Reflections on Simon Critchley's Philosophical Short Cuts (Part 2)

Simon Critchley: Bald 

(Yale University Press, 2021)

Part 1 of this post can be read by clicking here.  

All page numbers given below refer to the above edition of the book. 

Titles are Critchley's own. 

 

 

The Cycle of Revenge [a]

 

Critchley, somewhat surprisingly, takes a very Christian position on the question of revenge: turn the other cheek and forgive those who have sinned against you; at least on the first 490 occasions [b] and even if you have just witnessed the death of nearly 3000 of your citizens: 

 

"What if the grief and mourning that followed 9/11 were allowed to foster a nonviolent ethics of compassion rather than a violent politics of revenge and retribution? What if the crime of the September 11 attacks had led not to an unending war on terror, but to the cultivation of a practice of peace - a difficult, fraught and ever-compromised endeavour, but perhaps worth the attempt?" [111]    

 

As I say, that strikes me as very Christian - but almost inhuman in its idealism; as D. H. Lawrence says, man isn't a spiritually perfect being full of light, he is rooted in blood and soil and has natural instincts and vital passions and it's probably better in the long run to give these expression rather than deny them. 

 

Thus, although Lawrence acknowledges the madness of those who live solely for revenge - see his poem 'Erinnyes', for example [c] - he is not going to be meekly submissive before those who would devour him; nor is he going to love his enemies, bless those that curse him, or pray for his persecutors [d]. 

 

As for Nietzsche, well, he wasn't a big fan of revenge, describing it as a manifestation of ressentiment that often masquerades as justice. The noble individual, he says, knows not only how to forgive - for that is merely Christian - but also how to forget. Just like the spirit of gravity, the spirit of revenge must be overcome. 

 

On the other hand, however, Zarathustra teaches us that a small revenge is better than no revenge at all; that an action taken spontaneously and limited in scope prevents the malignant growth of resentment that will ultimately issue as a repulsion against time and earthly existence itself [e]. 

 

The Good Book ends, one might recall, not with Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, but with John's call for the Apocalypse, the great book of revenge and world destruction that gives the death-kiss to the Gospels [f]. That tells us something important, I think. 

 

 

The Art of Memory

 

This is the first of a series of essays collected under the section heading 'Athens in Pieces' and written during the first four month of 2019, whilst Critchley was based in the Greek capital. 

 

Like him, I too have a fondness for the city - though for different reasons; Critchley thinks it "a magical city [...] where what we still recognise as philosophia really began" [124]; I think of it as the birthplace and hometown of My Little Greek. 

 

In other words, he has a more professional and I have a more personal reason for loving Athens and, whilst I'm not disputing it's ground zero for philosophy, my interest in the latter is really more Franco-German in character and located in the modern and postmodern period, rather than the Classical Age of Greece. 

 

Nevertheless, let's explore a city and a time whose ghosts "continue to haunt our present, often in unexpected and unimagined ways" [124] - ghosts whom we must find a way to make speak (or moan a bit at the very least); something which, says, Critchley, requires giving them "a little of our lifeblood" [124]. 

 

For only when we have transplanted a little of our blood into these ancient Athenian ghosts, will they communicate in a manner that will make sense to our modern ears and "tell us not just about themselves but also about us" [124] (and let's be honest, we moderns only really want to hear about ourselves):

 

"We always see antiquity in the image of ourselves and our age. But that image is not some Narcissus-like reflection; it is more an oblique refraction that allows us to see ourselves in a novel way and in a slightly alien manner." [124]

 

That's a positive spin and not one I'm sure I agree with. And I certainly have problems with the idea that the ancient past should be valued for providing "some kind of solace and escape" [125] from the present; "for a time", writes Critchley, "we can be transported elsewhere, where life was formed by different forces" [125].

 

He'll be telling us next we can even learn from the ancients, but I tend to agree with Foucault that we must exercise extreme caution here; our world and the world of ancient Greece are fundamentally distinct and we can't, for example, simply adopt their model of ethical behaviour, no matter how much we may admire aspects of it, and "you can't find the solution of a problem in the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people" [g].

 

The Stench of the Academy 

  

On my one and only trip to Athens, I crashed through a glass door - click here - and I took a look at the Acropolis. 

 

But I didn't visit Plato's Academy, although, from Critchley's description, it doesn't sound like I missed much: a run-down space smelling of piss calling itself a park in "a not particularly nice part of town" [128], where undesirable go to get high (and not on philosophy).   

 

Funnily enough, Critchley also does his best to put readers off the Academy even in its heyday and its founder:

 

"The Academy was a privately funded research and teaching facility, situated outside the city. Most of us have a rather whimsical idea of philosophy as a bunch of men in togas having a chat in the agora. And we think of Socrates as a gadfly philosophising in the street and somehow speaking truth to power. The idea is attractive. But it is a literary conceit of philosophy - one that is still in circulation today. It is the fiction that Plato wanted his readers to believe." [130-131]

 

Critchley continues - and I think these are my favourite paragraphs in Bald so far -

 

"Behind that fiction stands the library, the editing and copying rooms, and the entire research engine of the Academy, which was devoted to the careful production and dissemination of knowledge through texts and teaching. Much as we may flinch at the idea, philosophy has been academic and linked to the activity of schools since its inception." [131]

 

In other words, it's always been a business on the one hand and factional on the other and Plato - if that was even his name - was ultimately just a rich fantasist backed by wealthy patrons and fleecing wealthy students who led us all into an Ideal dead-end: 

 

"We are less attracted to the idea of a wealthy aristocratic philosopher sequestered in his research facility and making occasional trip to visit foreign tyrants than to the image of the poor, shoeless Socrates causing trouble in the marketplace, refusing to be paid and getting killed by the city for his trouble. But out captivation with this image, once again, is overwhelmingly Plato's invention." [131-132-   

 

It's the great philosophical swindle ...  

      

 

In Aristotle's Garden 

 

After visiting the Academy, Critchley obviously had to go next to the "beautifully maintained site" [137] of the Lyceum; Aristotle's answer to the former [h] - only bigger and better, transforming his new space into "the most powerful and well-endowed school in the world" [136]. 

 

And he was able to do this because if Plato had a few bob, Aristotle was one those individuals we now term the super-rich. Anyway, the Lyceum was the "aspirational school destination of choice" [137] for the elites to send their children and for ten years or so, Aristotle was top dog in the philosophical world (which is not to imply he was in any way a Cynic).  

 

For Critchley - and I agree with him here - it's important to point out that the Lyceum, like most ancient schools, had a lovely garden, and he ponders what it was for:

 

"Was it a space for leisure, strolling and quiet dialectical chitchat? Was it a mini-laboratory for botanical observation and experimentation?  Or was it [...] an image of paradise?" [138]

 

Critchley finds the latter possibility the most intriguing, but personally I prefer to think that his first suggestion concerning its use is the right answer. But whatever the answer, it's true that there's a close and vital relationship between gardens and philosophical thought. Indeed, I would suggest that those who lack green fingers and an appreciation for the beauty of flowers can never be a true lover of wisdom:

 

"At the end of the Nicomachian Ethics, Aristotle sees the promise of philosophy as the cultivation of the contemplative life, the bios theoretikos [...] What better place for this than a garden? Might not botany be the royal road to paradise, an activity at once empirical and deeply poetic." [138]

 

Is Critchley - someone who by is own admission was formerly insensitive to the pleasure to be found amongst plants and trees - becoming a floraphile at last ...? Will he end up like Rupert Birkin, rolling in the grass and ejaculating in the foliage in a state of delirium? [i]  

 

Perhaps not. But, then again, anything's possible ...  

 

 

We Know Socrates's Fate. What's Ours?

  

Interesting that Critchley should claim he was named after Simon the Cobbler; a good friend of Socrates and someone who "also pretended to be a philosopher of sorts" [154]. 

 

Apparently, whenever the latter called into his workshop, Simon made notes on their conversation; thus some claim that it was Simon - not Plato - who was the first author of a Socratic dialogue. 

 

Simon was also much admired by the Cynics, for refusing the patronage of Pericles in order to safeguard his freedom of speech (parrhesia): 

 

"For the Cynics, only those people who achieved self-sufficiency (autarkeia) or independence of mind could truly exercise their freedom speech. For a cobbler-philosopher like Simon to work for a powerful political figure like Pericles would have undermined that independence and compromised his freedom." [158]

 

One wonders if Critchley ever has doubts about his own relationship with powerful institutions like the New School for Social Research and the Onassis Foundation; ever wishes he were repairing old boots instead?     

 

 

The Happiest Man I Ever Met

 

From Simon the Cobbler's workshop to Mount Athos ... and three days, two nights at the monastery of Simonopetra, founded in the 13th century. Critchley wishes to know: "What is it like to be a monk? And what does it take to become one?" [161]

 

These are not questions I would ask and it's not somewhere I would go: anywhere that doesn't welcome the presence of women is a place I choose not to visit. I'm fine with the idea that monks choose to hide themselves from the world of Man, but not that the only female creatures tolerated on their Holy Mountain are cats and that this is justified on supposedly religious and spiritual grounds.

 

How, one wonders, does Critchley look his wife and daughter in the eye after going to a place from which they are barred on the grounds of maintaining a pure environment [j] ...?  Expensive four-wheel drive cars - no problem; they apparently don't pollute the place in the way that women would stink up the joint. 

 

At the end of his stay, Critchley takes off the little wooden cross he had been given to wear, and returns back into the profane world, resuming his "stupid philosophical distance and intellectual arrogance" [169].

 

I know it's a Latin phrase associated with the Jesuits, rather than a Greek phrase associated with the Orthodox monks of Athos, but, clearly, Critchley has found out what it takes to be a monk: sacrificium intellectus (i.e., the voluntary subordination of reason to faith; or what Nietzsche describes as moral self-mutilation).  

 

What shocks me is that Critchley seems to think this is something admirable and he ends this profoundly depressing piece by describing his time at Simonopetra as "the closest to a religious experience that I have ever come" [169] - as if such a psychotic episode were a good thing!

 

        

Adventures in the Dream Factory

  

This is the third of three pieces on the science fiction writer (and garage philosopher) Philip K. Dick - not someone I've ever read (or wish to read), although, yes, I know the film adaptations of his work. 

 

Dick was a kind of Gnostic on Critchley's reading and Dick's Gnosticism enables us to ditch the traditional Christian idea of original sin:

 

"Once we embrace Gnosticism, we can declare that wickedness does not have its source within the human heart but out there, with the corrupt archons of corporate capitalism or whomever. We are not wicked. It is the world that is wicked. This insight finds its modern voice in Rousseau before influencing a Heinz variety of Romanticisms that turn on the idea of natural human goodness and childhood innocence." [219]

 

Critchley continues in a paragraph that returns us to where we began this post, with a critique of authenticity:   

 

"On the gnostical view, once we see the wicked world or what it is, we can step back and rediscover our essential goodness, the diving spark within us, our purity, our authenticity. It is this very desire for purity and authenticity that drives the whole wretched industry of New Age obscurantism and its multiple techniques of spiritual and material detox [...] Against this toxic view of the world, I think we need to emphasize what spendidly impure and inauthentic creatures we are." [219]

 

Horray! Something I can agree with and get behind! Probably a good place to finish then. But let me first wish Mr Critchley a happy 66th birthday - that's not quite the number of the Beast [ἑξακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα ἕξ], but it's two-thirds of the way there ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This essay should probably be read in conjunction with the following piece 'Theater of Violence', pp.112-120, though it's not absolutely necessary to do so and I do not, in fact, analyse this later essay here; not because I disagree with Critchley's view that we need to "understand the history of violence from which we emerge" [113], but because Greek theatre, Shakespeare, sport, and the work of American rapper Kendrick Lamar do not particularly interest me (and, to be honest, I'm increasingly sceptical that complex philosophical problems can best be addressed in terms of football and/or popular music).    

 

[b] Critchley quotes Jesus telling Peter that it is not enough to forgive someone seven times, you must, rather, forgive them seventy times seven, which Critchley interprets as meaning that the quality of forgiveness is infinite and unconditional. See Matthew 18:22 and see Bald p. 110. 

  

[c] The poem 'Erinnyes' (1915), can be found in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. III., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1526-1527. Or it can be read online by clicking here. 

 

[d] Whilst admitting that the Christian vision is one form of consummation for man, Lawrence makes his opposition to Luke 6:27-28 clear pretty much throughout his work. See, for example, 'The Lemon Gardens'; in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 119.

 

[e] See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Of the Adder's Bite' (in Part 1) and 'Of Redemption' (in Part 2).

 

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

 

[g] Michel Foucault, 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Penguin Books, 1991), p. 343. Developing this point, Foucault goes on to say: "I think there is no exemplary value in a period which is not our period ..." [347]. To think otherwise, of course, sets one on a slippery path towards universal humanism. 

 

[h] Aristotle established the Lyceum after being snubbed by Plato, who chose Speusippus as his successor, rather than him. Critchley wonders whether Aristotle was angry and disappointed not to have become the main man at the Academy and I would imagine that he was; for, in fairness, although he was "reportedly a difficult character" and "not much loved by the Athenians" [134], he was undoubtedly the best qualified for the role.    

 

[i] I'm referring to the (in)famous scene in chapter VIII of D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love (1920), to which I have referred numerous times here on Torpedo the Ark: see, for example, the post 'Floraphilia Redux' (17 Oct 2016) - click here.    

 

[j] Critchley explains, but doesn't challenge, the Athonite legend which has it that the Virgin Mary travelled to Athos and liked it so much that her son Jesus declared it her private garden, from which all other female creatures were banned. The 335 sq km peninsula that Mount Athos sits at the heart of is the largest area in the world that women cannot enter (they are not even allowed within 500m of the coast).

      What strikes me as a little hypocritical, to say the least, is that in an essay written earlier, Critchley says that the BBC Television series The Ascent of Man (1973) has an admittedly sexist title and wishes to point out that there are "a few great women too!" [190] who have played a key role in human history (not that any of them would be allowed to visit Athos).  

      In this same essay, Critchley also opposes monstrous certainty which, he says, leads "not just to fascism but to all the various faces of fundamentalism" [193] - though that apparently does not include the dogma of Greek Orthodoxy.   

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.  

 

Know Thyself: A Reflection

Ai Weiwei: Know Thyself (2022) 

Lego bricks 192.5 x 192.5 cm [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Whenever I come across the ancient Greek injunction know thyself [b], I immediately think of Nietzsche's preface to the Genealogy in which he mocks the very possibility of this, even for those who pride themselves on being men of knowledge: We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers ... [c]

 

But I also think of Foucault's text entitled Technologies of the Self ...

 

 

II.     

 

Based on a lecture given at the University of Vermont in October 1982, this text is hugely interesting for its insistence that care of the self - conceived as an ethico-aesthetic project of stylisation - is at least as important as knowing the self (understood in relation to a moral conception of Truth).

 

In the modern era, care of the self was almost entirely decoupled from the more imperative-sounding command to know the self. And that is unfortunate to say the least, because care of the self crucially entailed the forming of external relations with others, whilst knowing the self is a much more internalised and solitary pursuit (like masturbation).

 

For Foucault, "the equation of philosophical askesis with renunciation of feeling, solidarity, and care for one's self and for others - as the price of knowledge - was one of the biggest wrong turnings" [d] in Western history. 

 

But rather than simply regret this, or naively call for an impossible (and undesirable) return to an ancient way of life [e], Foucault began to think things through in his own inimitable manner (more as a hermeneutics of the self than an epistemological exercise) ... 

 

 

III.

 

Gnōthi seauton is one thing; epimeleisthai sautou is another. Without doubt, says Foucault, we moderns have overemphasised the former and largely forgotten the latter. 

 

In the Graeco-Roman world, however, "the injunction of having to know oneself was always associated with the other principle of the care of the self, and it was that need to care for oneself that brought the Delphic maxim into operation" [f]. It was, in other words, one of the key principles (and practices) governing "social and personal conduct" [226].

 

For Foucault, this "profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society" [228] has occurred for two main reasons: 

 

"We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality [...] We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was paradoxically the way to self-renunciation." [228] [g]

 

The second reason - just as crucial - is that in modern philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, "knowledge of the self (the thinking subject) takes on an ever-increasing importance as the first step in the theory of knowledge" [228].

 

 

IV.

Does any of this really matter today?

 

To many people, perhaps not: but to me, as a philosopher who, like Foucault - and, indeed, like Socrates - cares about the question of care, it matters a great deal. 

 

For I would love to see a greater concern with ethos as the Greeks understood this term; i.e. a way of being and of behaviour, of stylising the self (in relation to others) that was evident in every aspect of the person (their appearance, dress, manner, etc.). 

 

The immanent utopia realised now/here in the bonds between people that D. H. Lawrence terms a democracy of touch will be a society founded upon such an ethos; one in which everybody takes proper care of him or herself whilst also properly conducting themselves "in relation to others and for others" [h]. 

 

Ultimately, let me add in closing - once more in agreement with Foucault - the relationship between philosophy, politics, ethics, and art is permanent and fundamental. And that's why one can't simply visit an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, for example, and simply come away speaking about aesthetics or his method of working [i].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This Lego mosaic by Ai Weiwei, based on a first-century Roman work depicting a skeleton and the Greek phrase ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ, is presently on display at the Lisson Gallery (London). It previously featured as part of Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition Know Thyself, at Galerie neugerriemschneider, in Berlin (September 14, 2023 - March 30, 2024). 

      Why the artist chose to reverse the image and write the Greek maxim as if viewed in a mirror, I don't know; perhaps it is meant to indicate the fact that he is reflecting on the complex relationship between past and present (I very much doubt, from what I know of him, that he is advocating a reversal of moral wisdom).  

 

[b] Know thyself was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. It has been quoted and interpreted by countless thinkers, scholars and authors ever since. It is usually written in Greek as Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton).

 

[c] The original German reads: Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst ... See Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), p. iii. 

[d] Paul Rabinow, introduction to the Essential Works of Foucault 1: Ethics, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (Penguin Books, 2000), p. xxv.

 

[e] In answer to the question whether he sees the ancient Greeks as offering an attractive and plausible alternative, Foucault says: "No! [...] you can't find  the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people." Further, Greek ethics "were linked to a purely virile society" founded upon slavery and he doesn't much like that idea. 

      See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 256. 

 

[f] Michel Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 226. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. 

      A slightly different version of this text appeared in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49 and this can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[g] It's important to note that Foucault sees many continuities between pagan and Christian culture and does not see a clean break as many modern Christians and neo-pagans like to imagine. Christianity - a religion of confession and salvation - is, as Nietzsche once said, in many respects a form of Platonism for the people (see his preface to Beyond Good and Evil, 1886) and the Christian tradition is not uniquely to blame for the moral world we now inhabit. 

      See the interview with Foucault from January 1984, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', which can be found in an amended translation with footnotes in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... pp. 281-301, where he stresses this point.  

 

[h] Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 287. 

[i] In a recent post published on Torpedo the Ark, I discussed how Ai Weiwei's transformation of a well-known canvas by Van Gogh enables the viewer to reflect upon contemporary social, cultural, and political concerns. Those interested in reading the post, can click here. 

 

From Kant's Cave to Nietzsche's Kindergarten (Confessions of a Children's Entertainer)

Me in my role as a punk children's entertainer 

(c.1985)

 

Now watch closely little girl as I prick your red balloon 

with a safety pin ...

 

I. 

 

Last night I gave a short talk to the crowd gathered at Kant's Cave; a monthly meeting organised by Philosophy for All [1] and held in a first floor function room at the the famous Two Chairmen pub, in Wesminster [2].

 

The paper addressed the question of what constitutes dark enlightenment [3], so perhaps not ideal material for "shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats" [4] - or indeed young children. 

Nevertheless, I was delighted to discover that one of the people Zooming into the event was watching it accompanied by her precocious four-year-old son, who was equally fascinated by my public persona and appearance as he was by the contents of the paper itself:  

 

Mummy, why does he talk so fast? Why is he wearing such funny clothes? What's a zombie apocalypse?

 

 

II. 

 

Deleuze says that children are born philosophers or, more exactly, natural Spinozans; by which I think he means they instinctively know how to map real (rather than imaginary) trajectories and experiment with immediate (rather than representational) affects. 

 

That may or may not be the case. 

 

But what is undoubtedly true is that I should never have abandoned (my very short-lived) career as a punk children's entertainer in the mid-1980s, in order to become a failed artist and spectacularly unsuccessful poet-philosopher. 

 

For it seems I have a real knack for amusing little ones (and corrupting young minds in the manner of Socrates), whereas I have strictly limited talents as a grown up intellectual and adult educator. 

 

Not that I'm unhappy about this: for like Nietzsche, I think it is only by remaining a little childlike ourselves that we remain close also to the flowers, the grass, and to butterflies ... [5]

         

 

Notes

 

[1] Founded by Anja Steinbauer in 1998, Philosophy for All is an independent non-profit organisation that welcomes everyone with a love of wisdom - whatever their intellectual background or IQ - to attend its various events; walks, talks, film screenings, etc. Click here to visit the PfA website for full details.

 

[2] The Two Chairman is thought to be the oldest public house in Westminster and is housed in an 18th-century Grade II listed building in a part of Town at one time as notorious for cockfighting as political intrigue.        

 

[3] I published a four-part series of posts on dark enlightenment on Torpedo the Ark in July 2024: click here for part one, on the politics of hate; here for part two, on exiting the present; here for part three, on the zombie apocalypse; and/or here, for part four, on rejecting universalism. These four posts essentially formed the heart of the paper given at Kant's Cave.

[4] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), 'Expeditions of an Untimely Man', 38, p. 102. 

 

[5] See Nietzsche writing in Human, All Too Human, Vol. II, Part 2 ('The Wanderer and His Shadow'), section 51. 

 

 

Ad Hominem à la Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

Master of the argumentum ad hominem

 

I.

 

Academic philosophers, who like to take a serious and professional approach to their discipline, hate ad hominem attacks. 

 

In other words, they believe that when addressing someone else's argument or position, one should always refrain from maliciously (and fallaciously) attacking the person or some attribute of the person who is making the argument. 

 

Always stick to the substance of what they say; don't question their motives, denigrate their character, or insult their looks. 

 

In other words, play the ball, not the man. To do otherwise, is just not cricket; something that even Aristotle appreciated [1]. 

 

 

II. 

Nietzsche, however, was not an academic philosopher. 

 

He may have been the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, when appointed in 1869, aged 24, but he made his name as a philosopher only after resigning from the post ten years later (due to ill health) and becoming a fiercely independent thinker; one who cheerfully attacked his philosophical enemies - from Plato and Socrates to Kant and Hegel - directly employing an abusive model of ad hominem argument.      

 

As a psychologist, as a clinician, and as a genealogist, Nietzsche was far more interested in what made the individual (or an entire people) tick - what forces were at play within them - than in the validity of their arguments, or the falseness of their judgements. He valued those with healthy instincts over those whom he regarded as decadent, or those whose values betrayed their ressentiment.     

As many readers of Nietzsche have noted, his philosophy consists to a very large extent of speculative diagnoses, concerning the virtues and vices of those figures (or those cultures) that most excite his interest. This certainly makes him unusual amongst philosophers. 

There are times when ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious; and there may even be times when it's relevant to question the personal conduct, character, or motives of an opponent. But it's highly debatable if Nietzsche is justified in dismissing Socrates, for example, on the grounds that his being monstrous of face proves he was also monstrous of soul [2]. 

 

Ugliness may be an objection, but is it really sufficient grounds to refute a persons thought?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Aristotle is credited with first making the distinction between (legitimate) logical arguments and (illegitimate) personal attacks. In his work Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle showed the fallaciousness of placing the questioner rather than their argument under scrutiny. The proper thing for a philosopher to do, he wrote, is not to question the attributes of an intellectual opponent, but to address the weaknesses and ambiguities in their argument. 

      This isn't to say, however, that all ad hominem arguments are fallacious; one might, for example, adopt a dialectical strategy of using an opponents own ideas and assumptions against them. But the term ad hominem was by the beginning of the 20th century almost always linked to a logical fallacy and today, except within very specialised philosophical circles, the term ad hominem signifies an attack on the character of a person in an attempt to refute their argument.

 

[2] See Nietzsche, 'The Problem of Socrates' (3), in Twilight of the Idols. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Attack', taken from the debut album by Public Image Ltd. (Virgin Records, 1978): click here. Note this is the remastered version from 2011.  

 

 

Notes on Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety (A 6/20 Paper by Maria Thanassa)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Socrates, Maria Thanassa & Larry David 

 

 

I. 

 

According to Maria Thanassa [1], notions of sobriety and intoxication are central to Plato's Symposium and Socrates is shown to be a man of self-restraint above all else; he drinks, but never gets drunk; he loves, but never succumbs to erotic ecstasy (even remaining somewhat indifferent to the charms of Alcibiades).

 

Socrates, in other words, is a man who, like Larry David, knows how to curb his enthusiasm [2] and keep his wits about him. It's not so much that he lacks passion, but he prefers to master his desires. For Socrates, sobriety guarantees the integrity of his nature.

 

But, as becomes clear later in her presentation, Dr Thanassa is not only concerned with the doings of ancient Greek philosphers. She is interested also in how the idea of sobriety can be reactivated within a contemporary culture she thinks of as intoxicated (and infantilised) by a form of liberal Dionysianism that promotes the freedom of the individual and self-expression.           

 

In other words, a bit like the Greek lyric poet Theognis, Dr Thanassa wants people to exercise a degree of control and not act in a shameless or foolish manner (enslaved by their own base instincts); to behave in an ethical and stylised manner, carefully cultivating the self [3]. 

 

II. 

 

This might make Dr Thanassa sound like a bit of a killjoy or a member of the morality police; i.e., one who wishes to enforce a code of conduct and is concerned when people transgress certain social rules. Fortunately, however, she is saved from becoming a battle-axe like Granny Hatchet [4] by that which Socrates and Larry David are both masters of: irony. 

 

Maria ironically tempers her own enthusiasm for telling others to curb their enthusiasm before it tips over into zealotry. Like Socrates - and Larry David - she seems at times to try out and test philosophical positions without ever allowing them to become points of principle or dogma. 

 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take what Dr Thanassa says seriously - just not that seriously. And it certainly shouldn't stop us from enjoying the wine served at the end of the paper, for as Alcibiades might remind us, the 6/20 is, like the symposium, a drinking party as much as a forum of debate.

 

Having said that, food and wine is served at the 6/20 to help facilitate conversation between those in attendance, not to induce drunken excess and vomiting on the way home [5] - something that the host, Mr Christian Michel, would almost certainly not approve of.          

 

III.

I think the part of Dr Thanassa's paper I enjoyed the most was the section in which she (following Martha Nussbaum) discussed Socrates as someone who, in his strangeness, stands apart from other men - and indeed, the human condition itself. 

 

As already mentioned, Plato depicts Socrates as someone who is absent when he should be present; who drinks but does not get drunk; who is impervious to cold and hunger; who values beauty but remains unaffected by its physical manifestations; and who feels erotic desire but does not fully succumb to the pleasures of the flesh.

That certainly makes him sound like a queer fish and, according to Dr Thanassa, the oddity of his character when combined with his satyr-like ugliness makes him not only different, but genuinely other - inaccessible, impenetrable, and impossible to shut-up, even when sentenced to death.  

 

I can see why so many of his fellow Athenians hated him, just as so many of Larry David's friends and neighbours seem to find him impossible at times. But the above traits only increase my admiration for Socrates; he may lack empathy, but at least he recognises that even the most tragic events (such as the death of a pet parrot) have a comic aspect and that the philosopher must be free to ridicule, mock, or criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others [6]. 

 

As the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: Socrates could abstain from those things that most are too weak to abstain from and enjoy in moderation those things that many indulge in excessively to their shame. His strength, his ability to endure, and his sobriety marked him out as a man of perfect and invincible spirit [7].  

In sum - and I think this was Dr Thanassa's closing line (borrowed from Baudelaire) - Keep smiling with Spartan serenity [8] and remember that curbing your enthusiasm means choosing not to burst into flame even though, as a philosopher, you will burn with a very special type of passion.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dr Maria Thanassa presented a short paper entitled 'Curb Your Enthusiasm: On Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety' at Christian Michel's 6/20 Club (London) on 20 Feb 2023. This post is based on my recollection of what was said and I apologise to Dr Thanassa should I misrepresent her ideas in any manner. 

 

[2] The Socrates / Larry David connection and comparison has been made before; see, for example, Daniel Coffeen's excellent post on the philosophy of Curb Your Enthusiasm on his blog An Emphatic Umph: click here. 

      Coffeen rightly argues that both Socrates and Larry are characters who interact with the world in a fundamentally different way from most other people, refusing as they do inherited terms and questioning beliefs and norms of behaviour at every opportunity: "But whereas Socrates is really only concerned with big ideas about truth, morality, language, politics, Larry takes on the micro interactions of the social." 

      I was rather disappointed, considering the title of her paper, that Dr Thanassa didn't make more of the relationship between Socrates and Larry David. 

[3] This is suggestive of Foucault's later work and I was pleased to hear Dr Thanassa refer to such later in her paper, as well as to Nietzsche's idea of what constitutes the most needful thing - the constraint of a single taste - if an individual is to give style to their lives. 

[4] Granny Hatchet (Caroline Nation) was a member of the American temperance movement in the late-19th century and early-20th century, who famously smashed up liquor joints with a handheld axe. See the recent post written on her life and times: click here.   

[5] See the poem by Theognis in Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, ed. and trans. Douglas E. Gerber (Loeb Classical Library / Harvard University Press, 1999), lines 477-496, quoted by Dr Thanassa on the night. 

[6] See my post of 14 Nov 2017 - 'Torpedo the Ark Means Everything's Funny' - click here. 

[7] I'm paraphrasing here from Meditations 1.16 - a passage quoted by Dr Thanassa in her paper. 

[8] See Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon Press, 1995), p. 29. 

      What I say here of the philosopher is, of course, what Baudelaire says of the modern dandy - another figure who understands, style, sobriety, and self-restraint.

 

I would like to express my gratitude once more to Maria for producing a fascinating paper and to Christian Michel for hosting another very enjoyable evening. This post is dedicated to them both and I hope it brings them some pleasure.