In his On Dreams (1901), Sigmund Freud puts forward the fascinating theory that we do not sleep in order to dream but that we dream in order to sleep. The wish fulfilment the sleeper receives in the dream is a way for the mind to neutralise any disturbances that might…

Introduction Antonio Gaudi once said that originality consists of returning to the origin. In this short paper I seek to explore how in the ideas of the original early Greek thinkers Anaxamander, Permenides, Empedocles and Heraclitus we can see intimations of the Christian theology which would one day come to…

Recently, a few of the online course makers I follow have been writing and vlogging about their experiences pursuing a viable and self-supporting intellectual life online. These commentaries made me want to solidify some vague thoughts that have been circling in my head for a while now, particularly as I…

My own understanding of Kant’s project is that he was trying to determine how it is possible that we can reason about phenomena about which we have no direct experience; such as the question of what happens to us after we die (Kant, 2001, pp.25, 35). The first thought…

That morning, Peter* woke up feeling down again. Dragging himself out of bed, Peter was nonetheless determined to head to the marketplace and see the tightrope walker who was due to be giving a performance that day. When he got to the marketplace, however, Peter was surprised to see everyone…

Having now explored several key themes of Gregoire Chamayou’s critique of drone warfare in the previous sections of this digest, it is now possible to come to a conclusion about the overall themes underpinning Drone Theory (2015). First of all, what is so fascinating about Chamayou’s critique of drone warfare…

‘A robot commits a war crime. Who is responsible?’ (Chamayou, 2015, p.210) Having spent most of Drone Theory exploring the negative consequences of the increasing separation of body and machine in drone warfare, towards the end of the book Chamayou follows this trend to its its logical conclusion: the total…

A central theme of the previous posts in this exploration of Gregoire Chamayou’s Drone Theory (2015) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) has been the place of the body in warfare and how drones undermine this link, with dangerous results. Part 8 now examines Chamayou’s invocation of the social…

In November last year I signed up for Justin Murphy’s IndieThinkers. My main reason for doing this was to give the final stretch of my part-time PhD thesis writing an extra productivity boost, but also to put some impetus into a blogging/vlogging/podcast experiment I called Primitive Accumulation, or PrimAcc for…