You’ve heard of the death of God. Well, this is the death of philosophy. Philosophy’s had enough.
So it just rolled over and died?
We’ve murdered philosophy. Philosophy died of disgust. When it saw us, would-be philosophers, trying to philosophise. When it saw what we’d done to European thought, philosophy … just … killed itself.
Which means we killed philosophy. We’re murderers. The blood of philosophy froths on our knives.
We’re here to write the plaques for European philosophy. To Explain. And Explain Away!
We domesticate: that’s our role. We tame. We house-break. We teach good anglophone manners to European thought.
We make sure our introductions follow British Standards rules of clarity. Of logical argument. We’re certain to situate continental thought in its time. Its space. To show how it arose from fevers. From wars. From invasions. From massacres. From hot blooded Europeanism.
To clarify European aims and objectives. To bring into the light – the British light. To translate it into English prose – practically the clearest prose that ever existed. To iron out European style. Its flourishes! Its rhetoric! Its grandiosity! Its self-importance! To make it teaching-ready. Undergraduate-ready.
We’re filters. We’re capacitators. We’re transformers.
We make sure European thought doesn’t run riot. Doesn’t foam at the mouth. We’ll make sure that it doesn’t appear rabid. Or contagious in any way. We calm down the continental fever. We place a cold towel on the European brow.
We hose it down, European thought. We administer the tranquiliser. We place it on a leash, brought under control. Muzzled it. Make sure it’s wrangled into submission, at least in translation.
We’ll Account for it, European thought. Set in place. Place where it should be on the continental philosophy shelves.
We’ll put up the guardrails. The velvet rope. We’ll write the plaques. The exhibition catalogues.
We’ll handle it with care, continental thought. With tongs. With protective equipment. With a visor on. With gloves. Like we’re handling radioactive material. Like we’re dealing with explosives …
We’ll keep it in the specimen bag. Keep it under quarantine. Under glass. As an exhibit in the museum of thought.
They think, the Europeans, and we interpret. They feel, the Europeans, and we relate what they feel in clear English prose. They wrote in the midst of absolute crisis, and we, in our calmness, explain the crisis. Show how their work implicitly or explicitly responds to the crisis. Account for the work in terms of the crisis! From our safe historical distance! From our safe geographical distance! From our safe cultural distance! Safely across the English Channel!
We defuse the text. We’re like those robots they send in on caterpillar tracks to inspect the device. We're like the besuited specialists who snip the cables. And if it blows – we smother the thought-bomb. To protect the English reader. To keep them outside the blast radius. To stop their heads exploding.
To be calm and phlegmatic: that’s what was important.
None of that European excitability! None of that continental passion!
Clear, methodical prose! No wooliness! No wordiness! None of that European high falutin’ talk. None of that German ponderousness! And French baloney!
Soundness! Rigour! None of that continental mystery-mongering! None of that European obscurity! That across-the-Channel rhetoric! That intellectual trickery!
It was about bursting philosophical balloons rather than inflating them. About resisting the lure of abstraction. About distrusting theories.
Forget good ol’ liberal humanism. The good ol’ liberal consensus.
Forget the good ol’ British virtues. Forget straightforwardness! Directness! Simplicity! Moderation! Freedom from regrettable excitability. From continental passion! From European fanaticism!
Mental hygiene!: forget that. Mental clarity! Forget a low temperature of argument. Forget deflation, rather than inflation. Forget scepticism, rather than enthusiasm. Forget small scale exploration rather than metaphysical speculation.
Forget the old conservatism! Slow wisdom! Deep peace!
And forget the grey scientism! The lab-coatery! Forget the test-tubery! The imitation rigour!
Forget the analytic boredom. The analytic dullness. The analytic flattening and levelling. Forget the making philosophy about nothing schtick.
Forget all the armchair stuff. The ahistorical stuff. Forget all the technical stuff. The too clever by half stuff.
Forget all the cut and dried stuff. The bought and sold stuff. Forget the sense that it’s all been Decided. And Concluded! That all the thought-adventures have been had.
Forget the dull ol’ God-is-dead world wrapped up in an analytic philosophy bow.
Actual existential questioning: that’s what we’re about. Stuff that isn’t dry as dust. That isn’t all piecemeal. That isn’t all modest.
We like our thoughts hard – too hard for us. And high – above our heads. And rich – full of complex things. And dense! And thick!
We like our thoughts to come from beyond us. Beyond our British world. Beyond our cut and dried world. Beyond our-God-is-deader-than-dead world. Beyond our ordinary world. Beyond our medium sized dried goods world.
We like our thoughts racy and transgressive and not really allowed. We like our ideas wild. Grandiose. About Everything. About Nothing. In big capitals!
We like our European philosophers to be thinking things of which our own philosophers would disapprove. That is the very opposite of underlabourer philosophy. Of philosophy as plumbing, or whatever. Of philosophy as the handmaiden of the sciences …
Soaring philosophy: that’s what we love. Philosophy allowed to be philosophy. To dream for us. To speculate. To climb into the sky. To take the great view.
To forget the technical stuff. The finickity stuff. The lost in the details stuff, that everyone writes about over here.
We like our continental philosophy dense. And in poetic prose. And full of allusions we can’t quite get.
We like our European philosophy impossible for us to follow. Written in the high style. And literary – thoroughly literary. Having emerged from a genuinely literary culture. Unlike us, who come from a post-literary culture. Who have never really read anything. But who like the idea of Literature, capital L.
We like our continental philosophy full of religious pathos. Positively messianic. Forbidden stuff, for those of us brought up as new atheists. Thrilling stuff, for those from tediously secular societies. We want it to be religious for us, who have no idea how to be religious, but who are full of vast, vague and undefined religious feeling.
We like our European philosophy to have emerged from periods of absolute crisis. Of civilizational shifts. To have been written in the midst of wars … invasions … massacres. By beleaguered types. In obscure corners. By those just about surviving. Burning whole manuscripts to keep warm. Who are just more authentic than we are! Who are just more real! Who are so much more entitled to their doomy pronouncements than we’ll ever be. Who’ve actually Suffered, capital S. Who really do have legitimate reasons for contemplating suicide.
We like our European philosophy to be too much for our Anglophone heads.
In the end, there can no more philosophy, Livia said, we remember. No one can believe in philosophy. Just like no one can believe in God.
A negative philosophy – like negative theology: that’s what we had to think. Where philosophy became apophatic. Where it’s all about what it’s not.
Or even better: a not-yet philosophy – or not even philosophy, Livia said. Philosophy that has forgotten that it’s doing philosophy. Or perhaps philosophy that doesn’t know it’s philosophy.
Amnesiac philosophy. Philosophy that doesn’t know itself as philosophy. That hasn’t woken up to itself, not yet. That hadn’t gotten onto the serious business of doing philosophy.
Philosophy, daydreaming. Woolgathering. Philosophy too distracted to be philosophy. Philosophy that had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing.
Lazy philosophy, humming to itself. Philosophy, writing a poem. The idiot cousin of philosophy, that had been bashed on the head. Which had cartoon tweety birds turning all around it.
What’s wrong with us? How did self-loathing become a form of enjoyment? Like scorpions stinging themselves.
Nothing hates itself like a human being. We’re the uniquely fucked up species, right?
Work in Progress 