I am a British expatriate teaching philosophy at a university in Istanbul. I have been teaching philosophy in Istanbul since 1997, on a full time basis at two universities, also part time at one other institution. In early 1997 I was teaching in Northern (Turkish) Cyprus. Before that I was teaching part time at various institutions in London and the southeast of England while completing my doctorate in philosophy and literature and for a period after completion and before securing full time employment.
This blog refers to my philosophical interests, along with my political interests, and general cultural interests.
Philosophical Position: Montaigne/Pascal/Vico/Kierkegaard/Nietzsche/Foucault. Historical-literary-Continental aspects of philosophy. Was at one time leaning more towards a Kant,Wittgenstein, Derrida combination, roughly speaking, more oriented towards transcendental limits, limits and possibility of thought and meaning, universality and transcendence in philosophy. I have not abandoned all interests there, but my earlier publications lean in that direction, in the direction of a unifying project in that area which I did not complete and have instead shifted to a comparatively more genealogical, historical, cultural, literary and contextual approach, which has yet to reach its most expanded forms. Not an absolute distinction, but a meaningful shift.
Various literary figures are important for my philosophical thinking, as well as thinking about the nature of literature, including Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cervantes, Melville, Hardy, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Mann and Beckett.
Political Position: Classical Liberal/Libertarian of a moderate kind (Ordoliberalism is one possible label)and with strong Republican tendencies.
Very ‘Europeanist’ in that I work on: the history and philosophy of European identity and I am an advocate of European political union based on a reformed European Union that emphasises flexibility and variation within a strong political union.
The 1989 Anti-Communist Revolution in Europe, with its associated themes of Enlightenment liberalism, European tradition and identity, and civil society was the most formative political event for me.
My philosophical and literary education was at the University of Warwick, 1984 to 1988, for a few months at the University of Southampton in 1989, then the University of Sussex until 1995.
Further information about my publications and academic profile on neighbouring page links immediately.
Stockerblog 
Moderately free yourself? 😉
[I mean in an Islamic state……how easy is it to give lectures to Muslims, albeit in a to some [keyword: Ataturk] strangely un-Islamic country, where girls can wear the tightest jeans imaginable without causing circulation problems, and no one bats an eye-lid. Mind you I’m going by a small Anatolian coastal town/city, where I found modern attitudes in things like dress {and of course drink for some} yet fierce pride in Islam from educated middle-class Turks]
Looking forward to reading your online stuff.
Sometimes a position is pretty much – or can end up as – I can take more freedom that you…. “You see, I’ve worked out the limits of freedom and of course how individual freedom works in society, so am in the best position both to tell you what to do and not to do it myself.”
….think always in this regard of the Grand Inquisitor sequence in Brothers Karamazov. Those in charge have worked out how best society can be ordered, no need for Jesus to come back to mess things up with his love/freedom, but of course the rules they apply to others need not apply to themselves. [Any number of movies along those lines…]
And then there is another flash image I tend to get every time there is another media report of impending environmental collapse: the guys planning to live completely aboard super liners once they have exhausted the terrestrial part of the planet. And of course to keep the starving hoards off their backs! [Any number of movies soon along those lines..]