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Quote by Simon Critchley

“It's complicated. On the one hand we're killer apes, and on the other hand we have this metaphysical longing.”

Author

Simon Critchley is a British philosopher known for his contributions to existentialism and ethics. His work covers a wide range of topics, including political philosophy, aesthetics, and moral philosophy. Critchley's research interests include the ideas of philosophers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault. more

“The culture of irony is the culture of postmodernism, which I would furiously want to denounce. We have to act ethically and politically. Irony is a defensive position, against reality. It always knows what to think about reality. The idea of commitment and engagement is central to me, which is not ironic.”

Thinking Knows Want Ideas Reality Culture Position Commitment Irony Ironic Engagement Postmodernism

Author:Simon Critchley

“There's a floating distraction in the contemporary world, life at a distance enabled by technology. I want people to commit at the level of their subjectivity. The idea of subjective commitment is at the core of ethics, something that divides the self from itself. I become an ethical self. I cannot meet that ideal, I cannot fulfill it, it divides me from myself and it makes me strive harder. This ideal subjective ethical drive is at the heart of an absolutely earnest, radical politics that insists that people will be able to engage with each other, and they're lifted from irony at that point.”

“I think governments are quietly terrified. There's massive unemployment, a recession they don't know how to deal with, and the measures they've taken are not working yet, and maybe they're not going to work. There's a prospect of significant social disorder.”

Thinking Knows Government Social Deals Know How Taken Significant Massive Disorder Terrified Unemployment Going To Work Recessions

Author:Simon Critchley

“Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.”

Felt Natural Beauty Moral Philosophical

Book:An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An. inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion

Source: An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An. inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion

“Philosophy is the art of dying.Philosophy is an activity that has always been concerned with how one seizes hold of one's mortality, and I see myself continuing a very ancient tradition that goes back to Socrates and Epicurus, which is that to be a philosopher is to try and learn how to die. In learning how to die, one learns how to live.”

Trying Art Philosophy Dies Dying Activity Concerned Tradition Ancient Philosopher Mortality Continuing

Author:Simon Critchley

“There is something desperately lonely about Barack Obama's universe. One gets the overwhelming sense of someone yearning for connection, for something that binds human beings together, for community and commonality, for what he repeatedly calls "the common good". This is hardly news.”

Humans Together Universe Community Human Beings Common News Lonely Connections Barack Overwhelming Yearning Common Good Being Together Commonality

Author:Simon Critchley

“Obama dreams of a society without power relations, without the agonism that constitutes political life. Against such a position one might assert that justice is always an agon, a conflict, and to refuse this assertion is to consign human beings to wallow in some emotional, fusional balm.”

Humans Dream Might Political Justice Human Beings Position Emotional Conflict Relation Refuse Assertion Political Life

Author:Simon Critchley

“The yearning for the common good comes from the refusal to accept that perhaps Americans have very little in common apart from the elements of a sometimes successful civil religion based around a sentimental, indeed sometimes teary-eyed, attachment to the constitution and a belief in the quasi-divine wisdom of the founding fathers.”