tomorrow

It will probably rain again tomorrow in Manchester. Everyone from the conference will have left, except for me, and I don’t know a soul in this city (other than the conference organizers I just met, and I would be a fool to bother them again; they need rest, and already treated me to enough hospitality, free dinners, kindness, etc.).

What I will be left with while solo tomorrow looks almost like a parody of the intellectual life: viewing Manchester’s large collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings, and reading more Francisco Suarez.

Speaking of Suarez… I don’t want to exaggerate. Leibniz is clearly better. But Leibniz owes him a great deal, and Suarez does consider the possible arguments and counterarguments for each point at great length. We are lucky to have had him.

I still think that a whole semester on Leibniz would be the best and most pleasurable introduction to metaphysics that one could have. I can’t think of anyone who embodies a better balance between classical seriousness and the sort of borderline wild innovation that you need in order not to to be a boring old pedantic stump of a human who merely regurgitates the words of the ancients.