Our idiocy belongs to it, Old Europe. Our idiocy comes from it.
What the young lack today is a sense of idiocy. They don’t know what they lack. What they don’t possess.
They don’t mourn it, Old Europe. They don’t ache for it. They don’t lament that it lies in ashes, Old Europe. That it’s been destroyed, old Europe. That its wines run with poison now. That its philosophy is likewise poisoned.
No one knows but us. And the mode of our knowledge is idiocy.
Old Europe: that’s what we measure ourselves against. And the thinkers of Old Europe. And the writers of Old Europe.
It’s old Europe that makes us feel our idiocy. That lets us know it. Compared to them, the gods of Old Europe, who are we? Insignificants. Count-for-nothings.
There is no Europe, not anymore. Oh there’s pastiche Europe. Museum Europe. But no actual Europe.
No more old European masterpieces. No more master signatures. No more world-bestriders.
The time of Thought is gone. The time of Theory.
The end of Europe. We had grasped it instinctively, Cicero knew. We could feel it, even in Newcastle. Even at this distance.
We knew we were reading the last books of Old Europe. And that we were the last readers of the books of Old Europe. That it was only eschatology from now on, when it came to Old Europe.
The new European nothing. The new European absence. Only a negative theology could explain it.
Only an apophatics might help. We can only speak of what Old Europe is not. Of the thought that isn’t happening.
Nothing new under the old European sun. No new recipes. Only the same old stirring of the European pot.
The European texts are relics now.
No one’s singing those old European songs. No one’s ascending the Old European peaks.
Not even European nihilism. Not event the uncanniest guest standing by the door. Not even the European uncanny. The magic’s gone. The spell doesn’t work. The European incantations.
God is dead. And so is European Philosophy. So is European culture. It’s essentially dead. Nothing more can be expected.
Do not expect any more European geniuses. No European genius is coming to help you now.
The European desert is growing. The European cry is no longer to be heard. The European names are gradually being forgotten.
Will European philosophy be born again in Newcastle? Cicero mused. Of course not! It’s not a question of that. But it will be honoured here – by our dishonour. Tribute will be paid – by our lack of tribute. By our drunken European philosopher impressions.
Europe is dead and we have killed it, Cicero said. Europe’s blood foaming on our blade.
We’d essentially run Europe through. When the European philosophers actually read the secondary work written about them. When they saw what had been made of their thought – what we had done to it …!
What we do to philosophy over here. How we destroy it, philosophy, in our special way over here.
What happened to European thought? Who killed European thought? Was it us?
Did European thought have to contemplate what it had made in the UK? Did it have to face its Anglophone legacy? Did it have to see what we had made of their thought? What we had put their thought through?
European finalism. The European dead end. The European Not.
The Channel doesn’t exist – not anymore. There’s no distance. There’s no gap. There’s no void between us and Europe. Europe is part of our world now.
European atrophy. The withering of European thought-limbs. The European weakening.
Work in Progress 