possessions -
November 3, 2025 at 12:24 PM
One of my coolest possessions -
I'm giving a talk next Wednesday at the University of Oxford's Philosophy DPhil Seminar, titled 'Spinoza and the Politics of Atheism.' Anyone in the city, feel free to come along!
October 30, 2025 at 12:37 PM
I'm giving a talk next Wednesday at the University of Oxford's Philosophy DPhil Seminar, titled 'Spinoza and the Politics of Atheism.' Anyone in the city, feel free to come along!
I've just about got all of the materials ready for my presentation at the Cambridge Workshop for the Early Modern Period. I'll be delivering my talk on November 3rd at 17:00GMT. It'd be great to see some friends there!
October 27, 2025 at 11:25 AM
I've just about got all of the materials ready for my presentation at the Cambridge Workshop for the Early Modern Period. I'll be delivering my talk on November 3rd at 17:00GMT. It'd be great to see some friends there!
This looks really good! I've struggled a lot with the reactionary political attitudes that Spinoza explicitly expresses, but this book seems to suggest a reading of him that exorcises those attitudes.
October 25, 2025 at 7:54 PM
This looks really good! I've struggled a lot with the reactionary political attitudes that Spinoza explicitly expresses, but this book seems to suggest a reading of him that exorcises those attitudes.
I've now got all of my materials submitted for the exam Oxford has us do for admission into the third year of the doctoral programme - hopefully this all doesn't go as badly as the second year exam did for me
October 25, 2025 at 10:58 AM
I've now got all of my materials submitted for the exam Oxford has us do for admission into the third year of the doctoral programme - hopefully this all doesn't go as badly as the second year exam did for me
I work primarily on Spinoza, but I've somehow managed to get a bunch of pieces on Simone Weil published in books and such. So how do I get my name into Spinoza books instead!?
October 20, 2025 at 11:57 AM
I work primarily on Spinoza, but I've somehow managed to get a bunch of pieces on Simone Weil published in books and such. So how do I get my name into Spinoza books instead!?
I find it hard not to admire how committed Bayle was to annoying people and provoking controversy at every point in his life
October 16, 2025 at 9:20 AM
I find it hard not to admire how committed Bayle was to annoying people and provoking controversy at every point in his life
I've just received news that the University of Oxford's Philosophy department is giving me the opportunity to teach a 4-week course for undergrads on Spinoza's philosophy in Hilary term!
October 13, 2025 at 3:27 PM
I've just received news that the University of Oxford's Philosophy department is giving me the opportunity to teach a 4-week course for undergrads on Spinoza's philosophy in Hilary term!
It looks like the schedule for the Gröningen Spinoza Fest has now been finalised - I look forward to meeting all the other Spinozists there!
October 10, 2025 at 11:46 AM
It looks like the schedule for the Gröningen Spinoza Fest has now been finalised - I look forward to meeting all the other Spinozists there!
The brief explanation of my research that my college asked me to write has now been published in the annual St Hugh's Chronicle:
online.fliphtml5.com/uwbnc/dqef/#...
online.fliphtml5.com/uwbnc/dqef/#...
October 8, 2025 at 8:21 PM
The brief explanation of my research that my college asked me to write has now been published in the annual St Hugh's Chronicle:
online.fliphtml5.com/uwbnc/dqef/#...
online.fliphtml5.com/uwbnc/dqef/#...
Getting set up back in Oxford
October 5, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Getting set up back in Oxford
At a local mop fair with my little sister
October 4, 2025 at 7:37 PM
At a local mop fair with my little sister
Another conference paper acceptance: I'll be presenting the second half of one of my dissertation chapters, on Spinoza and Montesquieu, at Cambridge University's Early Modern Workshop.
September 23, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Another conference paper acceptance: I'll be presenting the second half of one of my dissertation chapters, on Spinoza and Montesquieu, at Cambridge University's Early Modern Workshop.
A new translation of some work by Julius Dickmann is out in the latest issue of Historical Materialism - Dickmann was, of course, a very important Marxist economist for Simone Weil, and I'm sure it'll be useful to have English-language access to some of his work now.
September 18, 2025 at 10:53 AM
A new translation of some work by Julius Dickmann is out in the latest issue of Historical Materialism - Dickmann was, of course, a very important Marxist economist for Simone Weil, and I'm sure it'll be useful to have English-language access to some of his work now.
This is the abstract I've been including in my submissions. Maybe it's not something that anybody's interested in publishing?
August 26, 2025 at 2:49 AM
This is the abstract I've been including in my submissions. Maybe it's not something that anybody's interested in publishing?
For the next step in my DPhil, I need to write a full outline of my thesis. I'm not too great at things like this, but how does the following look as an abstract for the piece? I've tried to keep the abstract under 200 words, and each chapter outline will be 150.
August 19, 2025 at 2:30 PM
For the next step in my DPhil, I need to write a full outline of my thesis. I'm not too great at things like this, but how does the following look as an abstract for the piece? I've tried to keep the abstract under 200 words, and each chapter outline will be 150.
I've typed up this provisional abstract for my talk as a loose guide for what I plan to discuss:
![pinoza's Moral Error Theory
Disagreement rages today over whether Spinoza believed that moral standards are real or imaginary. Moral realists point out that Spinoza consistently makes use of moral language which appears to depend on real moral facts. They also point out that his definitions of 'good' and 'bad' are consistent with moral facts being real, but relative. Moral antirealists point out that Spinoza relegates the language of good and bad to the realm of inadequate ideas, while he also holds that inadequate ideas are "confused and mutilated." In this paper, I propose a way of making sense of both sets of claims. Moral error theory MET] is a form of moral antirealism, according to which moral facts do not exist, and thus moral language is systematically erroneous. The 'Now What' problem of MET concerns how one is to navigate ordinary life if they think that MET is true. I will argue that the components of MET can all be found in Spinoza's writings. I will also argue that the substitutionist solution to the 'Now What' problem can make sense of the data to which moral realists appeal when discussing Spinoza, while also being consistent with Spinoza's own philosophy of language.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jhwzbuvtnhyavmnugvkes2ho/bafkreifecf5obdiq72kd63nlz5cmph2aneur3n6zt4y6fsdhv7hyyj5kta@jpeg)
August 1, 2025 at 8:51 AM
I've typed up this provisional abstract for my talk as a loose guide for what I plan to discuss:
I suspect that I will need to delete this footnote from the final piece due to constraints on the word count, but I think it is worth sharing nonetheless
![[Simone] Weil was first translated into English within Dwight MacDonald’s short-lived politics journal (1944-9), an important publication for the creation of the New Left in the USA, beginning with her ‘Reflections on War’ in the February 1945 issue, then ‘The Iliad, or The Poem of Force’ in November 1945, ‘Words and War’ (also called ‘The Power of Words’ and ‘Let’s not start the Trojan War again’) in March 1946, ‘Factory Work’ in December 1946, and then her letter to the French minister of education in the final, Winter 1949 issue.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jhwzbuvtnhyavmnugvkes2ho/bafkreib5lyncyq5sa2w6uyqwsvpc34wmyh2yuk3tkzumxrhq4xqyzbrclu@jpeg)
July 21, 2025 at 12:45 PM
I suspect that I will need to delete this footnote from the final piece due to constraints on the word count, but I think it is worth sharing nonetheless
I’ve finally found the time to make a start with @axdouglas.bsky.social’s new book - my only big shock so far is that there isn’t more Deleuze!
July 18, 2025 at 10:09 AM
I’ve finally found the time to make a start with @axdouglas.bsky.social’s new book - my only big shock so far is that there isn’t more Deleuze!