Reflections on Simon Critchley's Philosophical Short Cuts (Part 1)

Simon Critchely: Bald (Yale University Press, 2021) 

Essays edited by Peter Catapano 

Cover design by R. Black

 

 

I don't know Simon Critchley: but he's one of the Simons that I can't help admiring and to whom I feel a vague connection, that is part philosophical in nature and part generational; we share many of the same ideas and points of reference and we were all born in the same decade [a]. 

 

Having said that, there are differences between me and the Simons, including Herr Professor Critchley, whose collection of essays Bald (2021) I'd like to discuss here in an amicable if still critical manner. Readers might best see this post then as less the staging of a confrontation or a reckoning [Auseinandersetzung] and more an attempt to offer an insightful commentary in the same kind of engaging, jargon-free - or bold and bald - style that Critchley adopts in this work.  

 

Note: whilst there are thirty-five essays in Bald - all originally published in the New York Times - I'll not be discussing each of them here; just the ones that really catch my interest or which I find particularly provocative [b]. The titles in bold are Critchley's own. And all page numbers refer to the 2021 edition shown above. If the post becomes overly-lengthy - as these posts often do - I'll publish it as two (or possibly even three) parts.   

 

 

Happy Like God  

What is happiness? 

 

In an attempt to answer this question Critchley calls on Rousseau, who provides him with the idea that happiness might simply be the feeling of existence; a feeling that fills the soul entirely. 

 

Perhaps in order to update the language slightly, Critchley reframes this feeling as one of "momentary self-sufficiency that is bound up with the experience of time" [5]. Happiness, in other words, is learning to enjoy the nowness of the present (no regrets and no longing for a better tomorrow). 

 

Achieve a state of joyful reverie and, says Rousseau, you become like God - and Critchley doesn't demur, which is slightly strange for an atheist, but indicates the direction his thinking often takes; i.e., towards secular mysticism (whether this makes him a crypto-theologian more than a critical theorist is a question we can return to later). 

 

And where and when is Critchley happiest? 

 

Sitting by the sea, or in his lover's bed; happiness can be a solitary state, but "one can also experience this feeling of existence in the experience of love" [6]. Maybe: though I'm not sure that love is ever that blissfully straightforward and Critchley is honest enough to admit that even the most oceanic feeling of happiness is outrageously short lived: "Time passes, the reverie ends and the feeling for existence fades." [6].

 

Didn't Goethe once say that no one can enjoy looking at a beautiful sunset for more than a few seconds without getting bored; and I remember also Johnny Rotten once characterising love as less than three minutes of squelching noises. 

 

In other words, we are incapable of being permanently happy (or even happy for long) [c].  

 

 

How to Make It in the Afterlife 

 

As a thanatologist, what I like about Critchley is that, sooner or later and no matter what the topic - he's going to speak about mortality. And sure enough, we quickly pass from happiness to death and the relation between them, which he discusses in relation to ancient Greek philosophy (his other specialist subject). 

 

The key is: live a good life and die a noble death and happiness will be yours. Which means that "happiness does not consist in whatever you might be feeling [...] but in what others feel about you" [13]. 

 

In other words, happiness is something posthumously ascribed - a very unmodern view, but one worth considering; particularly if the adoption of such a view encourages us to live in a more beautiful manner so as to be remembered with smiling fondness.  

 

 

The Gospel According to Me

 

That's a nice title. And it's a crucial short essay attacking the search for individual authenticity, which Critchley rightly recognises is born of a "weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality [...] and a litugy of inwardness" [15]. 

 

This ideal of authenticity - which was central to existentialism before becoming central to New Age therapeutic culture - is basically a type of selfish conformism; something which "disguises acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion" [16]. 

  

Those who think the quest for authenticity is an ethical practice, might be surprised to find Critchley dismiss it as a form of passive nihilism. Passive nihilism and the zen fascism of the 21st century American workplace. For when the office is such a fun place to be and encourages you to be yourself and express yourself, then "there is no room for worker malaise" [17] or class war and in in this way authenticity becomes "an evacuation of history" [17] [d].    

 

I like it when Critchley nails his colours to the mast and pops his political hat on; exposing not just the fantasy of authenticity, but the evils of the workplace - even those that allow us to wear our favourite T-shirt "and listen to Radiohead" [17] on our i-Phones while at our desk. 

 

And I like it too when he relates his philosophical and political critique to literature; pointing out, for example, that Herman Melville, "writing on the cusp of modern capiatlism" [19] in the mid-19th century, had already twigged that "the search for authenticity was a white whale" [19]; i.e., an obsessive quest that is "futile at best and destructive at worst" [19] [e].   

 

 

Abandon (Nearly) All Hope

 

Having demolished the ideal of authenticity, Critchley now attacks the ideal of hope: is it, he asks, such a wonderful thing? 

 

Obviously, I don't think so and I've long been an vociferous opponent of this Christian virtue: see the post dated 6 Feb 2022, for example, on Shep Fairey's Obama poster: click here. Thus, I was pleased to see that Critchley is also hostile to the idea, regarding it from a Graeco-Nietzschean perspective as a form of moral cowardice that "allows us to escape from reality and prolong human suffering" [20].    

 

Hope, says Critchley - contra Obama - is not audacious; it is mendacious; something exploited by our religious teachers and political leaders alike. And what we need is not blind hope but clear-sighted courage in the face of reality (including the courage to abandon hope). 

 

Or, to put that another way, "skeptical realism, deeply informed by history" [25], that knows how to smile like Epictetus (the slave turned Stoic philosopher admired by Nietzsche).    

 

 

What Is a Philosopher? 

 

An idiot who falls down the well (like Thales); or one who takes their time ...? 

 

Probably a combination of both: 

 

"The philosopher [...] is free by virtue of his otherworldliness, by the capacity to fall into wells and appear silly" and this freedom "consists in either moving freely from topic to topic or simply spending years returning to the same topic" [71] [f].   

 

Critchley endorses this Socratic defnition further by agreeing that the philosopher is also one who is indifferent to convention; shows no respect for rank; never joins a political party or a private club. Of course, this kind of attitude and behaviour can get you in trouble - Socrates  was ultimately put on trial and condemned to death for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens [g]. 

 

Thus, Critchley (amusingly) decides: "Philosophy should come with the kind of health warning one finds on packs of European cigarettes: PHILOSOPHY KILLS" [72]. 

 

It is thus not only a perverse love of wisdom - a form of erōtomaniā (see below) - but a risking of one's own life; i.e., a practice of joy before death. 

 

Critchley concludes (in a slightly confessional, slightly self-dramatising manner):

 

"Nurtured in freedom and taking their time, there is something dreadfully uncanny about philosophers, something either monstrous or godlike, or, indeed, both at once." [73]

 

 

Cynicism We Can Believe In

 

Ancient cynicism is "not at all cynical in the modern sense of the word" [83], writes Critchley. 

 

And that's certainly true; ancient cynicism was a rigorous philosophical way of life that involved self-debasement in order to make its case, whilst modern cynicism, on the other hand, is "an attitude of negativity and jaded scornfulness" [83]; often no more than a fashionable pose.  

 

The modern cynic isn't expected to live like a dog, eat raw squid, or masturbate in the market place and his cynicism lacks the moral and political radicalism of the hardcore cynicism that Diogenes practiced. 

 

But in a world like ours - self-interested, lazy, corrupt, and greedy - "it is Diogenes's lamp that we need to light our path" [85]. Though I think we can do without the flash-wanking or pissing in public, thank you very much.    

 

 

Let Be - An Answer to Hamlet's Question

 

For Heidegger, letting be [Gelassenheit] is a fundamental granting of freedom, born not of indifference, but an active concern for otherness and a refusal to see the world as something to be manipulated and exploited. In other words, it's a form of care. 

 

Critchley - who certainly knows his Heidegger - prefers to think the idea of letting be in relation to Shakespeare's Hamlet, however. In response to the play's famous ontological question - 'To be, or not to be?' - he says 'Let be'. 

 

But in order to let be, requires, he says, the cultivation of "a disposition of skeptical openness that does not claim to know aught of what we truly know naught" [107]. 

 

He elucidates:  

 

"If we can cure ourselves of our longing for some sort of godlike conspectus of what it means to be human, or our longing for the construction of ourselves as some new prosphetic god through technology, bound by the self-satisfied myth of unlimited human progress, we might let be." [107] 

 

I think we can all agree this would be a good thing. But it's not going to happen, of course; man is the creature who just can't help interfering and organising and wanting to be master of the universe; Homo sapien is also Homo importunus.   

  

 

Notes

 

[a] The other Simons include Reynolds and Armitage - see the post dated 17 Jan 2026: click here - and also the monstrous figure of Síomón Solomon; see the post dated 19 Jan 2026: click here. 

 

[b] Readers will note that I don't, for example, refer to any of the five essays in the section entitled 'I Believe'. Essentially, that's because I don't know anything about (or have much interest in) Mormonism, Russian literature (Dostoevsky), or Danish philosophy (Kierkegaard). 

      Nor do I share the (quasi-religious) faith of a football fan and find Critchley's paean to Liverpool FC a bit cringe if I'm honest. Does he really believe that football teaches us something important about our humanity and that being a Red inculcates a set of purely noble values: "solidarity, compassion, internationalism, decency, honour, self-respect and respect for others" [63] -? (Opposing fans sometimes accuse Liverpool supporters of moralising sentimentality and hypocrisy, but we can leave this for another post, another day.) 

      The essay on money - 'Coin of Praise' - I did read and found myself nodding in agreement with the idea that our financial system essentially rests on faith; i.e., money is the most ideal of all material things and our one true God. But saying that didn't seem to justify an entire section in this post.      

 

[c] See the follow up piece entitled 'Beyond the Sea' (pp. 7-11), in which Critchley addresses some of the comments and criticisms he received from readers of 'Happy Like God'. Crucially, he recognises that happiness in the moment is often topped by happiness of the memory of our happiness in the moment; that the best kind of happiness isn't ecstatic, but melancholic.  

 

[d] Michel Foucault famously dismissed what he called the Californian cult of the self in comparison to the ethico-aesthetic stylisation of self as practiced by the ancient Greeks and modern dandies. See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Penguin Books, 1991), p. 359. 

      And see also what Foucault writes on the 'arts of existence' and 'techniques of self' in The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1992). 

 

[e] Critchley also refers to his hero Shakespeare, reminding readers that no one is more inauthentic than Hamlet and that the depiction of his radical inauthenticity "shatters our moral complacency" [19] as witnesses to the drama that unfolds.    

 

[f] I would suggest that just as there are two types of philosophical freedom, so too are there are two types of philosopher; I belong to the first type, who flit from topic to topic; my friend Síomón Solomon belongs to the latter type and enjoys the freedom to return and ruminate upon the same problems over and over. This naturally enough produces a different type of thinking and writing style.

 

[g] Critchley notes: "Nothing is more common in the history of philosophy than the accusation of impiety" and philosophy has "repeatedly and persistently been identified with blasphemy against the gods" [72]. Because their attitude is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as one of not giving a fuck, philosophers are often regarded as "politically suspicious, even dangerous" [72].

 

 

Part 2 of this post can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

From Roman Amphitheatre to Nazi Death Camp (A Note on the Topology of Violence)

Postcards from Hell ...[1]

 

 

Oh, those Greeks! They regarded violence as an indispensable necessity [ἀνάγκη]: "tolerated like fate or a law of nature" [2] and cheerfully sanctioned acts of physical aggression as a legitimate means of conflict resolution.

 

I say cheerfully, because affectively discharging destructive energies is a good way of preventing neurotic conditions like depression and anxiety (even if it does have tragic consequences). As Byung-Chul Han notes: "External violence unburdens the psyche because it externalizes suffering." [3] 

 

The Greeks delighted in acts of appalling cruelty - including rape, torture, and arson - but they didn't internally agonise over them afterwards; indeed, their poets celebrated these acts and "Greek mythology is drenched in blood and strewn with dismembered bodies" [4].             

 

Of course, the Romans were just as cruel - if not worse - with giant public displays of staged violence designed to demonstrate the might and magnificence of Rome, free from all bad conscience. As Han writes, in the ancient world, violence was not only ubiquitous, it was "a significant component of social practice and communication" [5]. Power was spectacular, sensational, and bloody.    

 

But in the modern world, "brute violence was delegitimized [...] It has lost virtually every show-place" [6]. Auschwitz, with its gas chambers, is a million miles away from the Colosseum; unlike the latter, the former is located at the edge of town and what goes on there is kept hidden from the public.

 

Power continues to express itself, but does so without any sense of pride or glory: "It does not expressly draw attention to itself. It lacks all language and symbolism. It heralds nothing. It takes place as a mute annihilation." [7] 

 

This isn't to say being torn apart by wild animals in the Colosseum in front of a large crowd is preferable to being murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. 

 

But it is fundamentally different and it illustrates how violence itself has undergone a radical transformation, but without ever disappearing: "Violence is simply protean. It varies its outward form according to the social constellation at hand." [8]   

   

 

Notes 

 

[1] As these two picture-postcard images indicate, dark tourism is today a thriving industry. Whilst there are some who genuinely wish to get a better understanding of how violent power manifested itself in other times, places, and cultures, one can't help suspecting that, for most visitors, a day trip to Auschwitz, for example, is what Johnny Rotten would describe as a cheap holiday in other people's misery.        

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 3. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid.

      Han is surely recalling Nietzsche here, who famously describes how noble peoples - be they Greek, Roman, Arabian, Germanic, or Japanese - remain at heart magnificent blond beasts, avidly prowling round for spoil and victory and able to commit terrible deeds in a spirit of innocence and gay bravado. See On the Genealogy of Morality, Essay 1, §11. 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, p. 4.

[6] Ibid., p. 5. 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. vii. 

 

On the Splendour of Greco-Sicilian Superficiality

 D. H. Lawrence: Fauns and Nymphs (1927)

  

I. 

 

"Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: what is needed for that is to stop bravely at the surface, the fold, the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in shapes, tones, words - in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial - out of profundity!" [a]

 

If I had to choose the one passage by Nietzsche that has most significantly shaped my own thinking as a philosopher, both on and off the catwalk, it would be this one. 

 

And, interestingly, despite his onto-theological penchant for indulging in what Nietzsche would characterise as beautiful soul twaddle [b], D. H. Lawrence also seems inspired by this idea of Greek (and Sicilian) superficiality in his 'Introduction to Mastro-don Gesualdo, by Giovanni Verga' [c] ...

II.

 

Regrettably - and unlike Lawrence - I've never lived in Sicily [d], nor even visited this "sun-beaten island whose every outline is like pure memory" [148]. But I'm happy to accept the literary consensus and regard it as a magical location, which provides a clue not only to understanding modern Italy, but also the ancient Mediterranean world. 

 

For according to Lawrence, not only are the Sicilians marked by an ironic fatalism, like the ancient Greeks, but they also lack psychic depth. In other words: 

 

"The Sicilian has no soul, except that funny little naked man who hops on hot bricks, in purgatory, and howls to be prayed into paradise [...] He can't be introspective, because his consciousness, so to speak, doesn't have any inside to it." [151].      

Developing his theme, Lawrence continues:

"The Sicilians today are supposed to be the nearest descendants of the classic Greeks, and the nearest thing to the classic Greeks in life and nature. And perhaps it is true. Like the classic Greeks, the Sicilians have no insides, introspectively speaking." [152] 

 

Unfortunately, however, unlike the classic Greeks, the Sicialians have no external gods. This, for Lawrence at least, is a problem and represents a great loss.

 

Why? Because, says Lawrence, people who live in the sun like flowers - i.e., beautiful but soulless - still need "the bright and busy gods outside" in order to make them feel heroic in the old Homeric sense with "the same easy conscience, the same queer openness [...] and the same ancient astuteness" [152].

 

Whilst the more soulful - more Christian - races of Northern Europe "have got over the old Homeric idea of the hero, by making the hero self-conscious, and a hero by virtue of suffering and awareness of suffering" [151], the Sicilians only feel this sort of thing in short spasms and it is unnatural to them. 

 

In fact, Lawrence concludes, it's pointless to suggest that a Sicilian learn how to develop northern (or Russian) inwardness: "You might as well say the tall and reckless asphodel of Magna Graecia should learn to be a snowdrop." [153]

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, even if the modern Sicilians have lost the bright and busy gods, still they possess the undying beauty of the island itself:

 

"And we must remember that eight-tenths of the population of Sicily is maritime or agricultural [...] and therefore practically the whole day-life of the people passes in the open, in the splendour of the sun  and the landscape, and the delicious, elemental aloneness of the old world. This is a great unconscious compensation. But what a compensation, after all! [...] and you can't read Mastro-don Gesauldo without feeling the marvellous glow and the glamour of Sicily, and the people throbbing inside the glow and the glamour like motes in a sunbeam. [...]

      And perhaps it is because the outside world is so lovely, that men in the Greek regions have never become introspective. They have not been driven to that form of compensation. With them, life pulses outwards, and the positive reality is outside. There is no turning inwards. So man becomes purely objective. And this is what makes the Greeks so difficult to understand: even Socrates." [154]

 

These, then, are the three key words of Greek profundity: superficiality, externality, and objectivity. And these the three key words of the ancient Greek character: singleness, carelessness, dauntlessness [e]. 

 

If you want to become an artist or practice la gaya scienza - if you want to become heroic in the old sense - then you must abandon ideas of salvation or retreating inside yourself in order to twist the soul into knots; instead, concentrate on care of the self as an aesthetic and ethical project that aims for splendour (becoming what Lawrence elsewhere terms an aristocrat of the sun) [f].   

 

Notes

 

[a] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Preface to the second edition (4), pp. 8-9.  

 

[b] This amusing phrase can be found in note 951 (Spring-Fall 1887) of The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufman, (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 499.  

[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Mastro-don Gesualdo, by Giovanni Verga', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 145-156. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. Readers are encouraged to also read the two earlier versions of Lawrence's Introduction which appear as Appendices II and III (pp. 369-378 and 379-389). This passage from Version I is particularly Nietzschean-sounding in its vision of the Greeks: 

 

"The Greeks were far more bent on making an audacious, splendid impression than on fulfilling some noble purpose. They loved the splendid look of a thing, the splendid ring of words. Even tragedy was to them a grand gesture, rather than something to mope over. Peak and pine they would not, and unless some Fury pursued them to punish them for their sins, they cared not a straw for sins: their own or anyone else's. 

      As for being burdened with souls, they were not such fools." [376-77]    

[d] Lawrence and his wife Frieda spent two years living in Sicily in the early 1920s, at the Fontana Vecchia, on a hill above Taormina. Like many others before him, including - perhaps most famously - Goethe, Lawrence was captivated not just by the island, but also its people, flora, and fauna and he wrote some of his loveliest poetry on the island. In Version I of his Introduction to Mastro-Don Gesualdo, he confesses: 

 

"Perhaps the deepest nostalgia I have ever felt has been Sicily [...] Not for England or anywhere else - for Sicily, the beautiful, that which goes deepest into the blood. It is so clear, so beautiful, so like the physical beauty of the Greek." [378].     

[e] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction [Version I] to Mastro-Don Gesualdo, by Giovanni Verga', Introductions and Reviews, Appendix II, p. 378.

[f] See the poem 'Aristocracy of the sun', in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 457. See also the related verses 'Sun-men' and 'Sun-women', p. 456.  

Art, Sex and Dolphins (with Reference to the Work of Jeff Koons)

Jeff Koons: Antiquity 2 (2009-2011)
Oil on canvas (102 x 138 inches)

I.

Inhabiting as they do all the world's oceans, it's not surprising that dolphins have long played a role within human culture and appear in the stories of many sea-faring peoples, including the ancient Greeks, who regarded them as benevolent beings and symbols of good fortune.

Indeed, the modern name, dolphin, derives from the Greek δελφίς (delphís) and is related to the word δελφύς (delphus), meaning uterus. It might therefore be interpreted as meaning a fish born of a womb. For many Greeks, the deliberate killing of a dolphin was an immoral act that rendered the perpetrator unclean before the gods. 

This isn't surprising, as the Greeks not only regarded these intelligent and friendly marine mammals as messengers of Poseidon, but associated them with several other deities, including Apollo and Aphrodite; the latter of whom was often depicted riding on the back of a dolphin - which brings us to the painting by Jeff Koons shown above ...

II.     

I've been interested in Jeff Koons and his work ever since Malcolm McLaren told me about him (and Julian Schnabel) in the mid-1980s and one of my happiest memories is of seeing his monumental sculpture Puppy (1992) at the Guggenheim Bilbao (I don't like dogs, but I do love flowers).   

Thus, I was naturally excited to learn that the Ashmolean - the world's oldest university museum of art and archaeology - was putting on an exhibition of his work, curated by the artist himself (in collaboration with Norman Rosenthal).

The show features seventeen pieces - fourteen of which have never been exhibited in the UK before - spanning his entire career and selecting from some of Koons's most important series of works, including Antiquity, in which, via a clever use of montage, he blurs the distinction between popular contemporary culture and the art of the classical world - always a fun thing to do.      

For Koons, ultimately, there is nothing different between what he does now and what the artists of the past were doing then: honouring those who have gone before and extending an aesthetic tradition that reaches back to prehistory.

But, it seems to me, he's also interested in what turned the ancients on; to see how modern ideas of sexuality compare and contrast with those from the Graeco-Roman world. Thus Gretchen Mol (in full Bettie Page mode) is transformed into Aphrodite, riding an inflatable dolphin, and holding tight to a toy simian incarnation of Eros.*   

Now, before the usual objections are raised, it's worth remembering that Aphrodite was continually being reimagined by Greek artists themselves; each vision of loveliness "drawing on subjective compositional fantasies", as Norman Rosenthal puts it. Art, no matter how hard some may pretend otherwise, has always been a bit pervy.

Indeed, according to D. H. Lawrence, half the great artworks of the entire world "are great by virtue of the beauty of their sex appeal" and we should be grateful for this fact. For sex is "a very powerful, beneficial and necessary stimulus in human life". Only the grey Puritan finds this objectionable. The rest of us "rather like a moderate rousing of our sex" by visual imagery, music, and literature. 

 
Notes

Norman Rosenthal, 'Jeff Koons and the Shine and Sheen of Time', essay in the exhibition catalogue, (Ashmolean Museum / University of Oxford, 2019), p. 26. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 239-240. I very much doubt that Lawrence would like the work of Jeff Koons. I suspect, rather, that he would brand it as pornography; an attempt, according to his definition of the term, to insult sex and degrade human nudity.   

*Interestingly, it was only some time after Koons had photographed the actress in 2006 that he discovered images of Aphrodite astride a dolphin and made the mytho-aesthetic - or what some would term archetypal - connection that inspired the Antiquity series. 

For more information on the exhibition Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean (7 Feb - 9 June 2019), click here. 

Thanks to Maria Thanassa for her help with this post.

When Ancient and Modern Worlds Collide: Notes on the Profane Fate of Plato's Sacred Olive Tree

A preserved section of Plato's olive tree

Agricultural University of Athens

According to legend, the ancient Greeks had the minor deity and culture-hero Aristaeus to thank for teaching them three essential skills: cheese-making, bee-keeping and - most crucially of all - the care and cultivation of olive trees.

For whilst the Greeks liked their feta and honey, they really loved their olive oil ...

Not only was the latter a key ingredient in their cuisine, for example, but they would anoint their kings and champion athletes with it. Indeed, even ordinary citizens, including philosophers, liked to rub olive oil onto their bodies in order to keep the skin supple and healthy.

Thus, it's really no surprise to discover that Plato's Academy was situated next to a sacred olive grove dedicated to the goddess Athena. It's believed that each of the twelve gated entrances to the school had its own tree standing as an evergreen sentinel and symbol of wisdom, fertility, and purity.

But there was also one very special olive tree under which Plato was said to have taught his students. And this tree continued to stand for thousands of years - long after the Academy itself had crumbled into dust - until, on one fateful day in October 1976, a bus was driven into it, breaking the noble trunk in two.

The upper section was taken to the Agricultural University where it has been preserved and displayed ever since. The lower part, however, including the enormous roots, remained at the original site until being dug up in January 2013 to serve as firewood by local people adversely affected by the Greek financial crisis.

Or so the popular story goes, as reported widely at the time by both local and international media ...  

Seeking to clarify the situation, however, the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage issued a (seemingly little-read) statement a few days later explaining that Plato's olive tree had, in fact, been uprooted and killed - not merely damaged - as a result of the accident 37 years earlier.

A new tree, with three trunks, had been planted in its place by the Agricultural University of Athens and it was one of these that was removed, having died, on January 6th, 2013 (the other two trunks remaining intact and in situ).       

Whilst there are amusing aspects to this tale, one can very well imagine what Plato - who esteemed truth above all things - would think of fake news: False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Photo: Olive Oil Times Collection

In Praise of a Well-Turned Ankle

A judge and contestant in an ankle contest 
organised by the Women's Section of the 
British Railways Social Club, 
Oxford, 1949 

I.

Some men are very fond of shapely female legs. Others are partial to a pretty pair of feet. But I've always been an admirer of that erotic zone where these things intersect; the so-called talocrural region. Indeed, if a woman has ugly ankles, then it's almost irrelevant to me how shapely her legs or how pretty her feet.

And the key to a lovely looking ankle?

The curve: that and a pronounced narrowing from calf to foot (an effect easily enhanced by wearing a pair of high heels). Ideally, there should also be a little vein - visible, but not overly-prominent - cutting across the malleolus (whether this be the medial or lateral malleolus is a matter of personal preference).

Essentially then, it's fair to say that fine ankles determine my desire; just as they did for the ancient Greeks, who often explicitly related the (un)desirability of woman to the slenderness of her ankles. According to the lyric poet Archilocus, for example, a woman with fat ankles deserves to be thought of as a vulgar object of loathing.


II.
 
I have to admit, this seems a bit harsh - certainly by modern standards. So maybe it's just as well that Archilocus wasn't around in the 1930s and '40s to judge the ankle contests that were very popular in England at this time, with even an annual pageant on the rooftop of Selfridges.

Originally, the contestants were concealed behind a thick curtain, only displaying their lower-legs and feet and still wearing their stockings and shoes. In later years, however, the organisers did away with this aspect which was meant to afford anonymity and modesty.

Once the women were lined up, a judge - usually but not always a man (and, strangely, often the local bobby) - would slowly walk up and down, occasionally stopping for a closer inspection and to take a few measurements. Finally, he would announce the lucky winner who - as the events were often sponsored by hosiery companies - could expect to receive a prize pair of stockings, as well as the adulation of her local community.

Now, I know what some will say about these contests. But such spoil-sports view everything with an evil eye and are possessed by the spirit of gravity. Women should be proud of their ankles, poets should sing of them, and honours should be bestowed upon those who possess the prettiest looking pairs.

Surprisingly, the associate fashion editor of The Guardian agrees, arguing that the ankle "should be a focus of national celebration". It's a blessing, she writes, that whilst British women are often large of thigh and chunky of calf, they have ankles "made in the image of Persephone".   


See: Jess Cartner-Morley, 'What makes a nice ankle?', The Guardian, (12 April 2006): click here to read online.

See also Phoebe Jackson-Edwards, 'Best foot forwards ...' Daily Mail (14 Oct 2015), an article which is illustrated with marvellous black and white photos of ankle contests in the 1930s and '40s, including the one below, taken in Hounslow, in July 1930. Click here.

On the Truth of Things

Artwork by Tyler Feder

roaringsoftly.com

According to Foucault, the ancient Greeks were mostly interested in a conception of public and political parrhesia that obliged them (and accorded them the privilege) of speaking the truth to others (including those in authority), in order to guide them and help facilitate wise government. 

The early Christians, on the other hand, were more concerned with a personal-psychological form of parrhesia (eventually institutionalized as a system of penitence); the moral obligation of each individual to confess the truth about themselves, in order to be freed from the burden of sin and thereby saved.

This, as Foucault says, is a significant moment of transformation in the long history of parrhesiastic practice; a history that he goes to great pains within his late lectures to reconstruct in order that he may better analyze the relations between subjectivity, language, and power - this essentially being his philosophical project in a nutshell. 

Now, fascinating as this project is - and one has to invariably return to politics and psychagogy (or questions concerning the governance of self and others) sooner or later - I have to admit that one of the great attractions of object-oriented ontology and other related forms of what Bill Brown terms thing theory, is that they allow one to be seduced by those entities that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the asking of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject, final solution, or great point of correlation.

In other words, the beauty and the truth of things is they exist mind independently and it's a real joy to occasionally write about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens (not to mention bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens), rather than just human ideas and human relations.


Note: The lyric quoted in the final paragraph is - as I'm sure everybody knows - from the song 'My Favourite Things', from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music (1959).