Simon Critchley

80

Simon Critchley : biography

27 February 1960 –

Miscellaneous links

  • Faculty page at European Graduate School (Biography, bibliography, photos and video lectures)
  • website with interviews, reviews, bibliography of work etc.

Selected bibliography

  • (1991) Re-Reading Levinas, ed. with Robert Bernasconi, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
  • (1992) The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, (2nd edition, 1999)
  • (1996) Deconstructive Subjectivities, ed. with Peter Dews, State University of New York Press, Ithaca, NY.
  • (1996) Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. with Adriaan T. Peperzak and Robert Bernasconi, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
  • (1997) Very Little… Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature, Routledge, London & New York (2nd Edition, 2004).
  • (1998) A Companion to Continental Philosophy, ed. with William J. Schroeder, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
  • (1999) Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas, and Contemporary French Thought, Verso, London (Reissued, 2007).
  • (2001) Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press.
  • (2002) The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. with Robert Bernasconi, Cambridge University Press.
  • (2002) On Humour, Routledge, London.
  • (2004) Laclau, A Critical Reader, ed. with Oliver Marchart, Routledge, London.
  • (2005) On the Human Condition, with Dominique Janicaud & Eileen Brennan, Routledge, London.
  • (2007) Infinitely Demanding. Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, Verso, London & New York.
  • (2008) The Book of Dead Philosophers, Granta Books, London; Vintage, New York; Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
  • (2008) On Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’, with Reiner Schürmann, edited by Steven Levine, Routledge, London and New York.
  • (2008) Der Katechismus des Bürgers, Diaphanes Verlag, Berlin.
  • (2008) Democracy and Disappointment: On the Politics of Resistance (DVD) – Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley in Conversation, Slought Books, Philadelphia.
  • (2010) How to Stop Living and Start Worrying, Polity Press.
  • (2011) Impossible Objects, Polity Press.
  • (2011) International Necronautical Society: Offizielle Mitteilungen
  • (2012) The Faith of the Faithless, Verso.

Critchley has also edited the following book series:

  • Thinking the Political (Routledge)
  • Blackwell Readings in Continental Philosophy (Blackwell)
  • Thinking in Action (Routledge)
  • How to Read… (Granta, London, and W.W. Norton, New York)

Biography

Critchley was born on February 26, 1960 at Hertfordshire, London. Growing up in the 70s, Critchley described himself as a hippy. However, he still attended academic high school. He became a fan of the punk rock band Ramones as a teenager, and gained an interest in poetry and political activism as a young man.

Critchley studied philosophy at the University of Essex (BA 1985, PhD 1988) and at the University of Nice (M.Phil. 1987). Among his teachers were Robert Bernasconi, Jay Bernstein, Frank Cioffi, Dominique Janicaud and Onora O’Neill. His M.Phil. thesis dealt with the problem of the overcoming of metaphysics in Heidegger and Carnap; his Ph.D. dissertation was on the ethics of deconstruction in Emmanuel Levinas and Derrida.

Following a period as a university fellow at Cardiff University, Critchley was appointed a lecturer in philosophy at Essex in 1989, becoming reader in philosophy in 1995, and professor in 1999. Since 2004 Critchley has been professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He held the position of chair in philosophy at the New School from 2008–2011, and became the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy in 2011. He has held visiting professorships at numerous universities, including Sydney (2000), Notre Dame (2002), Cardozo Law School (2005) and at the University of Oslo (2006). In 2009 he was appointed a part-time professor of philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, where he runs a summer school and teaches in philosophy and liberal arts. Critchley is also a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

The Stone

is an opinion series in The New York Times, moderated by Simon Critchley, that features the writings of contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless – art, war, ethics, gender, popular culture and more. Recent contributors include J.M. Bernstein, Arthur Danto, Nancy Sherman, Peter Singer, Natasha Lennard, Nancy Bauer, Todd May, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Railton, Galen Strawson, Feisal G. Mohamed, William Egginton, Andy Martin, Gary Gutting, and Critchley.See Crtichley’s contributions from May and August of 2010: , a reassessment of the ancient art, and , which asks whether the experience of faith be shared by those unable to believe in God? Other articles by Critchley in The New York Times also include , , and .

The New York Times

The Guardian series on Heidegger’s Being and Time

In an essay series, , , , , , , for the British newspaper The Guardian, Critchley explores Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time, first published in 1927. The importance of Heidegger’s work, Crtichley explains, is not limited to philosophy, but has poured over into such diverse areas as architecture, contemporary art, social and political theory, psychotherapy, psychiatry and theology. Yet, because of his political commitment to National Socialism in 1933, when he assumed the position of Rector of Freiburg University in south-western Germany, Heidegger continues to arouse controversy, polemic and much heated misunderstanding: How could arguably the greatest philosopher of the 20th century also have been a Nazi? What does his political commitment to National Socialism, however long or short it lasted, suggest about the nature of philosophy and its risks and dangers when stepping into the political realm? Critchley argues that such political questions cannot be properly confronted without coming to terms with Being and Time. The Guardian Series is a concise attempt to understand and feel the persuasive power of this seminal text.