quick Dundee wrap-up

At this moment the youngsters continue to party at the home of Reid Kotlas. Old Man Johnston and Old Man Harman bailed before the party’s end due to very early taxis to the train station tomorrow. Old Man Hallward is so old that he never even showed up at the party. (Just joking… In all fairness, he has Cahiers work to do, and we were lucky he came at all.)

Put briefly, it was a fantastic conference, probably the best I’ve ever attended. It was a lively group, loaded with brilliant grad students. Every paper was interesting, and many of the questions from the audience were hard-hitting. Finally, as someone observed afterward, not one person at the conference was acting jerkishly, whereas at many conferences there will be at least one person with a bad attitude in one way or another. By the time the conference ended I felt like working a lot harder, which is just about the best possible result of such an event.

Mike Burns and Brian Smith seem to be the ones receiving the most credit for organizing the whole event, and certainly they have much to be proud of. If anyone reading this post is looking for a philosophy graduate program, I think you should consider Dundee. The atmosphere for students seems very supportive here.

I’m too wiped out to summarize today’s discussions, but some excellent points were raised. The entire spirit of the meeting was both serious and friendly. Certainly I feel that my understanding of the current “state of the situation” in continental philosophy is clearer than it was 48 hours ago.

With most conferences the end comes as a relief, even for relatively good events (conferences are inherently tiring; it’s not natural to want to sit and listen to people talk for 6 hours per day). But in this case I wish we had another 2-3 days of the same format.

My personal thanks to everyone who attended, and especially to all those who read papers (many of them are readers of this blog). Your words are still bubbling in my mind.