Work in Progress

There’s no torsion in Organisational Management. No self torture. Organisational managers aren’t naturally divided against themselves. There’s no conception of sin, among the Organisational Management. Of evil. Their conception of the human being isn’t tragic. They see no clash between freedom and necessity. There’s no such thing as human striving, for Organisational Management. As Bildung.

Organisational Management doesn’t want to be. This whole campus – is everything that’s wrong. And it knows it!

This whole campus exists to be sacrificed. It wants only to be burnt up as an offering.

To who? To what?

To … inutility. This whole campus is waiting for the flame …

And you're the flame?

 

I can see death in its eyes – the Organisational Management campus’s eyes. I can see its longing for death.

It wants not to be. To disappear. It wants to die. It wants death. It knows that death is its truth. It knows that it will have to go under, Organisational Management, and everything else. The civilization based on Organisational Management. That is nothing other than Organisational Management.

It knows that it’s Wrong. In the eyes of God. And in our eyes. It knows. And that’s why it’s brought us here: to be judged.

Cicero always called herself a theologian. Even a Gnostic theologian. With Benjamin bells on.

She used to insist that we were theologians, too. Even the greatest theologians.

The best theologians don’t know that they’re theologians, Cicero used to say. Theology must be a secret. Even from its greatest practitioners.

 

God is dead, Helmut says. And this means everything except ‘there is no God.

Who said that? Let me guess. Nazi. Small moustache. Wrote a lot of books about being.

 

The death of God must be the first principle of a new theology, according to Cicero, I say.

 

Theology must descend into hell and stay there, Io whispers. The passage through death is … necessary. That’s what the Christian apocalyptic consciousness understands.

 

The full reality of the world – that’s what has to be faced in theology, Cicero said. All the darkness and evil. No longer escapism or wishful illusion. Theology must know history as horror.

Cicero always called herself a theologian. Even a Gnostic theologian. With Benjamin bells on.

She used to insist that we were theologians, too. Even the greatest theologians.

The best theologians don’t know that they’re theologians, Cicero used to say. Theology must be a secret. Even from its greatest practitioners.

 

God is dead, Helmut says. And this means everything except ‘there is no God.

Who said that? Let me guess. Nazi. Small moustache. Wrote a lot of books about being.

 

The death of God must be the first principle of a new theology, according to Cicero, I say.

 

Theology must descend into hell and stay there, Io whispers. The passage through death is … necessary. That’s what the Christian apocalyptic consciousness understands.

 

The full reality of the world – that’s what has to be faced in theology, Cicero said. All the darkness and evil. No longer escapism or wishful illusion. Theology must know history as horror.

It’s not enough to make thing meaningless, they have to make a mockery of meaning. They have to laugh at meaning. It’s deliberate. It’s an existential attack.

That’s how they demoralise us. They know how to wield nihilism as a weapon.

Cicero’s doom-ideation brigade. Her philosophical self-harm troupe. Her philosophy Z team. Her parasuicide squad.

 

Our pidgin Europeanism. Our European philosophy gobbledygook. Our speaking in European tongues.

Our free British improvisation on European themes. Our daft extemporisation on Continental thought.

 

It wasn’t European philosophy’s fault. Continental philosophy shouldn’t be held responsible.

The problem is, it was mediated through the stupid English head. What the English head does to continental ideas! How it banalizes European ideas!

 

This was really a toy European philosophy, like toy poodles. This was really pretend European philosophy. But wasn’t that enough?

 

Rockpool European philosophy. Diminished European philosophy. Shrunken European philosophy. The shrunken heads of Europeans. Shrunken by the Anglophone world! Shrunken Derrida! Shrunken Deleuze! Shrunken Foucault!  

 

Perhaps one day they’ll de-extinct European philosophy. Like Jurassic Park. The old philosophers will walk again.

 

The last European philosophy department! Like the last Neanderthals.

In your younger and less Heideggerian days.

 

I was a teenage Heideggerian.

 

Were you actually a teenage Heideggerian? Were you always like this?

 

How many Heideggerians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

 

Beat your Heideggerian chest. Strike your Heideggerian pose. Make your Heideggerian move – we’re waiting for it. Do you Heideggerian thing.

 

You need to find a Mrs Heidegger. Someone who’d understand you.

 

You always wanted to be the boy wonder of Heidegger studies.

 

Do you ever ask yourself, What would Heidegger do?

 

Sing your Heideggerian song. Be the best Heideggerian you can be.

 

Channel your inner Heidegger! Your great-great grandfather! You’re last in line!

Every philosophical gang needs a Heideggerian. Like a fat kid in gangs in Hollywood movies. There has to be one.

 

Do your Heidegger face. Is that it, your Heidegger face?

 

The guy who wrote that book, When Heidegger wept. No, it was When Nietzsche Wept, idiot.

 

Maybe they’re sending out a being-signal, like a bat signal. Only a Heideggerian can save us now.

 

All we have to offer the world is high quality anguish. 100 proof. Like the sweat of Heidegger.

 

Don’t fucking hulk out, Helmut. Don’t Heidegger out.

You have to cultivate disgust, she said. Just like you have to cultivate taste. You need a disgust palate. To distinguish between different kinds of disgust. To know all the varieties of disgust, which is to say different varieties of poison.

 

Let’s take a moment to savour our disgust. To enjoy its flavours. Let’s meditate upon what it shows us, our disgust. Let’s extend some gratitude to it, our disgust.

 

Philosophy is nothing but an apprenticeship in disgust, Cicero said. You must start with being disgusted by things closest to you, and then work outwards.

 

We’re supposed to feel disgust, she said. We need disgust. Because it makes recoil from the world. Which is to say, frees us. Disgust is the beginning of wisdom.

 

Do you feel it, disgust? she used to ask. Do you know it, disgust? Do you feel disgust at it all, with everything?

 

Cicero’s joy in disgust. In others, who were disgusted. Who were as disgusted as she was!

Her joy of fellowship in disgust.

In the terroir is the earth, postgraduates. And you know what Cicero thought of the earth! A fundamental Heideggerian term – always underestimated. There is earth and there is world, so Heidegger, Cicero said. And earth struggles with world. Earth tries to keep hidden, to stay dark. To turn away from the world’s light.

And the world, in turn, tries to expose the earth, to reveal its secret. Never understanding that earth will struggle against this revelation. Will fight to conceal itself and to keep itself in concealment. In forgetting. The earth doesn’t want to shown.

And this struggle between world and earth is the essence of Heidegger’s later philosophy. And it must be our philosophy, too – our wine philosophy.

The terroir is the earth, that’s what Cicero said. We need to drink what hides itself. In its hiddenness. What flees from the light. In its darkness. That’s there, in the wine. That’s what rises up through it. That’s what meets our lips.

Terroir, postgraduate: that’s a word you’ll have to learn. A wine expresses the unique place where it was created. All true wine has a terroir – a soul, because that’s what it’s all about postgraduates: wine is ensouled.

This isn’t about all that mass-produced, eager-to-please dreck that you find in the supermarket. Terroir is about the soil. The earth! The land!

Grapes are not carrots, postgraduates. They’re sensitive to where they are grown. To the particular character of the soil. To the microclimate. To the specifics of precipitation. Air. Water drainage. Elevation. Sunlight. Temperature! To all the circumstances of their cultivation.

Terroir is immutable, postgraduates. The terroir is what grants the uniqueness of the wine. What can’t be replicated. That can’t be anatomised. Analysed. That can’t be measured, only savoured. As an indivisible whole.

The goût de terroir, postgraduates. The taste of the soil! Winemaking is only about revealing the terroir, postgraduates. The skill of the winemaker is one of self-effacement – of knowing how to amplify the terroir by allowing the right kind of barrelling and fermenting. Without the winemaker’s own embellishment! Without stylistic flourish! There is no place for the winemaker’s signature. The terroir must bloom in and as the wine, that’s all. That’s the winemaker’s humble task.

Cicero used to recommend that we meditate on the terroir. Which is why we must drink this so carefully.