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Brice Cummings

@abcummings.bsky.social

2.6K followers 920 following 410 posts

Peripatetic (adjunct) instructor of philosophy and history renaissanceanimal.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Jun 2

My book's publisher recently joined the
@bloomsburyacad.bsky.social family, so here is an updated link for Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre.
www.bloomsbury.com/us/baudelair...

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 1d

So writes Arnaud Orain, in his latest book, Le monde confisqué: Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIᵉ - XXIᵉ siècle) [The Confiscated World: An Essay on Finitude Capitalism, 1500-Present]. For more, see my review, at
renaissanceanimal.com/2025/10/07/b...

Book Review | A Confiscated World: Arnaud Orain on Finitude Capitalism Resurgent

Arnaud Orain. Le monde confisqué, Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIe-XXIe siècle). Paris : Flammarion, 2025. [English quotations below are my translation.] In 2020, a book by Andrew…

renaissanceanimal.com

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 1d

because they are not (really) merchants. Their interests lie in becoming sovereigns within a specific ‘space,’ then in forcing ‘taxes’ on their ‘subjects’ who use or live in these spaces... also forced labor, forced prices, unavoidable subscriptions, obligatory publicity, etc.”

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 1d

“[C]ontrary to what [Adam] Smith thought, the goal of Company-States is not to enrich their subjects in order later to tax them [as a national government might], because they are not [pure] States. Nor do their interests lie in buying from and selling merchandise to them,

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 2d

The Crow Museum of Asian Art at twilight, when the skateboarders roam

Reposted by Brice Cummings

Geoff Bowden @geoffbowden.bsky.social · 2d

Just spent 50 minutes trying to convince college freshmen that the university will take your money and give you a degree AND let you cross that stage completely unprepared for what is coming next. The learning and shaping who they want to be is really up to them. Professors are here to help.

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 4d

The destination isn't bad, though

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 4d

On the trail, it's not about the destination, it's about the snakes along the way

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 16d

"A surprising amount of G.W.F. Hegel’s letters to friends and family touch on the subject of coffee."

(Marie Louise Krogh)

www.jhiblog.org/2025/09/22/h...

Hegel’s “Brown Rivulet of Coffee”: Colonies, Commodities, and Context

by Marie Louise Krogh This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”

www.jhiblog.org

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 18d

Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 18d

The western edge of the Ouachita Mountains, in southeastern Oklahoma

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 20d

Update: the dog retained none of the knowledge she inhaled, instead vomiting up her newly acquired wisdom all over the floor multiple times during the night

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 20d

My German shepherd hasn't eaten many classic books, but when she does, she always chooses a German one...hmm...
So far she has eaten an Albert Einstein and a Meister Eckhart. She's eating the big questions.

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 20d

Arnaud Orain's book The Confiscated World, at once a genealogy and exposition of the current geopolitical mood of aggressive "finitude capitalism" (as opposed to a growth-oriented [neo]liberalism of "infinite horizons") is a timely, and, I think, important one. I'll be writing about it soon.

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · 25d

Cooper Lake State Park, enjoying the second wind of wildflowers that arrive at summer's end across northeastern Texas

Reposted by Brice Cummings

Stuart Elden @stuartelden.bsky.social · Sep 8

Aaron Brice Cummings, Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre - @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social, September 2024
www.bloomsbury.com/us/baudelair...

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Sep 6

Hazel

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Reposted by Brice Cummings

David Bather Woods @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social · Mar 28

It lives!

You can now preorder my philosophical biography of Schopenhauer.

Out in November.

Arthur Schopenhauer

An engaging biography of one of the most influential Western philosophers and a thought-provoking exploration of how to live with Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) almos...

press.uchicago.edu

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 28

😂

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 28

English is a cursed language. In a perfect world, I would have written this monograph in the language of scholarship: Latin! 😀

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 28

On the Bloomsbury Academic website, my book is currently on sale for 30% off the regular hardback price.

Come for the conversation about the problem of nihilism in the face of fascism; stay for the detours into tortoises, geometry, and world-historical ennui.
www.bloomsbury.com/us/baudelair...

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 25

First day of the fall semester at the Dallas campus of East Texas A&M University

Reposted by Brice Cummings

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Jun 2

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expec…

www.bloomsbury.com

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Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 11

... "rather than as the ungraspable terms of every relation, including those between fire and cotton or raindrops or tar." 3/3
(Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology, 2018)

I'm surprised Harman doesn't engage with Gaston Bachelard's poetics of things in this text -- it seems a missed connection

Brice Cummings @abcummings.bsky.social · Aug 11

... "leaving any object-object interactions apart from humans to the mathematizing models of natural science. By contrast, OOO endorses the things-in-themselves and asks why Kant treated them as the sole and tragic burden of human beings," 2/3

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