When I was around twenty years old, I fashioned for myself a few “rules of life”. One was the “rule of the restaurant”: never order at a restaurant what you could eat at home. That was meant to challenge myself, in new circumstances, to go for the not-so-familiar option. The other rule was the “rule of the desk”: when the desk gets overwhelmingly messy, just put an arm on the short side, move it through to the other side and let everything fall down; then, start, little by little, sorting out...

On Friday 3rd October 2025, in the Aula of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, starting at 16:00 CET, I'll deliver my inaugural lecture as...

I wanted to start this post with the bombastic statement: “Philosophy has always been my vocation”. But I couldn’t, because I immediately...