There can no more philosophy. No one can believe in philosophy. Just like no one can believe in God.
Call it a negative philosophy, then – like negative theology. Where it’s apophatic. Where it’s all about what it’s not.
Call it anti-philosophy.
*How can you be anti-philosophy? Philosophy’s, like, everything. Not to do philosophy is still to do philosophy – that’s the philosophical trap.
It’s all a trap.
Anti-philosophy. Someone French is bound to have thought of it in, like, 1912. They’re so far ahead.
Look it up.
Fuck, there’s loads of stuff on anti-philosophy. It was all the rage in France in the ‘70s.
Typical.
There’s some guy who gave up philosophy for … sailing. He’s written a whole treatise on it. sailing and antiphilosophy.
Wow.
We’re always too late.
What about non-philosophy, then?
That’s taken – come on. There’s a whole school of non-philosophy. Don’t you know that?
What about hyperphilosophy?
That’s not bad …
How about ultraphilosophy. Surphilosophy … like surrealism. Where Sur means beyond.
People would be expecting things from us. Like, great things. We need to lower their expectations. They need to understand that this is philosophy in parody. Philosophy as a joke. Like a failure philosophy. A fuck up philosophy. A fuck ups philosophy. A philosophy for the fucked up. Philosophy that isn’t philosophy. That’s not quite philosophy. Not even anything.
Not even philosophy: that’s a name.
Do you think?
Not even philosophy … look that up.
Imagining it. A whole not-even-philosophy movement.
Would it mean we have do things? Like, work at anything? Run a not-even philosophy journal? A society? Hold conferences. Run some not even philosophy series for a publisher?
Fuck that. You shouldn’t have to do stuff if you’re not-even-philosophers. It should be like, slacker philosophy. Where it’s not about arguments, or theses, or positions, or being for or against anything.
What about ontology?
Not even that.
Metaphysics?
Not even that.
Ethics?
Not even that. Not even anything. Not even philosophy.
Just being lazy useless bastards, then.
It’s more like some suspension of philosophy: that’s how I think of it. Where we lay down the usual philosophical tools.
Where we get drunk together, in other words.
No, not even that.
Where we hang out.
Not even that.
Where we don’t organise anything. Just sit on the fucking beach.
Maybe.
Would we become the latest thing? Would word spread through the more alert postgraduates? Through the more vibrant postdocs? For MA students looking for something really transgressive?
Would blurred photos of us circulate on the net?
We should start some new philosophical movement. Like, coast philosophy. Philosophy of beaches and off shore breezes and morning fog. Philosophy that’s never quite in focus.
But it’s not really philosophy then, is it?
Exactly – it’s not yet philosophy. Not even philosophy.
So it’s philosophy-lite?
Maybe. But with all the pathos. With, like, heavy pathos. With self-loathing. With self-castigation. With the cleverest variations on self-destruction. With a special emphasis on picking the scabs. On digging the wounds a little deeper. On hating ourselves and each other. Quite systematically.
Brilliant idea. Where will it lead?
Nowhere. But joyfully nowhere. Because it’s not even philosophy.
Not even philosophy’s like the opposite of applied philosophy. Of useful philosophy. Of philosophy that wears the muzzle. Of underlabourer philosophy. That makes itself subservient.
A philosophy of disgust. At doing philosophy. At pretending to do philosophy. Or anything. Of pretending to be philosophers. Or being anything.
Because we’re against being. Against existing …
We’re just enjoying self-hatred. And the hatred of everything. In some vague apocalypticism. Some millennialism, without religion. Throwing all these big words about, idly. And smoking. And not being fucking productive.
Living in the great lull. Between the knowledge that the disaster’s coming and the disaster not yet being here. Between the sea going out, the open beach, and the incoming tsunami.
We’re in the time of the end, knowing that there’s nothing we can do about the end. Like, we can’t philosophise about it.
What has not even philosophy to do with the void? The void is the real object of thought. The void is what’s there when you’re not looking for it. It’s what you see from the corner of your eye. When you’re idle. When you’re distracted. When you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be. When you’re just woolgathering. Gazing out the window, or whatever.
The void … it’s what there is instead of an object to think. Something serious to focus on. The void is what appears when reality’s, like, thinning out. Here at the coast, for example. Where it’s not even a city.
The ‘not even’ is a beautiful category … did we come up with it by ourselves. Look it up … see if some French type had the idea …
Georges Bataille said he was not even a communist.
That bastard … so he was on to it … But no one’s developed it since then. Good – that’s something.
Look at us. We’re a disgrace. Because we don’t know what to do, now we’ve got our jobs. We don’t know what to do with them. We have enough integrity not to try to be careerist. No – scratch that. It’s not a question of integrity. It’s … can’t be botheredness. It’s … lack of capacity.
We could do it if we tried.
Bataille would approve.
Would he? I don’t we fuck enough for him to approve. We don’t hang out at brothels. Have you ever been to a brothel?
We should write a manifesto. What would it say? The Centre for Not Even Philosophy – do you think the uni would allow that?
You can be our president, X. You’re in charge of spreading our doctrine. Like syphilis.
This is our act of rebellion. Fuck it, it’s not even rebellion. It’s lazing about. It’s frolicking. Its whatever we fucking want it to be, sounds like.
Work in Progress 