Pictures from Oxford

Just sharing a few pictures from Teddy Hall, and other places in Oxford that will be occupying my view in the upcoming months.

Radcliffe Camera (undergraduate reading rooms in the Bodleian) and the University Church of St. Mary

The most important part of the Bodleian

Entrance to the Bodleian

Radcliffe Camera

Teddy Hall, I had my interview in this building

More Teddy Hall

St Edmund Hall has converted a disused parish church into the college library, and the grounds into a series of gardens. You can even walk on the grass in some of them.

So this is where I'll be working over the next year. I'm really quite impressed by the physical space.

Of course I'm most excited about having an extended period of time to work with Locke's manuscripts. Many of these have now been published, so the exclusivity of access to his drafts is less pronounced than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Still, there is something quite striking about holding papers which record the exertions of a great mind. The hesitancy, immediacy, and intimacy of such experiences are profoundly moving.

Patrick Riley, my undergraduate lecturer, reflected on his use of manuscripts in, recalling from memory, his The General Will Before Rousseau. His experience with manuscripts left him convinced that authors lived on in them; dead philosophers were only deceased in the most trivial of senses. There is something profoundly Socratic in that sentiment, and one which I frequently share.

This however is a photo post, so I will hold off on more extended musings on drafts, journals, and other manuscripts. Perhaps, that will make a good future entry.

Once more into the breach,

Ben