Work in Progress

So why were we supposed to save philosophy, or whatever?

Maybe we’re supposed to finish off philosophy. Strike the death blow.


A dying art – that’s what we’re practising. An art that’s past its sell by date. An irrelevant art. That we’re not good at. An unwelcome art.


What would it be like to acquire gravitas?


Has any of us produced an opus maximus yet? A magnum fabbo, or whatever? Are any of us close to a masterpiece?


As though we had come after philosophy. After everything, having forgotten everything.


We’re guardians of the pathos. We stand guard over the great European moods. We have versions of them ourselves.


We lived between inverted commas. We were happy between inverted commas. ‘Philosophers’, right? ‘European philosophers’? ‘UK European philosophers’.

We lived in the alibi. We were happy – for a while. But then it began to catch up to us. Then it began to niggle us – the old worry. Then it came to us.


Philosophical Bad Company.

Philosophy idiots assemble.

The philosophy stupidity squad.


Idiot Soup.


Livia’s Z list. Livia’s Z team.


The Most Low. The Most stupid. The biggest idiots.


Idiots assemble. Suicide squad.

They’ve desecrated Christmas. It’s anti-Christmas for the anti-Christ. The birth of the anti messiah.


The Anti-Santa. Is there such a thing? A Beelzebub Santa! And his demon-elves.

Santa is, like, Satan. Saint Nick is a name for the devil, too.


Always winter, never Xmas.

Helmut’s wandered off. Where’s he gone? Shouting. Helmut! Come back! We’ll be nice about Heidegger! We won’t talk quite as much rubbish!

Helmut – don’t get lost! The snow’s too thick? Its’s falling too heavily. You’ll get hypothermia. Actually, I think I’m getting hypothermia.


The Heideggerian bastard.


Where’s your last god now, Helmut? Is he going to be of any help?


You’ll become a future fascist leader, Helmut. The leader in the coming UK civil war.


We live under dark skies, Helmut. Things suck, Helmut.


Helmut’s battle against technology in general. One man, armed only with Heidegger books. In translation.


You should start a Heideggerian clothing line. Sell Heideggerian merch.


Helmut’s sabre-toothed phenomenology.


Helmut’s on a carnivore diet. Looks down on carbs.


That’s just Helmut doing his Wim Hof breathing. I’m surprised he’s not wandering the campus in shorts.


That’s a war crime, Helmut.


Helmut in a serious Heideggerian sulk.


Blood and soil, Helmut. Your kind of thing.


Read out some of Heidegger’s poetry, Helmut. What rhymes with Being?

Read out some of Bataille’s poetry. A recitation. Pee pee. Coffin full of shit.

People must think you philosophers know all about the meaning of life. Do you, philosopher? Do you have all the secrets?


I’m trying not to take it personally, philosopher. I’m making a great effort not to despise you. And I’m not sure whether I’m succeeding.


Ah the mysteries of your trade.


This is my fancy Organisational Management cage.


My Organisational Management head is spinning.


Maybe I’m having a breakdown, philosopher. How do you know you’re having a breakdown?


I’m shedding my Organisational Management skin, like a snake.


My golden retriever husband. My cinnamon husband.


Is there a philosopher bride? Is there a Mrs philosopher?

I suppose you philosophers are all solitaries. Lone wolves.


What are philosophers like in love? What happens when philosophers fall in love?


Do you weep as you type, philosopher? Are you moved by your thoughts?


What did you die of? You never said.


I amuse you, but I bore you. I know that.

Livia’s plagiarism – her crypto-quotations. What was hers and what was stolen?


She was in one of her Adornian moods. Threatening to beat us to death with his collected works.


We were Livia’s entertainment, at the very end, that’s all. Before she decided to go underground. Fun for Livia’s last day in the academic sun.


Didn’t Livia think of herself as a Heideggerian? As a Jewish Heidegger?


Livia wanted to found a philosophical school. That was to be her legacy. A mock school. A false school. An idiot’s school, at the other end of European history than the ancient Greeks.


God liked our stupidity, Livia said. And so did she.

European types. Who knew who Erasmus was. Who had seen the Strasbourg altarpiece. Who’d heard opera in Bayreuth and La Scala in Italy. Who’d visited Nietzsche’s boulder at Surlej.  Who’d hung out in Èze, the village where Blanchot wrote all those masterpieces. Who’d sailed down the Danube, for fuck’s sake. Who knew Florence, like, inside out.

We’ll be the last ones left who can utter word, philosophy. Who will have some sense of what it might have meant.


The Goldilocks zone of stupidity. Intelligent enough to know your stupidity. Not intelligent enough to do anything about it.


How dead are we? How dead must we become? To what depths of death must we sink?


Do the paragrads have legends of a stupid messiah? Of a stupid Indian messiah? Who come from the suburbs of Southall? Do you think you’ll fit the bill, Shiva?


God made the world from disgusting things. He couldn’t help it.


Nihilism in broad daylight. Nihilism as broad daylight. The orderable. The manageable. The deployable. The calculable.


What’s the opposite of MENSA?


We’re where Livia wanted us – on the inside. Fucking shit up.

You don’t change the system, motherfucker. The system changes you.

Don’t we all live too long these days? Don’t we go on too long, and in perfect health? Aren’t we entirely too healthy, nowadays?

Philosophers no longer have the good taste to die young. They live forever, writing book after book.

They should bring back TB. Reopen the sanatoria …

The paras are only ever passing through. All this is only ever part of the burrow to them. Like, the world burrow, spreading through everything.  


You should see their tattoos. What they have written across their bodies. Emblazoned across them.

There’s a code to their tats. It’s like the Russian mafia. It’s not about who they’ve killed, but what they’ve read. And not only read, but internalised. When The Visible and the Invisible is part of you, then you get the tat. Once the Critique of Cynical Reason shows itself in your every gesture, then it’s tat time.


The opposite of a hive mind, where it’s not about conformity. Where it’s not about towing the line. Each paragrad is a different blossoming. Unexpected. Unique. Irreplaceable.


They’ve read everything, but it’s like they’ve read nothing. The whole European tradition remembers itself in them. Comes to itself. Repeats itself, each time anew. Differently, each time.


Each inflecting it differently, the whole of philosophy. Each one living it differently. Each one, a thought-school unto themselves.


They live philosophy. Philosophy runs in their veins. They laugh philosophy. They love philosophy. Philosophy’s gone naïve in them. They’d bleed philosophy, if you cut them.

They’re philosophy incarnate. Living a life – carnally, concretely, really. In the world.


They’re the fruit of philosophy. Hanging from its branches, philosophy.


It’s like they’ve been through philosophy and come out the other side.


Twenty-seven words for study.

The philosophy child will destroy the campus almost by accident. Without even thinking about it. It’ll be a casual destruction. Like a shrug, or something. That isn’t deliberate. Or effortful. That simply destroys what needs to be destroyed. That does away with what needs to be done away with. Because it has to be done. Because it should be done.

And that destruction will be an act of creation. It will be an act of generosity and joy. To destroy the thing that should not be. To demolish the ersatz. To destroy the lies.


And will the philosophy child let us end, too? Will the philosophy child give us the death we want?

The happiness of death at the hands of the philosophy child. A kneeling into death. A bowing of the head to death. Death as kindness. Death as favour. Let it come. Let it be here.

In the simplest gesture. Without it even being a task, a plan. The child will destroy us, just like that. That’s the highest love, expressed as destruction.