iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

I'm giving an online talk on Saturday morning with the Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling :: Bad Faith, Bullshit, and Belonging :: mainly Beauvoir and Sartre with some Kierkegaard and Heidegger Everyone is welcome! Booking is here: bit.ly/SAPCbfbb

On the right side: image of the cover of The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy, edited by me.

On the left side, the following text:

Bad Faith,
Bullshit, and
Belonging

22 November, 10 - 11.30am

Exploring existentialist views on bullshit, from
Kierkegaard's ‘chatter’ and Heidegger's ‘idle talk’ to
Beauvoir's ‘popular wisdom’ and Sartre's development
of these ideas to critique societal divisions.

Online talk given by
Jonathan Webber, editor of

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF
EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHY

Tickets: bit.ly/SAPCbfbb

Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Coming soon –– The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy edited by me :: available now to pre-order from all good bookshops (and that bad one) :: –– contents pages are in the thread below. #philsky

Image is book cover with the release date beneath: 13 November 2025.

Artwork on the book cover is Marie Raymond's painting Arabesques ou Variations sur la volute, 1948, oil on canvas, 91 x 72.5 cm, © ADAGP, Paris, banque d’images de l’ADAGP – an abstract painting in yellows, greys, whites, and black.

Book is published in Penguin Classics.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Kierkegaard on why you need to actually do the work rather than, say, have an AI write your essay for you —

Suppose someone wanting to learn to dance said: 'For hundreds of years now one generation after another has been learning dance steps, it's high time I took advantage of this and began straight off with a set of quadrilles.' One would surely laugh a little at him; but in the world of spirit such an attitude is considered utterly plausible. What then is education? I had thought it was the curriculum the individual ran through in order to catch up with himself; and anyone who does not want to go through this curriculum will be little helped by being born into the most enlightened age.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Please delete this. It contains misinformation likely to be detrimental to your colleagues in philosophy. Retracting it in other posts does not change this. It comes top of searches for Cardiff philosophy and for Cardiff university philosophy. We intend to recruit students in clearing this year.

Screen shot showing the post at the top of a search for Cardiff philosophy

Screen shot showing the post at the top of a search for Cardiff university philosophy

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Some things have changed. Much has stayed the same. The exhibit in the M Shed is well worth a visit.

Photo of the Colston statue lying on its back with red spray paint over its face and upper torso, as it is now exhibited in the M Shed. Exhibit includes changing images and text on the wall behind. In this photo, the wall is black except for an unattributed quote –– "It was poetic justice, seeing it go in the harbour where those ships sailed."

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Some people did install a plaque a year later, though the city council soon removed it.

Brushed steel plaque attached to the railings in Bristol harbour at the place where the Colston statue was dropped into the water.

Plaque has an etching of that moment, accompanied by the text:

June 7th, 2020: At this spot, during worldwide anti-racism protests, a statue celebrating the 17th century slave-trader Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour by the people of Bristol.
Various campaigns to have the statue removed through official channels had been frustrated.

Plaque then quotes a poem that was published the next day by - Vanessa Kisuule, who was the official Bristol City Poet at the time:

"You came down easy in the end.
As you landed
A piece of you fell off, broke away, And inside, nothing but air.
This whole time, you were hollow"

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

Just found this — — six pounds and fifty pence !

Ticket to see My Bloody Valentine at Town & Country Club (as was) in Kentish Town on 15 December 1991. Price was £ 6.50.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Sleep matters! Highly flammable! Toxic to fish!

Back of packaging for some kind of room or pillow spray my teenager won in a raffle. Along the top it says SLEEP MATTERS in gold lettering. Beneath that in white lettering it says: spray as often as needed to freshen up any space. Then it says: extremely flammable liquid and vapour. Harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects. Then talks about allergic reactions in humans. There are also two chemical warning symbols, one is a flame in a red triangle and the other simply a bold exclamation mark in a red triangle. I have no idea why anyone would even make this never mind buy it.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Did also manage to photograph the flying saucer hovering over the city centre today. Hope no-one was hurt.

Photo of Birmingham city centre in the distance taken through a window of the university’s School of Education building, a window which in the camera’s eye alone reflected the ceiling light on the landing behind me to look like a flying saucer hovering over Birmingham city centre. Or did it?

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Excellent discussion of my paper at the philosophy of education group at Birmingham — thank you! — hope I wasn’t too distracted by the spectacular views from the seminar room window.

Sunset over the Birmingham university campus with the iconic square and ridiculously tall clock tower in the centre.

Sunset over the Birmingham university campus with the iconic square and ridiculously tall clock tower in the centre. This one is later than the first one so the sunset is slightly different. Lots of colour in the sky.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Celebrating Simone de Beauvoir's 117th birthday by spending the day in cafes and a library trying to write something about existentialism.

Black and white photo of Simone de Beauvoir looking despondent at a cafe table with pen in one hand, cigarette in the other, sheets of paper beneath the pen, and a coffee pot, cup, and jug (I guess milk or cream) on the table. Looks like it was taken in the 1940s.

Photo taken just now of my laptop, coffee, papers, notebook, and pen on the table in this cafe where I am writing this tweet (or whatever it is).

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

On the fifth day of Christmas a cancan line of one-legged turkeys dragged santa and his sleigh finally towards the light.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

New paper just published! Rethinking Existentialism: A Response to Eshleman, Kirkpatrick, and Romdenh-Romluc Sartre Studies International 30: 64–92 (2024) Argues for integrating my readings of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Fanon with readings offered in critique of my work. Free pdf :: bit.ly/mypapers

Cover of the academic journal Sartre Studies International

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Just found a setting that makes bluesky infinitely better …

Muted text setting with both Elon and Musk added as separate entries. (Not on screen: have also added Twitter and 20 books that stayed.)

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

So many great albums but if I could only keep one it would have to be …

Cover of Kate Bush album The Sensual World

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

Simone de Beauvoir vs longtermism ::

Excerpt from Beauvoir's book The Ethics of Ambiguity:

"The case is the same in what concerns time and its moments, and just as we believe that by denying each individual one by one, one eliminates the collectivity, we think that if man gives himself up to an indefinite pursuit of the future he will lose his existence without ever recovering it; he then resembles a madman who runs after his shadow. The means, it is said, will be justified by the end; but it is the means which define it, and if it is contradicted at the moment that it is set up, the whole enterprise sinks into absurdity."

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 19/09/2024

RIP the Evening Standard Still very pleased I liberated this from one of their iconic newsstand boxes in Euston Square twenty years ago ...

Evening Standard headline poster in frame. Headline is: Author dies after facelift

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 02/09/2024

Me realising that it really is actual September now already.

Face of an old grandfather clock (in a cottage in west Wales, since you ask) whose hands, screws, and some other dial thing together vaguely resemble a face expressing a blend of surprise and dismay.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 09/08/2024

Looks great! and a little familiar ...

Original cover of Tim Crane's book The Mechanical Mind (Penguin, 1995). Cover image is a photo of the same sculpture as in the post to which this is a reply. Not the same photo, though.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 18/07/2024

Views from the Edinburgh philosophy department common room #BSET2024

View east including Arthur's Seat and the Firth of Forth

View west across rooftops towards distant mountains

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 17/07/2024

Hurtling through the Lake District on the way to #BSET2024

Photo of small mountains and blue skies through train window, with handout for my British Society for Ethical Theory talk on table in foreground.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 04/07/2024

Superb #SEP2024 session on Simone de Beauvoir with Anna Cornelia Ploug (Copenhagen) on concrete contradictions in The Second Sex and Katja Čičigoj (Klagenfurt) on gendered forms of subjectivation structuring lived experience.

Photo of Anna Cornelia Ploug (Copenhagen) on concrete contradictions in The Second Sex.

Photo of Katja Čičigoj (Klagenfurt) on gendered forms of subjectivation structuring lived experience.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 04/07/2024

There are only two possible Governments that could be formed by this election. And there are three possible Oppositions. #GE2024 #UKElections #vote #MakeToriesHistory

Block print by Bristol-based artist Corinne Welch reading CHANGE in red letters over 2024 in turquoise letters.

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 02/07/2024

Great talk from Juliana de Albuquerque (University College Cork) on Hannah Arendt's theory of the primacy of experience over theory and the centrality of stories to ethical and political understanding. #SEP2024

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 30/06/2024

More of this sort of thing here: neal.fun/absurd-troll...

Trolley problem diagram with dilemma itself blurred. Caption reads: Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, killing 1 person instead. At least, that’s what you think is happening. You forgot your glasses and can’t see that well. What do you do?

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Jonathan Webber @jonathanwebber.bsky.social · 14/01/2024

Now out in actual print! (Still available open access here: bit.ly/SCPopen)

Cover of January 2024 issue of French Studies with contents listed.

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