Depigmentation: Notes on How Schopenhauer, D. H. Lawrence, and Frances Cress Welsing Constructed Whiteness

Schopenhauer, D. H. Lawrence, and Frances Cress Welsing 

 

Forced into a strange world, Caucasians are almost an abnormality; 

analogous to white mice, or at the very least grey horses. 

 

 

I. 

 

The tragic case of Jason Arday is unfortunate for many reasons - not least because it gives reactionary morons the opportunity to sneer at those with an interest in critical race theory and how whiteness as a conceptual identity is constructed and functions within modern society as a cultural and political norm. 

 

This is not an area of research with which I'm overly-familiar. But it does interest and, from what little I have read, it seems to me that there's a good deal of fascinating (and important) work being carried out. 

 

Indeed, if I were a postgrad student today looking for an idea to develop into a doctoral thesis, I would be tempted to examine how Schopenhauer's thinking on skin colour influenced later authors, including D. H. Lawrence, and how it relates also to pseudo-scientific theories to do with race, such as the one advanced by the American psychiatrist Frances Cress Welsing in 1970. 

 

Without attempting to provide a detailed proposal for such a project, I'd like to briefly touch on one or two points here that might be central to the above ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Seeking to explain why it is that blonde-haired, white-skinned persons are physically drawn to dark-haired, brown-skinned people - a sweeping claim asserted without any empirical or statistical evidence to support it - Schopenhauer develops a speculative evolutionary theory rooted in his own philosophy of the will (i.e., the unconscious drive he posits as underpinning all reality). 

 

His argument is that sexual attraction is no more a free personal choice than anything else in this life and that it rests upon the instinctive desire not only to procreate, but to ensure that biological deviations from the original human type are balanced out in the offspring. As he believes whiteness to be an example of such a deviation - almost an abnormality - it is perfectly natural, therefore, that white people seek out partners of colour. 

 

Schopenhauer concludes his thinking on that exotic plant that is the white man by insisting that in no region of the world is the latter indigenous - "not even in the vicinity of the pole" - and that consequently "a white man has never originally sprung from the womb of nature, and that thus there is no such thing as a white race, much as this is talked of, but every white man is a faded or bleached one" [1]. 

 

 

III.

  

One of the people most influenced by this line of thinking was the young D. H. Lawrence, who would go on to develop his own (idiosyncratic and slightly crackpot) racial philosophy in which whiteness is viewed not only as an unattractive skin tone, but a malevolent form of ideal being responsible for the destruction of the natural world and the triumph of money and machinery. 

 

According to his former girlfriend Jessie Chambers, Lawrence was obsessed with Schopenhauer's work in the period he was writing what would become his debut novel, The White Peacock (1911). She may have been the one to borrow a copy of the German philosopher's essays from the local library, but it was Lawrence who read and re-read the book and left annotations in the margins. 

 

And one day, as she recalled in her memoir published five years after Lawrence's death, whilst arguing with her and her brother on the subject, Lawrence declared that "white skin is not natural to man" and that therefore, for him, "a brown skin is the only beautiful one" [2]. 

 

As Laura Ryan says, for Lawrence "dark-skinned peoples were closer to the 'blood-consciousness' he prized, while whites, too much consumed by their minds and anaesthetised by the deadening mechanisation of the industrial world, were doomed" [3]. 

 

This is an idea that Lawrence holds on to in one form or another throughout his life and writing career; we find it in the early novel Women in Love (finished in 1916 but not published until 1920); we find it in the mid-period novel The Plumed Serpent (1926); and we find it in his final novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). 

 

In the latter, for example, during an extraordinary rant about the women he has known, Mellors tells Connie that the only modern women who "'really 'come' naturally with a man'" are black women - although, as he then adds, black women don't ultimately appeal to him as they seem "'a bit like mud'" to his white sensibility [4]. 

 

This echoes what Lawence also told Jessie many years before - namely, that while he finds blackness beautiful, he doesn't automatically desire it; in other words, he could separate attraction and aesthetic appreciation [5]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

I'd like now to show how Schopenhauer's writings on human pigmentation connect to the idea of whiteness as a mutation or genetic deficiency in the work of Frances Cress Welsing ... 

 

If Lawrence's racial philosophy can be described as idiosyncratic and slightly crackpot, then Welsing's pseudo-scientific ideas to do with melanin set out in her 1970 essay 'The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism' [6], can fairly be characterised in far harsher terms. 

 

An expanded version of the above was later included in her controversial collection of essays, The Isis Papers (1991), where she asserts that white supremacy is driven by a fear of genetic annihilation and that racism, therefore, is a defensive reaction on behalf of defective albino mutants long-ago expelled from Africa to the biological superiority of people with high levels of melanin [7]. 

 

I kind of wish I was making this up - and some readers will think I am making this up. Unfortunately, that's not the case: these claims were not part of some outrageous satire, but made in all seriousness. Welsing also suggested that the human immunodeficiency virus was a form of biological warfare unleashed on the black majority by white people and that the latter were also responsible for drug use and homosexuality amongst African Americans. 

 

All of this feels quite a long way from Schopenhauer and yet, as we saw earlier, his philosophy does at times lend support to such thinking. Like Welsing, for example, Schopenhauer argues that black is the authentic colour of humanity and that whiteness is a biological deviation from such. 

 

However, Schopenhauer viewed this loss of colour purely as a physiological effect shaped by climate rather than a genetic deficiency and his scathing critique of whiteness as an identity tied to ethnonationalism [8] has more in common with later critical race theory than to Welsing's racial essentialism which (thankfully) plays no part in mainstream debate today [9]. 

 

Ultimately, Schopenhauer and contemporary theorists agree that building an identity around skin colour - black or white - is ultimately foolish and even Lawrence quickly realised after spending time in Harlem and reading black fiction that the negro is just another modern, urban American very little different from the white man and that even his most cherished illusions concerning "the eternal negroid soul, black and glistening and touched with awfulness and with mystery" [10] are a lot of stuff and nonsense. 

 

 

V. 

In sum - and to return to where I began - I think the argument made by black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and yes, Jason Arday, that racism is not a black issue but a white problem, is a strong one which deserves serious critical consideration. 

 

In other words, the gaze needs to be shifted from the victims of racism to the creators and beneficiaries of racial hierarchies. I know that many white people are made uncomfortable by terms such as white privilege and white bias and often don't wish to see how whiteness operates as an unspoken, invisible norm against which all other races are judged. But, frankly, that awkwardness can't be helped and shouldn't be apologised for. 

  

Notes 

 

[1] The crucial passage by Schopenhauer in which he considers human complexion, is located in the section of The World as Will and Representation titled 'The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes' (Vol. III, Book IV, Chapter XLIV). 

      Click on the link provided to read online courtesy of Project Gutenberg, who have based their EBook on the three-volume sixth edition of Schopenhauer's classic study trans. R. B. Haldane and John Kemp (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1909). Schopenhauer's text originally appeared in German as Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818-19). An expanded second volume was added in 1844.

 

[2] See Jessie Chambers, D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 111. This memoir was originally published in 1935 by Jonathan Cape Ltd (London). 

 

[3] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (PhD thesis submitted to The University of Manchester, 2019), p. 39. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 204. 

      As Laura Ryan (2019, pp. 39-40) says, this exchange "illustrates Lawrence's othering of the black female as simultaneously representative of the 'real sex' both he and Mellors prize and a kind of degraded sexuality". In other words, in just one short statement Lawrence manages to both praise and denigrate "the presumed ultra-sensuality of black women", thereby betraying his ambivalence on the racial question (and romantic ideas of primitivism) more widely. 

 

[5] That seems (on the surface at least) a rather non-Lawrentian thing to do - something that enforces the mind/body split that he elsewhere seeks to overcome. 

 

 [6] This essay can be found in The Black Scholar, Vol. 5, Issue 8 (1974), pp. 32-40 (published online 14 April 2015). 

 

[7] Melanin is the natural bodily pigment that gives colour to skin, hair, and eyes.  

      I'm not a biological anthropologist, but I know a man who is and he tells me that lighter skin pigmentation is actually an advantageous evolutionary mutation allowing adequate synthesis of vitamin D by early human populations who had migrated out of Africa into regions with much less sunlight. 

 

[8] Schopenhauer famously hated tribalism and nationalism, even though he still maintained  Eurocentric, deeply racist beliefs that Africans were intellectually inferior that were very much in line with the pervasive biases of 19th-century European philosophy. 

 

[9] Just to be clear on this point: whilst the Cress Theory examines whiteness, it does so from a completely different perspective to contemporary CRT. The former relies on the belief that race dictates behaviour and is biologically determined. In contrast, the latter relies on the understanding that race is a fictional, legal, and political category - something socially determined but not essentially fixed - that was invented in the 17th and 18th centuries by the ruling class in order to justify slavery and colonialism.  

      Further, contemporary studies also focus on institutional advantages and systemic biases (i.e., questions to do with power) rather than the physical presence or absence of melanin. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Nigger Heaven, by Carl Van Vechten, Flight, by Walter White, Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos, and In Our Time, by Ernest Hemmingway', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 308.

 

  

Sniffing Out Otherness: D. H. Lawrence and His Racially Sensitive Nose

D. H. Lawrence and his nose: described rather unkindly by 

Mabel Dodge Luhan as 'podgy, almost vulgar' [1] 

 

I.  

 

In a recent post [2], I mentioned how the sense of smell was very important for D. H. Lawrence. 

 

Indeed, without saying as much, one gets the impression that, like Nietzsche, he located his own peculiar genius in his hypersensitive nose, the nostrils of which formed "the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs" [3] - and you thought them merely two small holes!

 

For Lawrence, our sense of smell is rooted in the lower centres of the body - the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion - and the shape of the nose depends on "the direct control of the deepest centres of consciousness" [4]. It is not simply determined by an interplay of anatomical structure, genetics, and evolutionary adaptation to climate. 

 

Lawrence - in case you hadn't noticed - doesn't have much time for conventional scientific descriptions of the body and its organs. And he would have hated and despised the modern quest for a perfect nose involving the cosmetic surgical procedure known as rhinoplasty. 

 

For better or for worse, Lawrence would have advised people to keep the hooter they've been blessed with - be it short and snub, long and beaky, high and arched, or thick and squat. For the nose reveals one's true character; that is to say, "it almost inevitably indicates the mode of predominant dynamic consciousness in the individual" [5] and the primary centre from which they live.        

 

If Lawrence had his way, not only would there be human excrement piled up in the streets (either don't ask, or see the post linked to in note 1 below), but kissing would be replaced by nose rubbing, as the latter involves "a more sensitive and a deeper sensual salute" [6] than the mere pressing of lips.   

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, one of the things that Lawrence used his heightened sense of smell for was to sniff out the racial otherness of the passenger sitting next to him on public transport. 

 

In one of his more contentious and controversial passages, Lawrence writes that if "an Arab or a negro or even a Jew" [7] sits down next to him on the train, then that individual is not known to him in a way that a middle-class white Englishman is known: 

 

"As he sits next to me, there is a faint uneasy movement in my blood. A strange vibration comes from him, which causes a slight disturbance in my own vibration. There is a slight odour in my nostrils. And above all, even if I shut my eyes, there is a strange presence in contact with me." [8] 

 

Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he rather likes this - arguing that it allows for a real thought-adventure beyond mere knowing and understanding. And so, rather than simply insulate himself from contact with racial otherness, he affirms the disturbance of his blood and admits that something vital passes from the stranger; "because, after all, there is some peculiar alien sympathy between us." [9]  

 

 

III.  

 

Lawrence's view of race is, then, by no means simple and straightforward. It is, as sympathetic critics like to say, nuanced (by which they mean full of contradictions and inconsistencies). 

 

Despite a misconception that still lingers in some quarters, Lawrence certainly wasn't a conventional racist, even if he subscribed to an essentialised form of racial mysticism that celebrated primitivism on the one hand and what used to be called exotic otherness on the other. As he once told Jessie Chambers, for him, white skin is unnatural and ultimately only black is beautiful (even if not personally desirable to him) [10]. 

 

Having said that, Lawrence often expresses "shock, disgust and disappointment" [11] when he actually encounters people belonging to different cultures or ethnicities - especially "when a people or culture proved insufficiently primitive or different" [12] for the purposes of his philosophy. 

 

It's one thing discovering that Apaches have "an unbearable sulphur-human smell [...] that takes the breath from the nostrils" [13], but it was even more upsetting for Lawrence - the savage pilgrim - to discover "sameness where otherness was to be expected" [14]. 

 

Thus, when he reads fiction written by African Americans or visits Harlem in NYC - "that dismal region of hard stone streets" [15] - it is disconcerting to find that the black man is just another modern, urban American very little different from the white man apart from the colour of his skin. 

 

"One likes to cherish illusions about the race soul, the eternal negroid soul, black and glistening and touched with awfulness and with mystery" [16], writes Lawrence, but that becomes impossible when one actually comes into contact with people of colour (or when one's nose is blocked).  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), p. 49. 

 

[2] The post I'm referring to is titled 'On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink' (23 Aug 2026). 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. 

 

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 101.

 

[6] Ibid. To be fair, Lawrence may have a point here; the traditional Eskimo greeting - often mischaracterised as mere nose-rubbing - is an intimate gesture where family members and/or loved ones press faces in order to inhale and familiarise themselves with each other's scent. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'On Being a Man', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 214. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. 215. 

 

[9] Ibid. 

 

[10] This conversation between Lawrence and Jessie Chambers is recalled in her memoir - D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 111.

 

[11] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (PhD thesis submitted to The University of Manchester, 2019), p. 40.  

      Dr Ryan's fascinating work in this area has significantly helped shape my thinking in this post - particularly section III - and I look forward to reading her newly published book D. H. Lawrence and Black Modernism: Transatlantic Influence and Confluence (Bloomsbury, 2026). I am also delighted to be contributing an essay on Lawrence's proto-punk sensibilities to a forthcoming collection she is co-editing (with Dr Jo Jones) for Edinburgh University Press. 

 

[12] Ibid. 

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 116. 

 

[14] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (2019), p. 43. 

 

[15] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Nigger Heaven, by Carl Van Vechten, Flight, by Walter White, Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos, and In Our Time, by Ernest Hemmingway', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 308. For a lively discussion of Lawrence's visit to Harlem, see the Introduction to Laura E. Ryan's, 'You are white - yet a part of me' (pp. 27-28). 

 

[16] Ibid. 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink

Jaume Serra Cantallops: Bad Smell 

saatchiart.com  

 

'There was a basic perfumatory theme to the odour of humanity: a sweaty-oily, 

sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive basic theme that clung 

to all humans equally ...' [1]

                                                                                           

 

I.

 

Although the popular idea that most people in the pre-modern past rarely washed and smelled constantly of sweat, excrement, and other foul odours is largely a myth, it can be agreed that they certainly lived in a far less deodorised and sanitised world than you and I have been reared within.    

 

One can only assume that because everyone lived in the same malodorous human environment, people in the pre-modern past were largely indifferent to the natural body odours of their fellow citizens (although they remained acutely sensitive to any smells that suggested disease). 

 

 

II. 

 

Personally, as someone with hyperosmia [2] on the one hand and osmophobia [3] on the other, I have to confess I'm glad I was born in the modern world - with indoor plumbing, plenty of hot water, and a huge range of soaps, shower gels, and shampoos available. 

 

That, however, puts me at odds with D. H. Lawrence, who argues that vital human sympathy rests upon our natural odour and that "the flow of spontaneous warmth" [4] between people has collapsed today precisely because we have become physically repulsive to one another. He writes: 

 

"While the old sympathetic flow continues, there are violent hostilities between people, but they are not secretly repugnant to one another. Once the heart is broken, people become repulsive to one another [...] They smell in each other's nostrils." 

 

Confirming what I say above, Lawrence then writes in the same text:

 

"It has been said often enough of more primitive or old-world peoples, who live together in a state of blind mistrust but also of close physical connection with one another, that they have no noses. They are so close, the flow from body to body is so powerful, that they hardly smell one another, and are hardly aware at all of the offensive human odours that madden the new civilisations. [...] And this is basically true." 

 

For Lawrence, then, once the blood-sympathy breaks - and only the nerve-sympathy remains - then men begin to smell to one another. This is revealed not only by the fact that we get gleaming white bathtubs, wash basins, and toilets, but in the novels of James Joyce and those "awful advertisements [...] about 'halitosis', or bad breath". 

 

Lawrence - who is dying of tuberculosis at the time of writing - is also irritated by the modern person's horror for "coughing, spitting, or any of those things" and seems to suggest that he'd rather see human excrement in the street than piles of litter and old rubbish.  

 

 

III. 

 

Again, I'm afraid I have to differ with Lawrence on this last point - and I can't say I'm thrilled by the fact that some local authorities in Europe and the UK are now having to erect signs explicitly asking people not to shit in public and post multilingual or pictogram-based instructions on how to use a toilet correctly. 

 

Some might think of this as cultural enrichment and a revival of an older form of human sympathy, but I don't.  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, trans. John E. Woods (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Books, 1987), p. 154. Note that I have slightly modified the quote.  

 

[2] Hyperosmia is the medical term for an intense or heightened sensitivity to smells. 

      Nietzsche had this condition and exploited it to his philosophical advantage to sniff out moral and cultural corruption, often boasting that his genius lay in his nostrils. See Nietzsche, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1), in Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126.   

 

[3] Osmophobia is a specific fear or psychophysiological aversion to (usually bad) odours that can trigger headaches, nausea, and other symptoms of migraine.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Bottom Dogs by Edward Dahlberg', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 121. All following quotes from this text are also found on p. 121 of this book. 

 

 

For a fun follow up post to this one on how Lawrence used his nost to sniff out racial otherness (25 Aug 2026), click here.  

 

Fragments from an Open Letter to an Anonymous Demon

Illustration by Fareha Islam in

The Stuyvesant Spectator (2026) [1]

  

 

Opening Remarks 

 

A recently published post on the maxim (and showtune) 'It's Not Where You Start' (18 Aug 2026) now comes with a pointy-tailed pair of comments attached by an anonymous critic, which I thought it might be fun to address at some length here in the form of fragments from an open letter.     

 

This is not because I wish to pick a fight or stage some kind of performative confrontation - nor is it an attempt to butter parsnips, as my anonymous critic puts it [2]. 

 

The suggestion that these are merely empty words assembled for the sake of a post misses the functional reality: the comments section has an inconvenient word limit. Also, by publishing the material here it hopefully becomes accessible to a wider number of readers.      

 

Finally, two more things to note: firstly, all quotations in the text are from the comments written by the above (italicised terms are also ones used by them). 

 

Secondly, whilst I will endeavour to address my anonymous demon critic in a courteous manner, as requested, this is nevertheless a critical rebuttal of their arguments which I think naive and moralistic; the sort of uplifting twaddle I would expect from an enthusiastic sixth-form teacher inspired by the disastrous example of John Keating [3]. 

 

 

I. 

 

Dear Anonymous, 

 

You find it bizarre that I should refer to beings sired by the Devil and ask if I can "helpfully point toward one or two of them knocking around the planet", before then making a rather cheap and unfunny joke referencing two cinematic examples of such. 

 

Perhaps you are forgetting that in a previous comment added to an earlier post [4], you explicitly described yourself as demonic spawn. But even if you haven't forgotten this - and are simply engaging in a form of revisionism - to take an obviously metaphorical phrase and treat it as a literal, biological claim is a ridiculous rhetorical failure. 

 

Pointing out that The Omen (1976) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) are "just films", is to treat an everyday figure of speech with the pedantic literalism of a young child - or a deliberately obtuse internet troll. Most readers will recognise that the phrase 'spawned by the Devil' is a humorous narrative trope. To imply that I am referencing actual demons is to set up a straw man just so you can then feel clever in mocking it. 

 

As for your parenthetical remark - "Unless we're missing something" - I read this as a passive-aggressive attempt to establish yourself as the voice of reason and make me seem like the one obsessed with the supernatural. 

 

In other words, you are pretending to be an objective and slightly puzzled reader looking for literal movie monsters, while fully knowing that you are the person the phrase demonic spawn refers to. It's an ironic turning of the tables, but hardly very courteous and betrays the fact you come to the comments section not to discuss ideas, but perform and compete.    

 

I'm fine with that: but don't complain when I decide to play the same game and join you on the stage. One cannot adopt a demonic persona one week and then feign confusion when that exact persona is referenced the next. That's not being protean, just a bit of a prick.

 

II. 

 

Moving on, we come to your defence of "bloody hard work" and "bringing out the best (or possibly worst) of what one has in oneself". 

 

This, you insist, "isn't a cliché or trite formula", but a "life-affirming idea", thereby positioning yourself as a moral vitalist (someone who views both good and evil as active forces of agency), as well as one who likes to roll their sleeves up and graft (whether this corresponds with the reality of your own life is something I'd be interested to know).   

 

I don't oppose the values of "resilience, persistence, and perseverance" - ironically, the 2,780 posts published on Torpedo the Ark over the last fourteen years demonstrate my adherence to (or embodiment of) precisely these qualities. I'll return to this point later when addressing your accusation of laziness. 

 

However, I do challenge the above as foundational ideals within Christianity that were weaponised by modern bourgeois society [5] - as does Nietzsche, in both his sane and crazy periods. 

 

As he notes in Daybreak (§ 173), for example, the relentless praise of hard work is part of a strategy to keep individuals productive and predictable members of the herd. By draining the individual of their energy through constant economic activity, society successfully prevents the dangerous, disruptive emergence of genuine creative endeavour [6].

 

Thus, when you champion hard work over idleness you are not being a radical vitalist, but, rather, acting as an anti-Nietzschean shill for the capitalist machine. 

 

And if you care to re-read the section in The Gay Science that you quote from (§ 290), you'll note that Nietzsche doesn't in fact use any of the three terms you defend. Giving style to one's character requires rigorous artistic discipline, not submissiveness to God or economic compliance with the world of work. 

 

Thus, I'm sorry to say that you have misunderstood his philosophy in relation to this question, falling back as you do into a moral liberal framework. 

 

 

III. 

 

Still on Nietzsche ... You state that his concept of slave morality "isn't a stupid attack on underdogs [...] wanting to succeed" and that's true - but only because the English term was not part of 19th-century German vocabulary (although it is now a loanword I believe).

 

But even if you love underdogs, I doubt Nietzsche would have had much time for them: what is the letzte Mensch if not the ultimate underdog; hardworking, happy, self-preserving - and he's gonna finish on top once all the top dogs holding positions of power and authority have been neutered. 

 

This certainly sounds like a canine version of the Sklavenaufstand in der Moral and you'd have to be barking to deny it.   

 

 

IV.

 

Abandoning philosophical argument entirely, you then shift to a (cod-psychological) diagnosis of my character:

 

"In his statement that 'starting positions such as wealth, access to education, and social connections heavily determine the direction and final outcome of life' and that people 'lucky enough to have a good start will invariably finish ahead of the game', we learn the truth of Stephen Alexander's own ressentiment, bitterness, and fundamental laziness."

 

So much for your earlier plea for courtesy! 

 

And it rather surprises me that a demon spawned by the Father of Lies and concealed in anonymity should be so concerned with learning the truth.  

  

More importantly, your character diagnosis fails on a purely empirical level: you provide no evidence of my ressentiment or bitterness and the 2,780 published posts on Torpedo the Ark over the last fourteen years render your accusation of fundamental laziness absurd. 

 

As a writer, my job is to write. And the millions of words written on TTA demonstrate a significant degree of intellectual discipline and creative endurance. To accuse me of "fundamental laziness" is, therefore, an odd thing to say - a kind denial not just of evidence, but reality.     

 

Actual laziness is more likely revealed by vague promises of "one day creating something self-astonishing", just as the safety of anonymity allows one to critique the labour of others without ever exposing one's own work to scrutiny.   

 

 

V. 

 

Ultimately, your text reads less like a diabolically clever critique and more as a conventional strategy typical of those who dismiss systemic realities in favour of individual exceptionalism. When the structural unfairness of an economic system is exposed, the immediate reflex of its beneficiaries is to pathologise the critic - rebranding political awareness of inequality as mere resentment or envy. 

 

In attempting to counter this by naming exceptional historical anomalies like Nelson Mandela and Edith Piaf, you rely entirely on what is known as survivor bias [7]. Unfortunately, simply pointing to a few extraordinary outliers does not disprove the statistical reality that baseline social structures trap the vast majority of people. 

 

You warn intelligent readers to be wary of anyone who uses phrases like in reality - and that is often good advice, as the phrase is frequently abused - but exercising a degree of rhetorical caution does not allow one to flatly deny that a reality exists. 

 

To suggest that simply because a phrase can be used to disguise doxa the underlying material conditions of human life disappear, is a bizarre leap of logic. It allows you to comfortably ignore the brutal, measurable statistics of poverty and structural disadvantage by treating them as mere linguistic disputes.

 

 

VI.

 

You end your commentary with an additional insult aimed my way, a reading of Aesop's story to do with the tortoise and the hare, and a couple more big names dropped - Samuel Beckett and Derek Walcott - just to add a final literary flourish. 

 

Ignoring Walcott if I may, let me first reply to the insult, then move on to the well-known Greek fable, and then, very briefly, say something about Beckett and his idea of failing better ... 

 

(i) 

 

Your assertion that because I do not turn my criticism into self-criticism - "the telos of all genuinely philosophical criticality" - I am therefore "unable or unwilling to acknowledge [my] own bullshit" is a tu quoque fallacy wrapped up in pseudo-Hegelian terminology. 

 

You invoke the word telos to give your argument a fancy intellectual veneer, but the argument itself is merely an attempt to deflect. By declaring that the ultimate goal of philosophy is self-criticism, you attempt to shift the focus away from your own logically flawed positions and put my character on trial once more.

 

But a critique of what Byung-Chul Han calls the burnout society does not require an author to issue a disclaimer admitting that they, too, participate in the market economy. Obviously, I'm implicated in the world I discuss. But to suggest that a writer must tack on a confession of their own personal flaws and failings to every structural analysis before that analysis can be validated is ridiculous. 

 

(ii) 

 

I'm afraid to say, having consulted the text, your reading of 'The Hare and the Tortoise' is a modern piece of revisionism. It's clever and imaginative, but far removed from the original story and to rewrite an ancient animal fable as a journey of self-actualisation is to strip it of textual and historical reality.  

 

You insist the tortoise emerges as the winner not because he beats his opponent per se, but because he remains "faithful to himself, non-stressed, and relentless" and ultimately "overcomes himself". 

 

In other words, the tortoise accepts his own nature, stays calm, and fights his own limits instead of fighting his long-eared rival. He symbolises what we would today call mindfulness and zen focus in a noisy and hectic world. 

 

But that is certainly not how the Ancient Greeks understood the story: they were far more pragmatically-minded and for them, the tortoise wins because he crosses the finish line ahead of an arrogant and complacent adversary; it's a political warning against the dangers of leporine hubris [8].

 

For the Greeks, wasting divinely-given talents and strengths was a severe moral failing that invited cosmic retribution. The tortoise won because the hare self-sabotaged, not because the slow-moving reptile was morally superior due to his resilience, persistence, and perseverance.

 

Ultimately, you admire the tortoise for the same reason you love the underdog: because you - like Aesop - support the slave revolt in morality [9]. 

 

The lesson of his fable for a lower-class Greek was this: if you are weak, you cannot beat the powerful through brute force or speed. You must quietly exploit their arrogance, keep your head down, stay humble, work hard, and keep moving forward while they destroy themselves.

 

(iii) 

 

This desire to turn art into uplifting motivational guff is further exposed by your misuse of Samuel Beckett. To borrow his 'fail again - fail better' idea from Worstward Ho! (1983) in order to celebrate "people who achieve things" is an outrageous move. 

 

Beckett was not auditing a business seminar or offering tips for personal reinvention and to enlist the high priest of mid-century nihilism into your campaign for personal productivity is a masterclass in bad faith. 

 

I refer you to my post of 11 June 2013 in which I write: 

 

"Beckett is absolutely not telling us that if at first we don't succeed, we should try, try again in the hope and expectation that such endurance is bound to pay off. Rather, he's saying that no matter how hard you try, no matter how many times you fail, you will never succeed: that success is not even an option. For we are destined to fail: such is the tragic character of our mortal being. The fact that Beckett affirms this and finds in it a source of darkly comic satisfaction, demonstrates that his is what Nietzsche would term a pessimism of strength." 

 

The post concludes: 

 

"The fact that his words are to be found on a wide variety of motivational posters, mugs, and fridge magnets is something that should cause laughter amongst Beckett enthusiasts. For observing people draw comfort and inspiration from lines they have naively misunderstood is, as one commentator notes, like watching someone innocently throw a stick for their dog, not realising that it is in fact a human shin bone they've just picked up in the park."  

That, dear demon, makes a good place also to end this letter. 

 

With kind regards,

 

SA 

   

 

Notes

 

[1] This image by Fareha Islam illustrated a piece by Michelle Huang titled 'A Letter from the Devil' in The Stuyvesant Spectator, Issue 14, Volume 112 (11 August, 2026). 

      The Stuyvesant Spectator is a bi-weekly newspaper produced by students at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. It was first published in 1915.

 

[2] Interesting that the anonymous critic - who may or may not be a demon (we'll come to this shortly) - should fall back once more on a proverbial saying in order to express themselves. For one of the issues I have with their criticism is precisely that they often substitute common folk wisdom for philosophical insight. 

      The fact that this particular English proverb from the 17th century betrays a suspicion of fine words (i.e., complex language which they believe lacks sincerity and is empty of meaning) is also very telling. They seem to imply that simple words invested with common sense are best - and that actions matter more than any form of speech, which is an unusual (self-loathing) position for a writer to adopt.   

 

[3] John Keating was the character played by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (dir. Peter Weir, 1989), whose unorthodox teaching methods and romantic idealism had tragic results. 

      Keating was the sort of teacher who inspired passion and encouraged free-thinking, but failed to warn his impressionable young students of the risks they were taking (and consequences that would follow) by acting in defiance of authority and convention. The sort of teacher who posed as a rebel having established a well-paid career for himself.   

 

[4] See the comment dated 14 August 2026 attached to the post 'On the Temptation of Christ' (07 Aug 2026). 

 

[5] Obviously, there are differences between early Christian culture and bourgeois society. The former, for example, directs these ideals - conceived as gifts of God's grace or fruits of the Holy Spirit rather than acts of human will or indicators of individual agency - toward spiritual salvation; while the latter ties resilience, persistence, and perseverance to material success, upward mobility, and personal achievement. 

      Over time, however, a fanatic religious work ethic fed directly into middle-class capitalist culture, as famously argued by Max Weber in his classic study of 1905, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For Weber, Calvinism in particular created the unique mindset necessary for modern capitalism to thrive; the pursuit of wealth was repackaged as a moral calling, transforming hard work into a moral duty (and idleness into a sin).  

 

[6] See Nietzsche, Daybreak, ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 105. Nietzsche explicitly calls the blessing of work a covert strategy to suppress the individual. 

      It is worth remembering also that he insists on idleness as the crucial condition from which philosophy is born and sees perseverance as an Asiatic - specifically Chinese - mode of life suitable for "industrious ants". See Daybreak, § 206 (p. 127 in the above edition).   

 

[7] Survivor bias is a form of cognitive and logical error. It occurs when an analysis focuses exclusively on the winners or survivors of a particular process while completely ignoring the vast, nameless cohort of those who failed or perished. D. H. Lawrence became acutely aware of this dynamic when observing the mechanics of American society:

      "It is not till you live in America, and go a little under the surface, that you begin to see how terrible and brutal is the mass of failure that nourishes the roots of the gigantic tree of dollars." See 'Introduction to Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 119.

      Ultimately, survivor bias is not merely an intellectual oversight; it is an ideological deception weaponised by the powerful to convince the powerless that systemic barriers can be overcome by sheer force of will and a lot of hard work. The organisers of the National Lottery rely on precisely the same psychological trick: they spotlight a microscopic handful of winners and declare "It could be you", deliberately obscuring the mathematical reality that, for the overwhelming majority of ticket holders, it never will be. 

 

[8] The Greeks also viewed the fable's underlying concept as a logical paradox; how could a slow-moving creature defeat a fast one - was it possible that motion itself was merely an illusion, as the philosopher Zeno argued?  

 

[9] According to early writers like the ancient historian Herodotus, Aesop was an enslaved person on the Greek island of Samos who later gained his freedom.  

 

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 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.