A Philosophical Travelogue, May-June 2013

Well, folks, the last year of my PostDoc-project is going on and this gives me a special plesure of participating many conferences in order to use the rest of my funding appropriately. This means that I can go basically anywhere I like and am accepted, even without a paper. A rare opportunity! Earlier this year I participated the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy Conference in Grenoble and there are three events in May-June which I will now briefly discuss.

SSEMP, Aberdeen

The first event is Scottish Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen, organized by Mogens Laerke and Beth Lord. This uninformal seminar is already familiar to me as I gave a paper on Leibniz and Spinoza there last year. The conference was excellent and the same can be said of this year's seminar. Perhaps a little more English philosophy was represented this time, papers on Hobbes (Alissa MacMillan), Toland and Locke (Stewart Duncan), Glanvil (Paul Lodge), Hume and Berkeley (three speakers including keynote James Harris). Then there were two excellent papers on Spinoza by Matthew Kisner and Martin Lin. I see that I am in a stage where I can follow Spinoza-papers without great difficulties. That was not always the case last year. Another trend this year was history of ideas. Other keynote, Leo Catana, gave a paper on the methdology of history of philosophy and there were also few papers on reception.

As last year, Aberdeen is not the most enjoyable of cities, but I reserved a hole day for shopping, finding nice brogues for £14 and the usual books and records. The informality of the congress was also nice - for example, among younger scholars we played tha what-to-take-with-you-to-a-deserted-island-game. And real ale is always a plus.

Ps. I completely forgot about this. So, while in Hannover, September 2013 I can't bring myself to remember all the details of the other events in May-June. Let me just say that the conference in Bucharest, organized by Adrian Nita , on Leibniz's early metaphysics was spot on and included a lot of interesting papers. I just sent my paper on Leibniz's De affectibus to the conference volume which will be published by Springer sometime. I am looking forward to that one! The third event was in Berlin, Humboldt universitet, a reading/discussion course by Martha Brant Bolton which was also excellent! Lots of people really reading the stuff and very good conversation on topics on philosophy of mind which are really interesting to me. Looking forward to further exchange of ideas with MB as I sent her some papers etc. A week in Berlin with my wife was very nice and I am very happy I could do that.

Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee & Glasgow, May 2012

Professionally, May was the most important part of the stay. I gave a paper on Leibniz and Spinoza on affects in Scottish Seminar of EarlyModern Philosophy in Aberdeen. I had only one month to learn Spinoza and write the paper, but judging by response it went down well. The paper needs more Spinoza-reading an rewriting, but I am confident it will turn out to be an article. Met some interesting people too as well as meeting again some old acquaintances. Aberdeen on the whole was not my dream town, bleak, cold and grey although the university campus was nice.

Right after SSEMP I attended The annual conference of British Association for the History of Philosophy in Dundee, entitled Spinoza: the infinite, the eternal with a special emphasis on the book V of the Ethics. Most interesting conference, although my limited knowledge of Spinoza hindered a bit my efforts to take in everything. Got to read the Ethics again ASAP. Dundee was a more likeable town, much like Edinburgh in fact.

During these conferences I discussed with many about career opportunities and though I try not to worry too much about it, it is clear that I should try to learn more about contemporary philosophy. Finland is a small country and in order to get a job in philosophy, one has to know something about everything. So I have bought some books about contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics here - one can get textbooks second hand with some hunting. Also attended a two day congress on epistemology in the University of Edinburgh. It was interesting stuff, but I find it a bit difficult to orientate thinking through things, not thinkers. Lot of reading to do, I am afraid. And have to attend conferences whenever there are those in Helsinki.

After the conferences in early May I have been mostly working on an article manuscript on Leibniz, Sophie and disinterested love which was given as a paper in March this year in Budapest and which will be published in a Hungarian journal. I am pretty happy with the paper so far. Other thing is that there is going to be a package of Leibniz-stuff fortcoming in niin & näin and I will edit the whole thing with Tuomo Aho. So I have been reading the texts and going through translations. I also interviewed Dr. Pauline Phemister for the magazine. The whole thing should be ready by end of June.

Outside of work, business of usual with my beloved wife. Charity shops, museums, pubs and movies. The highlight - literally - of the month was climbing to Arthur's Seat, the small mountain besides Edinburgh, and Salisbury crags, too which is beside it. Was not that hard to do, after all, although my Vertigo was a bit of a problem. We also went to the zoo which included a lot of climbing! Loved the penguins and the sea eagle was really impressive. I also loved the Forth Bridge boat ride - the railway bridge is fabulous and also visited an island and saw some wildlife seals busking in the sun on a great May day. Unforgettable.

 

Socially I've met some Finnish philosophers here who came to visit Edinburgh or live here - temporarily, at least. Besides this, there are the gatherings of the researchers of the IASH on fridays, pubs and discussions from all kinds of topics.

Pubs - that is something I am going to miss. And real ales - sigh. Having a lot of fish and chips, too. We finally got around to visit Glasgow with Susanna in the first weekend of June. Glasgow is not a pretty town, it is dirty, often ugly and noisy place. The west end, especially the university area is nice, though, with lots of cafes and second hand book stores etc. And the Kelvingrove art gallery was a nice place, although bit messy. With a Spitfire hanging from the ceiling!

Bought a lot of books there and had to carry them all the way to Edinburgh! The posting of all this stuff will cost a fortune, but most of it is included in my budget plan.

Coming up in June: Highlands, Locke Workshop in St. Andrews. Stay tuned!