Wild, Wild, Wild Youth: A Hundred Years of Anarchy

  

Philip Gibbs: Young Anarchy (Hutchinson and Co., 1926)  

Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the U.K. (EMI, 1976)

 

'I have no tolerance with the spirit of anarchy which is threatening to destroy 

this country of ours; none with the open immorality of youth 

who are dancing their way to the Devil.' [1]

 

I.

 

As ageing punks across the land will know, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - the debut single by the Sex Pistols; a four-piece rock group styled and (mis)managed by Malcolm McLaren, consisting of Steve Jones on guitar, Paul Cook on drums, Glen Matlock on bass, and frontman Johnny Rotten on vocals. 

 

Originally issued in a plain black sleeve [2], the single reached number 38 on the official UK Singles Chart despite EMI withdrawing the record and firing the band following the Bill Grundy Incident [3].

 

It remains one of the great pop songs: a clarion call to an entire generation of youth - or, more precisely, to that tiny minority of angry, alienated teens who aligned themselves with those described by Peter York as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [4]. 

 

In other words, teens like me [5] who, even now, five decades later, still think it sounds fantastic: play here. 

 

And some idiots still naively imagine that The Clash are the only band that matters ...!  

 

 

II.  

 

What ageing punks across the land will probably not know, however, is that this year also marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Young Anarchy - a newsreel novel [6] by the largely-forgotten English journalist and author Philip Gibbs [7].   

 

Published soon after the General Strike (3-9 May, 1926) [8], the book explores generational divides and political tensions in post-War Britain, offering a fast-paced commentary on contemporary events. 

 

The punks of their day - so-called Jazz Age youth - are portrayed by Gibbs as rebels who reject old ideals of obedience and duty. It frames their rebellion - whether through acts of cultural hedonism or radical left-wing politics - as a desperate response to the horrors of the Great War.  

 

True to Gibbs's own political liberalism, the book's narrator acts as a well-meaning, moderate observer; one who expresses sympathy for workers fighting for fair wages, but at the same time strongly opposes militants who use industrial action to threaten national stability and young people seemingly out of control and happy to drink and dance their lives away. 

 

This, said of a group of what Gibbs terms Glad Young Things in 1926, might also have been written by some old fart observing the staff and customers of SEX in 1976: "Born into the beginning of a new epoch, with a new mentality [...] We of the older generation cannot catch them up or hold them back. They have escaped from us." [9] 

 

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, both the novel Young Anarchy and the single 'Anarchy in the U.K.' serve as vital, time-capsule dispatches from eras when British society felt precariously close to the edge. 

 

Whether processing the lingering trauma of the Great War through a mixture of decadence and hedonism in 1926, or venting the frustrations of economic collapse and cultural stagnation by gobbing and pogoing in 1976, both generations of youth terrified the establishment by refusing to inherit an untenable status quo. 

 

Gibbs's forgotten book reminds us that the instinct to tear it up and start again did not begin with safety pins and ripped t-shirts - it is, rather, a recurring British tradition born whenever the promises of the old order ring hollow. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This is the reactionary Bishop of Burpham speaking - a character in the novel who does not approve of the younger generation openly jeering at religion and expressing revolutionary ideas. He finds them perplexing, distressing and terrifying: "They seem to me lawless, anarchical, and utterly lacking in any sense of duty and discipline." This includes his own son, Jocelyn, studying at Oxford where he encounters socialism, and his daughter, Nancy, who has published a successful (if somewhat racy) novel. Whilst he disowns them both, his sister, Elizabeth, is far more positive about her nephew and niece and the young generally in whom she sees great future potential.  

      The lines quoted are on p. 7 of the US edition of Philip Gibbs's Young Anarchy (published by George H. Doran, 1926) and available free online thanks to the New York Public Library.  

 

[2] There were only a couple of thousand copies of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' issued in the black sleeve; after that, it was sold in the standard EMI sleeve with a hole in the middle so the label information could easily be read. See the post on TTA titled 'But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It ...' (24 March 2024). 

 

[3] For those readers who aren't familiar with the details of the Bill Grundy incident, let me briefly summarise: After Queen cancelled their appearance on the live television show Today at the last minute, the Sex Pistols were offered the spot in order to promote their debut single, 'Anarchy in the U.K.', and explain what the new subcultural phenomenon called punk was all about. 

      Things started badly and quickly got worse when it was clear that Grundy was hostile and dismissive of the band and that the latter - particularly guitarist Steve Jones - was not prepared to take his bullshit, nor listen to his creepy sexual innuendo when speaking to a female member of their entourage called Siouxsie Sioux. Suggesting to her that they might 'meet afterwards' triggered Jones into calling him a "dirty sod" and a "dirty old man". 

      Stupidly, Grundy then challenged Jones to "say something outrageous" - which he did; calling Grundy a "dirty bastard" and a "dirty fucker". Grundy responded, "What a clever boy!" to which Jones hilariously replied, "What a fucking rotter!" 

      Predictably, the phone lines to the Thames switchboard lit up and the national press had a field day. Grundy was suspended by Thames and his career effectively ended. The Sex Pistols were fired shortly afterwards by their record label EMI (keeping their £40,000 advance) and branded by the media as public enemies. The interview - click here - has become one of the most requested TV clips of all time.

 

[4] Peter York, 'Them', Harpers & Queen (October, 1976). Quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

 

[5] I was thirteen when 'Anarchy in the U. K.' was released, but I didn't fully commit to the punk cause until the summer of 1977 around the time of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, when it became clear that one was either for the Crown or the Sex Pistols.    

 

[6] Newsreel fiction refers to a literary technique in which a writer splices actual news headlines, advertising slogans, and historical documents directly into the text with the aim of capturing the chaotic public consciousness of an era increasingly shaped by the media. The style is famously used by American author John Dos Passos in his U.S.A. trilogy (1930-36). 

 

[7] Philip Gibbs (1877-1962) served as one of five official British war correspondents during the First World War and was determined to be a writer just like his father and four of his siblings, producing an astounding number of books in his lifetime. 

      One extremely knowledgeable blogger writes: "In many ways Philip Gibbs is the archetypal male middlebrow writer of the inter-war period. Immensely prolific, he appealed strongly to the thoughtful decent middle class, worried about the way the world was going and wary of extremes." See the post Philip Gibbs and 'Heirs Apparent' (3 June 2013) on George Simmers' blog Great War Fiction Plus. 

      On a later post  - The Novels of Philip Gibbs - a checklist (17 Dec 2017) - Simmers writes that whilst today many of Gibbs's novels are largely forgotten and remain "of more interest to the historian than to the connoisseur of literature", he is, nevertheless, a very readable and interesting writer. 

 

[8] Called by the TUC in solidarity with the miners, around 1.7 million transport, printing, dock, and heavy industry workers walked out, bringing much of Britain to a standstill. It is worth noting that in Gibbs's novel the General Strike is something of a turning point; suddenly, the Glad Young Things rally round for king and country and do their scabby bit by driving buses and working at the docks. Gibb's writes: "That youth of ours [...] so careless of criticism, such rebels against authority, so reckless of convention [...] played the game according to the rules, and in the spirit of the old tradition." [Young Anarchy, US edition, 1926, p. 309.]

      Similarly, many punks proved to be right-thinking people when push came to shove - even Johnny Rotten is now seen as a national treasure, who loved his mother, loved his wife, and didn't really mean those nasty things he said about Her Majesty, describing anarchy as a bourgeois fantasy only ever subscribed to by people like McLaren. Young Anarchy suggests that the essentially peaceful and liberal spirit of England will always win out against more extreme, revolutionary ideologies and perhaps that is in fact the case. 

      See George Simmers's review of Young Anarchy (20 Oct 2025) published on Reading 1900-1950 - a Sheffield Hallam University blog site concerned with readerships and literary cultures in this period. And see also an earlier review by Simmers of Gibbs's novel published on his own blog (29 June 2008) - click here - upon which the later piece is largely based.   

 

[9] Philip Gibbs, Young Anarchy (George H. Doran, 1926), p. 134. 

      This marks the novel's thematic resolution; the narrator finally accepts that society has shifted permanently into a new era, leaving his generation behind. 

 

On Two High-Maintenance Individuals and the Man Who Paid the Price of Befriending Them

Ludwig Wittgenstein, D. H. Lawrence, and Bertrand Russell 

photographed in 1929

 

 

I. 

 

In the early 20th century, the phrase high-maintenance was one confined to the world of technical engineering and referred to sensitive machines that demanded constant monitoring and often frequent servicing or repair with specialised parts to ensure smooth running.

  

But by the late 1980s, it was being used by those hip to the latest slang to describe romantic partners and emotionally draining personality types, as well as racing cars and fighter jets. The phrase only gained wide circulation, however, thanks to the hugely popular and influential rom-com When Harry Met Sally (dir. Rob Reiner, 1989) [1].    

 

 

II. 

 

I'm not here to discuss the Harry Burns & Sally Albright relationship, however, and whether the latter was or was not difficult to date due to her being very particular about the manner in which her food was served. 

 

I'm here, rather, to discuss an English writer and an Austrian-born thinker, both of whom I'm sure Bertie Russell would agree were extremely exacting, hyper-sensitive, and emotionally volatile men of genius: D. H. Lawrence and Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

 

While Lawrence was a passionate, prophetic novelist who used poetic language to describe being and Wittgenstein an analytic philosopher who used rigorous logic to define the limits of language, they had similar temperaments and shared an intensity that many people found exhausting.   

 

 

III. 

 

Born in an East Midlands mining community in 1885, Lawrence was a visionary who - by his own admission - preferred his own subjective model of the truth and waged a relentless crusade against many - perhaps most - aspects of the modern industrial world and the moral-rational idealism rooted in Plato that gave rise to Christianity. 

 

Sensitive to criticism, social convention and all forms of authority - and happy to tramp around the world on what he termed a savage pilgrimage, picking fights with friends and enemies along the way - Lawrence was someone who seemed to actively court controversy and thrive on conflict. 

 

His books were censored and sometimes banned. And if he can legitimately be thought of as carrying forward Nietzsche's project of a revaluation of all values, Lawrence can also be viewed as a forerunner of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Born just outside Vienna in 1889 into an extremely wealthy family, Wittgenstein was unsparing in his demand for absolute conceptual clarity and perfection from himself and everyone around him. Whether spending years obsessing over a single architectural detail, pushing students to breaking point with his teaching methods, or waving pokers in the faces of visiting professors [2], he tolerated no sloppy thinking (as might be expected of someone who originally wished to study aeronautical engineering).  

 

His close companion and friend - the brilliant Cambridge mathematician David Pinsent - noted that Wittgenstein was always on edge and easily upset by the smallest thing or any imagined insult. If someone made a casual remark or used a cliché, Wittgenstein would react with genuine horror and fury, viewing it as a moral failing rather than innocent small talk. 

 

Like Lawrence, his personal life was marked by a series of fierce arguments, abrupt ruptures and intense reconciliations. He swung between deep self-loathing and absolute certainty in his own rightness in matters of philosophical logic. Prone to severe bouts of depression, he would sometimes have suicidal thoughts and seek out total isolation. 

 

In brief: both Lawrence and Wittgenstein were highly-strung as well as high-maintenance individuals. 

 

 

V.

 

Just to be clear: Lawrence and Wittgenstein never met. 

 

When Lawrence visited the University of Cambridge in March 1915, at the invitation of Bertrand Russell, he was introduced to several prominent figures, including the economist John Maynard Keynes, but Wittgenstein was then serving on the Eastern front as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army. 

 

Probably it's just as well that they didn't meet. 

 

For Lawrence was less than comfortable in the hallowed halls of Cambridge and came away detesting the Apostles, describing his visit as a major crisis that revealed to him the rotten nature of English intellectual life [3]. 

 

His visceral response was in part triggered by the rational cynicism of those he encountered and in part by his homophobia. For several members of the Cambridge Apostles and the affiliated Bloomsbury Group were either homosexual or had bisexual leanings and Keynes once rather amusingly declared that "practically everyone at Cambridge [...] is an open and avowed sodomite" [4] - this included Wittgenstein, of course.      

 

 

VI. 

 

Although they never met, there was one man - already twice mentioned in this post - who knew them both and was exasperated first by Wittgenstein (in the period 1911-1913) and then by Lawrence (1915-1916): Bertrand Russell ...

 

Born in 1872 - so a generation older than Lawrence and Wittgenstein - Russell would become one of England's most celebrated thinkers, social reformers, and outspoken opponents of the First World War (even spending six months in Brixton prison in 1918 for his pacifist writings and activism).  

 

Having won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1890, he graduated in 1893 with a degree in mathematics. Two years later, he won a prize fellowship in philosophy and was eventually given a teaching post in 1899. Aligning himself with figures such as G. E. Moore and Alfred North Whitehead, Russell was part of the revolt against idealism and one of the founding figures in analytic philosophy.  

 

 

VII.

 

Russell first met Wittgenstein in October 1911, when the latter suddenly appeared one tea time, unannounced and unexpected. Wittgenstein introduced himself as an engineering student from Austria who wanted to study mathematical logic. 

 

Intrigued, Russell welcomed the earnest young fellow and quickly recognised he was an extraordinary individual - so much so, that he came to think of Wittgenstein not merely as his student and research collaborator, but his protégé. Between their first meeting and the summer of 1913, the two men developed an intense intellectual bond and worked tirelessly to solve some of the fundamental problems in mathematical logic. 

 

However, Russell soon discovered that Wittgenstein could be difficult, to put it mildly - not least of all when insisting on the impossibility of proving there were no rhinos in the room - and in May 1913 their relationship suffered a significant strain when Wittgenstein criticised Russell's work on the Theory of Judgment with such savagery that it shattered Russell's confidence in his own writings. 

 

Shortly afterwards, Wittgenstein decided to leave Cambridge and retreat to a secluded wooden hut in Norway, before eventually volunteering to fight in the Great War. Afterwards, the relationship between the two men was never the same again. 

Nevertheless, Russell helped Wittgenstein publish his groundbreaking Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (in German in 1921 and in English translation the following year) - he even generously wrote an introduction, despite the fact that Wittgenstein made clear his view that Russell fundamentally misunderstood the work.  

 

Russell also facilitated Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929, by agreeing to accept the Tractatus as a doctoral thesis (and act alongside Moore as the examiner). But Wittgenstein wasn't particularly grateful and he increasingly grew to dislike Russell's popular writings and changing philosophical direction. 

 

 

VIII.

 

And then there was Lawrence ... Someone whom Russell found even more of a high-maintenance madman. At least Wittgenstein, for all his idiosyncrasies, was logical in his thinking and didn't subscribe to a libidinal philosophy based on an intuitive way of knowing described as blood-knowledge [5].  

 

Russell first met Lawrence in February 1915. They were introduced, I believe, by their mutual acquaintance Lady Ottoline Morrell, who, for some reason, imagined that both men would greatly benefit from the meeting. 

 

And, to be fair, at first they seemed to get along like a house on fire - united in their passionate opposition to the War, if nothing else. Russell initially found Lawrence an astounding figure: "He is like Ezekiel or some other Old Testament prophet [...] he sees everything and is always right" [6]. They even planned to co-author and deliver jointly a series of public lectures on social reconstruction. 

 

However, their brief working and personal relationship quickly deteriorated due to deep philosophical differences and by early 1916 Lawrence chose to cut all ties with Russell - though not before sending him a number of outrageously aggressive and insulting letters that, for a while, made Russell feel so wretched that he even considered killing himself. 

 

Take a butcher's at this one for example, written on 14 September 1915, which opens: "Dear Russell, I'm going to quarrel with you again. You simply do not speak the truth, you simply are not sincere" and which then goes on to say: 

 

"You are simply full of repressed desires [...] Your will is false and cruel. You are too full of devilish repressions to be anything but lustful and cruel. [...] The enemy of all mankind, you are, full of the lust of enmity. It is not the hatred of falsehood which inspires you. It is the hatred of people, of flesh and blood. It is a perverted mental blood-lust. Why don't you own it. Let us become strangers again, I think it is better." [7]    

  

Wittgenstein may have made Russell feel intellectually inferior - and he may have found Wittgenstein's moral perfectionism tiresome - but Lawrence left him feeling completely worthless as a human being - and who needs that?    

 

 

IX.

 

On reflection - and despite my not much caring for him - it's difficult not to afford Bertrand Russell a significant degree of sympathy. 

In D. H. Lawrence and Ludwig Wittgenstein, he was obliged to manage two of the most intensely high-maintenance individuals of the modern era - young men who were incredibly exhausting and demanding to be around. 

Biographers, friends, and peers have extensively documented how both Lawrence and Wittgenstein were routinely impossible - prickly, combative, tormented, and heavily burdened by an agonizing duty of genius. Both actively thrived on opposition, were prone to explosive rages, and would rather sit in hours of tense, excruciating silence than tolerate casual small talk.

 

What Russell encountered in both men was an insane refusal to compromise with the world as it was. Crucially, however, while Lawrence insisted on raw, emotional vitality at all times, Wittgenstein enforced a standard of absolute intellectual integrity and this fundamental divergence explains why Russell ultimately drew such a sharp line of distinction between the two. 

In his Autobiography, reflecting on his state of mind during the tumultuous period in which he was closely associated with both men, Russell summarised the difference: "Lawrence is just as ferocious a critic as Wittgenstein, but I thought Wittgenstein right and I think Lawrence wrong." [8]

 

In other words, Russell respected Wittgenstein's hostility because its strict conceptual honesty acted as a rigorous intellectual challenge, forcing him to abandon untenable logical theories. 

Lawrence's hostility, on the other hand, was purely personal and rooted in Lawrence's need to psycho-pathologise the people he met. Lawrence successfully drove Russell to the edge of despair, but his criticisms lacked any substantive philosophical basis, leaving Russell unconvinced by his arguments. 

Push comes to shove, then, Russell chooses the logical fanaticism of Wittgenstein over the destructive emotional chaos of Lawrence. For at least with the former, you can reason - which is not the case with a man who sings If it be not true to me / what care I how true it be [9] and talks an awful lot about his solar plexus. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In a famous scene in the movie, Harry (played by Billy Crystal) informs Sally (Meg Ryan) that there are, in his view, two types of women: high and low maintenance. This permanently shifted the phrase from a niche piece of slang into a universal linguistic shorthand for a demanding partner - and for this we can thank the film's writer Nora Ephron. 

      It might be noted, however, that there are critics of the term - especially as it is often used by men as a sexist insult about women (particularly women who are simply more than they can handle or out of their league).

 

[2] See the post 'Did You Hear the One About the Philosopher and the Actress?' (30 Oct 2025) in which I discuss the infamous 1946 incident where Wittgenstein brandished a poker in Karl Popper's direction. 

 

[3] In a notorious letter [19 April 1915] to David Garnett, Lawrence wrote that the scene at Cambridge filled him with "misery and hostility and rage" and he compared Keynes and co. to "black-beetles" (perhaps of the very same species that Wittgenstein would later place in an imaginary box to make a point about the meaning of words for inner sensations coming from public use rather than private hidden objects; see Philosophical Investigations (1953), § 293). 

      See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 320-321.

 

[4] Keynes wrote this playful observation in a 1906 letter to his close friend and lover Duncan Grant, with reference to the tight-knit, intellectually progressive circles at the university. It is quoted by Simon Goldhill in Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History (Cambridge University Press, 2025). See Chapter 2: 'The Politics of Homosexuality', pp. 92-144.

      Lawrence, who struggled with his own homoerotic impulses, was disgusted by how casually and cynically the Cambridge crowd treated sexuality. He viewed their lifestyle not as a genuine form of love, but as a sterile, intellectualised perversion (they had their sex in the head, as he liked to say).

 

[5] In a famous letter (17 Jan 1913) to Ernst Collins, Lawrence writes: "My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true." See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 502-504. Lines quoted are on p. 503.  

      When, a couple of years later, Lawrence tried to convince Russell of a non-mental, elemental form of consciousness, the latter was unimpressed and unpersuaded. And, rather unfairly and somewhat crassly, Russell would later write that Lawrence's mystical philosophy of blood was essentially fascist in character and led straight to the Nazi death-camps See Volume II (1914-1944) of his three-volume Autobiography (George Allen & Unwin, 1967-1969), p. 23. 

 

[6] Bertrand Russell, quoted by John Worthen in D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 158.

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Letters II. 392. As John Worthen notes, this letter went too far for Russell, who from this point on found Lawrence "increasingly absurd, incapable of real thinking and madly unrealistic". See D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, p. 160.

 

[8] Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, Vol. II (1968), p. 54. Russell originally wrote these lines to Lady Ottoline Morrell in a letter of July 1915.

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction' to Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 70. (My italics.)

 

 

On the Politics (and Philosophy) of Empathy

 A coloured detail from a lino-style illustration by Space Ink

Visit: SpaceInkShop on etsy.com  

 

 

I.

 

Interestingly, whilst the word empathy has Ancient Greek roots, the complex modern concept it refers to originates in 19th-century German aesthetics: Einfühlung described the projection of self into a work of art [1]. 

 

This term was translated into English and given a wider psychological meaning by Edward B. Titchener in 1909. Since then, the word has become central to ethical and political debates - serving as something closely related to, yet distinctly separate from, older concepts such as sympathy and compassion. 

 

 

II.  

 

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk famously expressed his dislike for the word empathy, viewing it as a type of false coinage [2] privileged by the radical left to manipulate and exploit human feeling for ideological ends. 

 

Taken to its logical extreme, Kirk argued, empathy is not only socially damaging, but suicidal for those who fail to recognise it as an irrational and pathological form of behaviour that, in a Nietzschean sense, is "more dangerous than any vice" [3]. 

 

 

III. 

 

The specific term - suicidal empathy - was coined by Lebanese-born Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, a long-term opponent of political correctness and social justice activism (or what is frequently termed wokeism) in academia. 

 

According to Saad, when an individual or a governing class is psychologically conditioned to believe that empathy is the highest moral virtue, then their decision-making process becomes fatally compromised [4]. 

 

Thus, for example, we might witness the rights of illegal migrants - belonging to cultures with beliefs, values, and customs entirely alien (and in some cases openly hostile) to those of the native population - being prioritised, even when it risks national security. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Obviously, this is a controversial idea.

 

Popularised by figures such as Kirk, Elon Musk, and others on the right of the political spectrum concerned with rapid demographic and cultural change in the West, it is fiercely contested by those who - wishing to abolish not only national borders but all barriers between self and others - preach that love is universal and unconditional.  

 

For the latter, sympathy no longer suffices. Only the deeper sentiment of empathy as total identification promises to heal the world via a process that, somewhat paradoxically, involves the simultaneous celebration of diversity while negating all differences between people in the name of Humanity. 

 

It's clearly a post-Christian vision (and as such one that would horrify Nietzsche).

 

And yet, ironically, those on the right who wish to defend the nation state, often turn to a medieval Catholic doctrine - ordo amoris - to justify their rejection of empathy. While they may feel a moral obligation to love strangers and sympathise with their hardships, they believe their primary duty is to care for their own family first, followed by their neighbours, and then members of the wider community and nation. 

 

Only after these obligations are met can the interests of the rest of the world be taken into consideration [5].

 

 

V.

 

As a Nietzsche scholar back in the day, I did not have to deal with the word empathy [Einfühlung]. In fact, I'm not sure it even appears in his writings [6]. 

 

For as indicated, while the verb sich einfühlen existed in German Romantic poetry, the noun Einfühlung was only popularised as a term in aesthetics in the 1870s. By the time it became a concept in German psychology (thanks to Theodor Lipps), Nietzsche was already pushing up daisies.  

 

Heidegger, meanwhile, preferred to speak of Mitsein and offered no specific theory of empathy per se. In fact, he critiqued the concept, arguing that there was no conceptual need for such, as human beings are already ontologically with-one-another rather than existing as merely isolated individuals. 

 

In other words, it's not Einfühlung that explains human solidarity and connectedness - relationality is fundamental to Dasein and we are always already living in a shared world [7].

 

 

VI. 

 

One philosopher who did write about empathy, however, was Wittgenstein - and he had some interesting things to say on the subject involving beetles in jars ... [8]

 

Actually, let me qualify that: Wittgenstein did not write extensively about empathy, but his later philosophy radically challenges how we understand the minds, emotions, and pain of others. 

 

For Wittgenstein, there are no hidden mental or emotional states - so we don't need to be mindreaders [Gedankenleser] or empaths who can mystically intuit and experience the moods and feelings of others. There's no need either, argues Wittgenstein, to look inside ourselves to understand others.

 

Emotions are not private inner states; they are tied to language games and public expressions and behaviours; i.e., to shared forms of life [Lebensform]. Thus, to understand another person doesn't require a spiritual merger or total identification. Empathy is an everyday mechanism built directly into our communal practices. 

 

But that means, of course, that when behaviour or language diverges too far from our shared background (due, for example, to species divides), true empathic understanding may reach a limit: If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him [9].

 

And this remains true even if the lion speaks perfect English, because it unfolds into being in a world completely alien to our own.

 

Similarly, when encountering people from entirely different cultural frameworks, we cannot simply feel how or what they feel. Such understanding requires slow, patient immersion into a common language-game. 

 

Unfortunately, we live in an era where no one has the time or patience for that - an age where an increasing number of people only want to interact with those to whom they feel instant kinship or can immediately identify as one of their own. 

  

Notes

 

[1] Readers who would like to know more may care to read Robert Vischer's Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik (1873), in which he discusses how viewers comprehend an artwork by projecting themselves (and their feelings) into its forms. For Vischer, this was a universal process; human beings having an innate capacity to empathise not only with other people and living organisms, but also inanimate objects. As this idea fell from favour in aesthetic theory during the early 20th-century, it was picked up by thinkers working in other fields of study - including psychology.

      A section of this work is available in Empathy, form, and space: problems in German aesthetics, 1873-1893, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities / University of Chicago Press, 1994).

 

[2] What Kirk said was this: "I can't stand the word empathy, I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term, and it does a lot of damage. Sympathy is a better word because empathy means you are feeling what another person felt, and no one can feel what another person feels." He concedes, however, that as a political tool, empathy has been highly effective. 

      Quoted by Mark Powell, in 'The ten biggest lies about Charlie Kirk', in the Australian edition of The Spectator (19 Sept. 2025). 

 

[3] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1968), § 2, p. 116.  

      The line in full reads: "What is more harmful than any vice? Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak - Christianity ..."

 

[4] See Gad Saad, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind (Broadside Books, 2026). Critics of the book have described it as a racist attempt to dehumanise others and undermine the natural human virtue of empathy.

      In an essay in The Guardian titled 'Loathe thy neighbour: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy' (8 April 2025), Julia Carrie Wong discussed Saad's book among other works critical of empathy and described what was going on as a far-right attempt to "dismantle and discredit one of the essential tools for any society - our capacity to recognize and respond to suffering". 

      She continues: "We should see the campaign against empathy [...] for what it is: a flashing red light warning of fascist intent", and ends her essay by declaring: "Empathy is not a sin, a toxin, or an evolutionary dead end. It is a tool, and like all tools it can be a weapon. We are going to need it."

 

[5] In 2025, the American vice-president JD Vance's invocation of ordo amoris to defend the foreign aid policies of the second Trump administration caused quite a fuss. Even the Pope joined in, criticising Vance's interpretation of the doctrine saying that love has to be shown for all without exception. 

      Now, I'm no theologian - I'm not even a Christian of any denomination - but it does seem to me that ordo amoris is essentially an order of rank which does, in fact, establish a hierarchy of care. Certainly in the work of Augustine and, later, Thomas Aquinas, special regard is due to be paid to those persons with whom one has a more intimate connection, thanks to contingent factors such as the time and place of one's birth.

      Readers who wish to know more are encouraged to read Augustine's De doctrina Christiana. This crucial theological text consists of four books that describe how to interpret the Scriptures. The first three books were published in 397 and the fourth was added in 426. An English translation by R. P. H. Green was published by the Clarendon Press in 1995.  

      See also, Summa Theologiae, by Thomas Aquinas, in which the idea of ordo amoris is developed alongside all the major theological teachings of the Church. This text was unfinished at the time of his death in 1274. The first English translation, published in 1911, was attributed to the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as the actual translator, Laurence Shapcote, wished to remain anonymous.

 

[6] When Nietzsche discussed our feelings for others - particularly others who were suffering or misfortunate in some manner - he usually spoke (for the most part negatively) about pity [Mitleid] - seeing it as a depressive, life-denying emotion inherited from Christianity (Zarathustra warns against it as a dangerous temptation). 

      However, Nietzsche did posit a noble model of compassion or sympathy rooted in strength and wellbeing; a generous form of fellow-feeling based not only on shared pain, but shared joy - a genuine rejoicing with others [Mitfreude].

 

[7] See Heidegger Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, (Blackwell, 1962), p. 162. 

 

[8] Wittgenstein introduced his famous beetle in a box thought experiment to challenge the idea that our inner feelings are private objects. See § 293 of Philosophical Investigations (1953). 

     In brief, the analogy challenges the ridiculous idea that empathy relies upon the (psychic) ability to peek inside someone else's Schachtel so as to see what they are feeling (what their Käfer looks like). Empathy is about connection, not inspection: you do not need to see the beetle to act with compassion. You simply need to respond to their public behaviour; if someone is crying, just put an arm round them and offer them a hanky to dry their eyes. 

 

[9] This is one of the most famous lines in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Blackwell, 2008), p. 190.    

 

 

Thanks to Ruth Malone for help with the Heidegger section.  

 

 

Limnophilia: Lakeside Tales of Monsters and Poets and a Little Blue Mind Theory

 

Frankenstein's Monster (Boris Karloff) plays with Little Maria (Marilyn Harris) 

Irish poet and playwright Síomón Solomon at Quilca Lake (Co. Cavan) 

I.
 

Quilca Lake is a body of freshwater located on the outskirts of Mullagh, a small town in County Cavan, Ireland. The Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift once stayed nearby at the home of his actor pal Thomas Sheridan, where he wrote parts of Gulliver's Travels (1726). 

 

I know this not because I have ever been to Ireland - or particularly want to go to Ireland - but because my friend, the poet and playwright Síomón Solomon, lives about eight miles down the road in the historical town of Kells, County Meath, and he recently sent me a photograph of himself standing on the edge of the lake. 

 

I like the photo: not because I care very much for lakes - as a non-swimming thalassophobe [1] I do my best to stay away from deep expanses of water - but because it reminds me of a scene in one of my favourite films - Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931), about which I'll say more shortly. 

 

First, however, I'd like to say something about the psychological pull exerted by lakes and other bodies of water for people who, like my friend, identify as limnophiles [2].       

 

 

II.    

 

Popularised by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols, the concept of blue mind theory describes how aquatic environments positively alter brain chemistry and reduce stress. 

 

In other words, research seems to indicate that if you sit by a lake, for example, and quietly reflect upon the water, the brain enters a calm and mildly meditative state and the body releases lots of feel-good hormones.

 

This might not be the case with the sea, however, as oceans can feel vast, loud, and overwhelming (sometimes triggering anxiety). A lake feels much more reassuring and offers sensory softness; the gentle lapping of small ripples on the shore provides rhythmic auditory input that calms, unlike the crashing of waves.

 

Whether we need a marine biologist whose work mostly involves the study of turtles to tell us this, I'm not sure. Anyone who has ever been fishing at their local pond or river has probably come to the conclusion that bodies of water not only provide soft fascination but improve mental wellbeing.

 

In addition, there may be an evolutionary reason for this: early humans who settled near fresh water had a much higher chance of survival, so our preference for such might not just be because being near, in, on, or under water can make us happier.  

  

 

III.

 

Leaving the world of popular psychology behind, let us return now to Frankenstein and the controversial scene by the lake involving the Creature and Little Maria - an iconic (if tragic) encounter ... [3]

 

Those who recall the scene will admire the way in which director James Whale uses the lakeside setting to create a false sense of pastoral innocence before the horror unfolds. The Creature and Maria - who is strangely unafraid of her new monstrous friend - play a gentle game of tossing flowers into the water and watching them float, much to the delight of both.

 

Unfortunately, when the Creature runs out of flowers, he picks up the child and throws her into the lake, in the expectation that she will float too. Only she doesn't. And neither does she swim to safety. She sinks like a stone beneath the surface of the water and drowns, leaving a confused and visibly distressed monster to depart the scene. 

 

 

IV. 

   

Within the fictional universe of the movie, the lake in which Maria drowns is supposed to be located close to a village in the Bavarian Alps. Actually, it was filmed at Malibou Lake, located in the Santa Monica Mountains in California.

 

Interestingly, the young actress playing seven-year-old Maria, Marilyn Harris, was in part selected for the role because she was a strong swimmer for her age.

 

Unsurprisingly, the footage of Maria being thrown into the water was deemed too shocking by censorship boards in 1931 and the scene was cut in most theatre prints of the film. It was not fully restored until the 1980s.

 

The strange thing is, when I look at the black-and-white photo of Síomón Solomon by Quilca Lake, I can't help thinking of the scene in Frankenstein with Little Maria in all its horror and cinematic beauty (though this is not to suggest for one moment that he has drowned a child in the waters, or even tossed daisies on the surface). 

  

 

Simonstein and Little Maria by the Lake 

(SA/2026)

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Thalassophobia - from the Ancient Greek θάλασσα [thálassa] 'sea' and φόβος [phóbos] 'fear' - is an intense fear of deep bodies of water, including lakes. Though related, thalassophobia should not be confused with aquaphobia, which is classified as the fear of water itself in its essential wetness and of drowning. 

 

[2] A person who loves lakes is called a limnophile and their deep affinity for lakes, ponds, and/or other freshwater bodies is known as limnophilia. Etymologically, we again go back to the Greeks for these terms - limnē (λίμνη) is Greek for lake. 

      It might be noted that whilst limnophilia implies a strong emotional attachment to (or fondness for) bodies of standing water, any erotic component seems to be lacking; those who get their kicks from sexual activity in or under water are termed aquaphiles within the kink community.  

 

[3] This scene from Frankenstein (1931) can be watched on YouTube: click here. 

 

 

Tales from Havering-Atte-Bower

Snapshots from Havering-Atte-Bower 

(SA/2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Havering-Atte-Bower is a semi-rural village 345 feet above sea level. It lies just a few short miles up the road from my house in Harold Hill - or a world away, depending on how you measure these things.

 

The first part of the name is Saxon in origin, dating back to the 11th-century reign of Edward the Confessor. It refers to a great landowner known as Hæfer. Literally translating to he-goat, we can assume he was either a man devilishly aware of himself, or simply rank-smelling. 

 

The suffix - pronounced to rhyme with catty and flower - was added by 1272 and marks the village's history as the site of a royal residence. Known as The Bower, this part-palace, part-rustic retreat fell into ruin and was pulled down in the 17th century.

 

 

II. 

  

A 20-minute ride on the 375 bus from Romford station brings you to the village green. Alight here to find a sign announcing the village's 1042 founding, alongside the original village stocks and an old whipping post. 

 

Fortunately, these are no longer in use, though under the current Reform UK council you never know what the future will bring. Still, I doubt even Nigel Farage and co. would revive the practice of ducking witches, though the pond for such is located just across the road (if now overgrown with reeds). 

  

Other landmarks include St. John's Church, constructed in the 1870s by architect Basil Champneys on the site of a medieval chapel, and Havering Country Park, home to one of England's only two giant redwood plantations imported from California. There is also the white-walled water tower on Broxhill Road, built in 1934 (we were told as children in the 1970s that the pop star David Essex lived there).    

 

Finally, there's the traditional village pub: The Orange Tree, on Orange Tree Hill. Licensed premises have stood on this site since at least 1754, under various names, and not only does The Orange Tree serve food but they actively encourage vertical drinking for those who like to stand by the bar and socialise.  

III.  

As Essex villages go, Havering-Atte-Bower possesses all the features that make them so beloved. And despite the fact that it is, technically, part of Greater London, it still feels as if one were (almost) in the countryside, surrounded as it is by green belt fields and farmland, and offering some lovely views. 

 

However, I regret to inform readers that it's also an ecological dead zone: I spent an entire afternoon there and didn't hear a single note of birdsong, nor the distinct buzz of insects in the long grass. There's just the relentless sound of cars. 

 

Havering boasts of being one of London's greenest boroughs. Yet its tree canopy has plummeted from 25% in 2018 to just 14% today, and nearly all the wildflower meadows of my youth are gone. Natural habitats face relentless pressure and animal numbers continue to decline. 

 

It's not just the huge impact of new housing developments and the gradual erosion of green spaces. Decades of intensive agriculture - ripping up hedgerows and spraying fields with poison - have wiped out the insects, leaving birds and small creatures to starve. 

 

Intense summer heatwaves, arson-induced wildfires, and the illegal dumping of rubbish obviously compound the damage. 

 

The UK-wide biodiversity crisis is profoundly depressing. And, despite the efforts of conservation groups fighting to restore local ecosystems and rewild certain areas, I hold out little hope, to be honest.

 

One can't help wondering what Hæfer would make of the county he knew and loved now deprived of its breeding birds and large beasts, its rivers and ponds once teeming with fish now polluted.   

 

 

Musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'Goodbye to the Village', from the album Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (E.G. Records /Virgin Records 1986). 

 

 

On the Temptation of Christ

Detail of an image showing the Devil bearing Jesus 

found in an old French liturgical book (c. 1470-75) 

Collection: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library 

(MS 425, fol. 48r) [1]

 

 

... the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, 

and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them ... 

                                                       - Matthew 4:8 (KJV)

 

 

I.

 

The biblical verses pertaining to the Temptation of Christ are among the most critically (and theologically) fascinating verses in the New Testament.

 

For these verses tell us something crucial about Jesus that any thoughtful and naturally questioning person who thinks the story of Christ through to the bitter end will ultimately have to acknowledge; namely, that Jesus was a kind of idiot [2] whose teachings were inadequate and displayed a fatal misunderstanding of the nature (and limits) of man.

 

For those who are unfamiliar with the verses and don't have the Good Book to hand, here's how they appear in Matthew 4:1-11 (KJV): 

 

 

1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 

 

2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. 

 

3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 

 

4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 

 

5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 

 

6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 

 

7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 

 

8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 

 

9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 

 

10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 

 

11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

 

 

II. 

 

It's this version of the narrative that we shall base our reading upon here, essentially arguing - in agreement with Dostoevsky and D. H. Lawrence - that man doesn't want freedom (or even salvation), but demands rather miracle, mystery, and a powerful authority to whom he can willingly submit.

 

Only a very rare few can find fulfilment without these things and establish lives of sovereign individuality. Jesus either couldn't or wouldn't see this and via his ideal teaching he makes "demands greater than the nature of man can bear" [3]. 

 

Thus, if you want to establish a Christian Church and State, you're going to have to turn to "that other great Spirit" [4] who loves man for what he is and not for what he ought to be: the Father of Lies and Prince of Darkness, Satan.      

 

 

III. 

 

The first temptation takes place in the Judean desert, where Jesus has been fasting for forty days and forty nights; a symbolic period of trial and spiritual endurance within biblical mythology, during which Christ demonstrated his total reliance on God. 

 

The devil encouraged Jesus to surrender to his hunger and prove his divinity by turning desert rocks into bread, but, being the religious fanatic that he was, Jesus simply mumbled something about man not living by bread alone. 

      

One can't help wishing he'd replied rather: I can resist everything except temptation [5] and conjured up a fabulous feast, inviting the Devil to join him - that would have been the wittier thing to say and also would have thrown the Devil on the back foot; Jesus would have turned the tables and upped the stakes via an act of what anthropologists term potlatch. 

 

But, of course, Jesus is completely humourless - he is not recorded laughing even once throughout the New Testament, let alone cracking a good joke or making a genuinely witty remark of the kind Wilde was famous for. 

 

So we get the now proverbial line about bread which Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor says was his first mistake: Feed men, and then ask of them virtue [6] - that's the formula if one wishes to produce loyal followers. And if that bread happens to be produced miraculously from stone, all the better; men who are both well-fed and given a magical display of power will be doubly loyal [7]. 

 

D. H. Lawrence develops this criticism of Jesus. Like the Inquisitor, he insists that man "demands bread: and not merely as foodstuff, but as a miracle, given from the hand of God [...] The earthly bread must in itself be the miracle, and be bound up with the miracle [...] The earthly bread is leavened with the heavenly bread" [8].  

 

IV.  

 

The second temptation of Christ unfolds when the devil takes Jesus to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem and urges him to throw himself over the edge, quoting scripture (Psalm 91:11-12) in support of the idea that the angels of Heaven would catch him, were he truly the Son of God and not just some delusional carpenter. 

 

This was an attempt not only to force Jesus into making a dramatic display of his divine status, but to manipulate God also into taking action. Predictably, Jesus declined to jump and refused to put his Father to the test.

 

Again, for me at least, it would have been more interesting had he succumbed to temptation and accepted the challenge. Or indeed if he had said something along the lines of 'Let's find out if the demons of Hell are as prepared to catch you as the angels me', and thrown the Devil off the top of the temple.

 

Casting himself down from the temple to be caught by angels - or turning the tables on the devil by pushing him from the temple - would, much like the stone-into-bread trick, demonstrate his godhood in the minds of the people and they would abandon their old ways and follow him to heaven and back.

 

But then I'm not a Christian and I suppose what I'm suggesting is, much like the Grand Inquisitor's philosophy, Satanic in character. 

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, the devil offers Jesus authority and political power over all the magnificent kingdoms of the Earth - providing that Jesus abandons his mission, derails God's plan, and agrees to kneel before him. 

 

Taking charge in this manner would ensure universal salvation, the Grand Inquisitor claims. But Jesus isn't tempted and firmly commands the devil to fuck off - Get thee hence! - making it clear that he submits to and serves no one other than his Father.

 

Lawrence is convinced that Jesus should have accepted earthly power and the responsibility of such; that he was profoundly and disastrously mistaken in his one-sided insistence on the Love ideal and his perverse self-absorption. 

 

For while he succeeds in providing a model of practice for the ascetic individual, by refusing to think of men as social beings and showing no understanding of how power and politics operate, Jesus surrenders us all to the State and opens the way for those who have no qualms about exercising power in the most brutal manner: 

 

"Jesus made it inevitable, when he said that the money belonged to Caesar. It was a mistake. Money means bread, and the bread of men belongs to no man. Money also means power, and it is monstrous to give power to the virtual enemy." [9] 

      

In his late essay 'The Risen Lord' (1929), Lawrence famously dreams of a very different Jesus: no longer a man of sorrows, but a power-lord who agrees to come down off his mountain top so that he might rule. Here is a Jesus with tongues of fire round his brows, not a crown of thorns, willing and able to take the devil on at his own game and resist those mechanical forces belonging to Mammon [10].   

 

It's a Jesus that the Grand Inquisitor would absolutely approve of. 

 

I suspect that the early founders of what became known as Christianity [11] quickly understood that it's the principles put forward by Satan - a kind of politics of evil - that allows for the long-term survival and success of an institution. Nietzsche writes of how, "with every extension of Christianity", it became more and more necessary to vulgarise the teachings of Jesus and incorporate "the doctrines and rites of every subterranean cult" [12]. 

 

 

VI.       

 

In conclusion: the Grand Inquisitor is quite right to say that the Catholic Church does not need Jesus - and that if he were to return, as promised, it would only throw a spanner in the works and interfere with their mission which is to rule mankind in the name of God, but using the Devil's tricks and techniques (even those which bring death and destruction).   

 

And even if Jesus himself were to kiss me on the lips, I would not say otherwise. For Dostoevsky's tale is, as Lawrence says, depressingly true whether we like it or not, presenting the "final and unanswerable criticism of Christ [...] borne out by the long experience of humanity" [13].   

 

Notes

 

[1] Artists have produced many visual representations of the Temptation of Christ, but this is by far my favourite, showing as it does Jesus being quite literally carried up the mountain. The image makes me smile, because Jesus appears to be no more than a large doll or dummy via whom the devil might ventriloquise his own Satanic philosophy.    

  

[2] The term idiot is used here in a philosophical sense that draws upon Nietzsche's characterisation of Jesus in The Anti-Christ (§ 29) as an idealist detached from material reality and living in his own inner world. It is highly likely that Nietzsche borrowed the term from Dostoevsky who used it in his 1869 novel of the same name to describe someone (Prince Lev Myshkin) who is equally pure in spirit, but seen as naive and foolish by others.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 128.

 

[4] Ibid., p.129. 

 

[5] This profoundly anti-Christian line was written by Oscar Wilde in his play Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and is spoken by Lord Darlington in Act 1. 

 

[6] 'The Grand Inquisitor' is a story contained within Fyodor Dostoevsky's philosophical novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). The line quoted is found in Book V, Chapter 5.   

 

[7] The Roman poet Juvenal would famously sum this up with the phrase panem et circenses - a practice of appeasing the people that he condemns. See Satire X in Book 4 of his Satires (a collection of satirical verses written between 100 and 127 AD). Today, we might say cibus rapidus et TikTok.   

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, pp. 128 and 132.  

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 146. 

 

[10] This essay can be found in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 265-273.  

 

[11] As Nietzsche points out, the term Christianity is already a misunderstanding (and a corruption) of the glad tidings taught by Christ. See The Anti-Christ (§ 39), where he claims there has only ever been one Christian - and he died on the cross. What followed in his name was a reversal and negation of the values he had lived his life by.     

 

[12] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (§ 37), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1968), p. 149. Nietzsche refers to this as Christianity's fall into morbid-barbarism, but we could just as easily use the phrase cynical-satanism.     

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, p. 127. 

 

 

This is a sister post to (or variant of) an earlier (unexpected) text published on TTA discussing the Spanish Inquisition in relation to Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor' (5 Aug 2026): click here.