Welcome to Simon Blackburn's Web Page

Welcome! This is the page for those of you who want to know about the philosopher Simon Blackburn, who is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Professor at the New College of the Humanities. Other Simon Blackburns are elsewhere in cyberspace, such as this homonymous mathematician, Link who kindly put a link to me, or nowhere in cyberspace, although let us hope somewhere in physical space.

Here is a picture of me
in a native habitat:
follow it for a brief biography
A picture of me
My most reent book is a small book on Truth, published in their "Ideas in Profile" series by Profile Books. I had the idea of calling it "Post-truth: fake news" since it claims that we cannot be post-truth, at least while we need to live and breathe. But it's not really about Brexit and Trump, so this was deemed inappropriate. It is about much more interesting things, to me at any rate
My previous book was a meditation on emotions directed at the self. It was to have been called "Because You're Worth It" but there was fear that L'Oreal might object. Since the book is partly about the perils of vanity I cannot unfortunately mention the brilliant review by Shahidha Bari in the THE, March 2014 although you could try clicking on the picture
Here too is my second collection of essays. Anybody finding it in bookshops under household pets, zoology, etc. please tell the management.

The site now gives you five distinct options

.

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You can browse several recent papers
by following this route: The picture shows you how much pleasure reading can give
.
Another option is to look at reviews I have written in various organs. These include reviews of works by Heidegger, Eco, Nussbaum, Pinker, Dawkins, Parfit and others. The ladder is to enable us reverently to approach these commanding presences, and then, with a smile or a tear, to climb down again.
Next, You can see an assortment of other books, remembering that Nietzsche said that a philosopher is an explosion waiting to happen.
This is a portfolio of black & white photographs with, I hope, philosophical themes, that I have taken over the years. The diagonal arrow bottom right brings up the full screen instead of the slide list.
Here is a fairly extensive CV so you can see what the fearless undaunted wanderer above
the sea of fog, gazing resolutely into
the Heart of Being, bringing back reports from outside the Cave, has managed to tell: