Major Coup for Philosophy at Southampton: Janaway from Birkbeck takes Chair

Christopher Janaway, the distinguished Schopenhauer scholar at Birkbeck College, University of London--who is also well-known for work on Nietzsche and on aesthetics, ancient and modern--has accepted a Chair at the University of Southampton, to start in January 2005. On this occasion, I will simply quote myself, from the letter I was asked to write by Southampton earlier this year when they were considering the appointment: "[Professor Janaway] would instantly raise the international standing of the Philosophy Department at Southampton, establishing it as the leading center in the United Kingdom for the study of such major 19th-century figures as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and one of the two or three such leading centers in the world." At Southampton, Professor Janaway joins, among others, Aaron Ridley in the Philosophy Department and David Owen in Politics. The University of London will continue to have good resources for those interested in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (Ken Gemes at Birkbeck, and Sebastian Gardner at UCL), as will Cambridge (Raymond Geuss) and Oxford (Stephen Mulhall and, if he stays, Michael Rosen); outside the U.K., of course, the place to be for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is...