Simon Critchley

50

Simon Critchley : biography

27 February 1960 –

Things Merely Are (2005)

In Things Merely Are (Routledge, 2005), Critchley examines the relation between philosophy and poetry through an extended meditation on the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Critchley’s particular focus in Stevens’ very late poems, which attempt to describe what poetry can and cannot say about a subject-independent reality. Critchley is referenced in the commentary on Stevens’s poem Another Weeping Woman. The book also contains Critchley’s influential essay on Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

Infinitely Demanding (2007)

Infinitely Demanding (Verso, 2007) is the most systematic overview of Critchley’s philosophical position. It combines a meta-ethics based on the concepts of approval and demand with a phenomenology of ethical experience and ethical subjectivity. At the centre of the book is a theory of ethical subjectivity based on the relation to an infinite demand. Critchley extends his analysis into discussions of aesthetics and sublimation and into political theory and practice. Critchley argues for an ethically committed political anarchism. Infinitely Demanding has been translated into 8 languages. The book has led to some heated polemics, notably with Slavoj Žižek (see below, the Critchley–Žižek debate). “Infinitely Demanding” is the topic of a special issue of the journal Critical Horizons (August 2009).

The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009)

An extended defense of the idea that to philosophize is to learn how to die, The Book of Dead Philosophers was published by Granta in the UK (2008), Vintage in the US (2009) and Melbourne University Press in Australia (2008). It has been translated into 17 languages. “The Book of Dead Philosophers” was widely reviewed and discussed (see below). It was on The New York Times Best-Seller List in March 2009 and was a top ten bestseller in Greece in Summer 2009. The aim of “The Book of Dead Philosophers” is to examine, defend and refine the ideal of the philosophical death in the context of a culture like ours that is defined by a denial of death. However, the deeper intention of the book is to challenge and revise the way we think about the history of philosophy. More specifically, the book tries to conceive of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers and thereby rethink the way in which approach the relation between the activity of philosophy and an individual life, between conceptuality and biography.

How to Stop Living and Start Worrying (2010)

How to Stop Living and Start Worrying (Polity, 2010), a sort of anti-self-help book, is a series of conversations between Critchley and Carl Cederström from 2009 and 2010, originally based on Swedish television series. The conversations are intended to provide an overview and introduction to Critchley’s life and work. They are based around a series topics: life, death, love, humour and authenticity. The volume also contains a discussion with Tom McCarthy.

Impossible Objects (2011)

A collection of interviews with Critchley over the past 10 years, edited by Carl Cederström and Todd Kesselman, published by Polity Press in 2011. Recent Reviews: , Et cetera: non-fiction reviews Review for PopMatters.com

Faith of the Faithless (2012)

From the paradox of politics and religion in Rousseau to the political stakes of the return to St. Paul in the work of Heidegger, Taubes, Agamben and Badiou, via explorations of politics and original sin in the work of Carl Schmitt and John N. Gray, Critchley examines whether there can be a faith of the faithless, a belief for unbelievers. Expanding on his debate with Slavoj Žižek, Critchley concludes with a meditation on the question of violence and the limits of non-violence. The Faith of the Faithless – Experiments in Political Theology was published by Verso in 2012. He argues that liberal democracy is the political expression of deism.

Stay Illusion: The Hamlet Doctrine (2013) [The Hamlet Doctrine (UK)]

The forthcoming book on Hamlet co-authored with Jamieson Webster deals with the play in the light of various ‘outsider’ interpretations, such as those of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Lacan.