Annual Cottingham Lecture 2026: Philosophy and its Past: A Canon or History?

Professor John Marenbon is coming to the University of Reading on Thursday 3 December for the Annual Cottingham Lecture 2026. He'll be speaking in Palmer Building 109 on the Whiteknights Campus, from 18:00 to 19:30.

The lecture is titled Philosophy and its Past: A Canon or History? and it sits right in Marenbon's wheelhouse. He's spent a career looking at how philosophy is handed down and how we decide what actually counts as part of the tradition. If you've ever wondered why certain thinkers get a permanent seat at the table while others are left as footnotes, this is exactly the kind of thing he'll be picking apart.

It's worth knowing who's behind the lectern, too. Marenbon is a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor at the Università della Svizzera Italiana. He's also an Honorary Professor of Medieval Philosophy Emeritus at Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. His recent work gives you a good sense of where his head is: he edited The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy and Pagans and Philosophers: the problem of paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. He's also got two books coming out soon, How Medieval Thinkers Analysed Cultural Differences and Facts and States of Affairs. Between those, you can see the thread running through his work — the way thinkers from different eras and cultures have talked to each other, and the way we've kept track of those conversations over the centuries.

Admission is free, but you do need to book your place in advance. The lecture runs from 18:00 to 19:30 in Palmer Building 109 on the Whiteknights Campus, so it's an early evening on a Thursday.