quick day update

In Paris as in Manchester, my hotel has decided to gouge on wireless internet rates, so I am choosing cybercafe use instead. That’s why the few posts I make from Paris will all be fairly short. These cybercafe keyboards are stiff and unreliable.

Spent a fun few hours over several coffees with Gabriel Catren, the young Argentinian philosopher-physicist. His enthusiasm and optimism are contagious, and if it’s true that most human interactions are either energy-enhancing or energy-sucking, Gabriel is very much in the “enhancer” column. I already feel happier than I did before that conversation. Mostly, I think he’s right that we are fortunate to live at this particular moment in philosophy, and though I always think that, he expressed the point with more convincing force than I often do.

Moved then to the garden of the Ecole normale supérieure, in the lovely crisp and cool sunny weather we are blessed with today. Knox Peden (recent Ph.D. from UCLA Berkeley on the history of French Spinozism) came up in conversation. 90 seconds later, who should appear but Knox Peden himself? Always a pleasure to see Knox again.

Then on to the day’s main event… A summary presentation led by David Rabouin and Frédéric Worms of their group’s activities on contemporary French philosophy.

This was followed by a discussion of the MétaphysiqueS series at PUF where my own L’objet quadruple will appear. The series is jointly edited by During/Maniglier/ Meillassoux/Rabouin (I hope I’m not forgetting anyone) and will launch in early November with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Métaphysiques cannibales (which reportedly mentions Speculative Realism) and a reissue of Souriau’s Les différents modes d’existence with a long introduction co-authored by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. Mockups of both covers were displayed: minimalistic white covers with the author’s name in black and the book title in red, and a small erratic sketch near the bottom of the cover.

Meillassoux himself was there, and clarified the situation with L’inexistence divine… The version on which he is now working will indeed be three volumes in length, with the first volume alone already at 400 pages. The other two volumes will probably take awhile. So if you want a taste of that work, the excerpts contained in my book on Meillassoux will be the only game in town for several years at least.

Everyone was in excellent spirits. And what a bright, crisp autumn day in Paris!