Simon Critchley Quotes

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• I have argued that philosophy doesn't begin in wonder or in the fact that things are, it begins in a realization that things are not what they might be. It begins with a sense of a lack, of something missing, and that provokes a series of questions.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, Missing, Realization

  "Demand Everything!". Interview with Anders Gullestad, www.truth-out.org. May 15, 2010.

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• It is so ridiculous to limit oneself to one version of the truth.

  Simon Critchley

  Limits, Ridiculous, Oneself

  "Dead philosophers society: an interview with simon critchley". Interview with Andrew Gallix, www.3ammagazine.com. February 15, 2009.

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• Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosopher, Humour, Wells

  Simon Critchley (2011). “On Humour”, p.34, Routledge

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• Just to say "Well, God is dead" in one breath is to say, in another, that nothing means anything. This is the moment of nihilism. Nihilism is the affirmation of meaninglessness.

  Simon Critchley

  Mean, Nihilism, Affirmation

  "Nihilism, punk and the international necronautical society: an interview with simon critchley". Interview with Steven Fowler, www.3ammagazine.com. March 30, 2009.

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• The only answer to the question of the meaning of life has to begin from the fact of our human finitude, of our vulnerability and our fallibility.

  Simon Critchley

  Meaning Of Life, Answers, Facts

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederström, Todd Kesselman (2011). “Impossible Objects”, p.33, Polity

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• That is to say, politics is essentially about the management of fear, an economy of fear, continually adjusting the level of fear to produce the right level of affect in the citizenry.

  Simon Critchley

  Levels, Adjusting, Management

  Simon Critchley (2008). “Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance”, Verso Books

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• If the denial of death is self-hatred, as it is to deny our freedom and live in fear of death (which is to say, to live in a form of bondage), then the acceptance and affirmation of death is indeed a form of self-love. But I'd want to make a distinction between a form of self-love which is essential to what it means to be human, and a narcissism of self-regard, like Rousseau's distinction between amour de soi and amour propre, self-love and pride.

  Simon Critchley

  Mean, Pride, Acceptance

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• It's complicated. On the one hand we're killer apes, and on the other hand we have this metaphysical longing.

  Simon Critchley

  Hands, Killers, Apes

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• The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out.

  Simon Critchley

  Want, Philosopher, Knows

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederstr?m, Todd Kesselman (2013). “Impossible Objects”, p.32, John Wiley & Sons

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• For me philosophy begins with these experiences of disappointment: a disappointment at the level of what I would think of as "meaning," namely that, given that there is no God, what is the meaning of life? And, given that we live in an unjust world, how are we to bring about justice?

  Simon Critchley

  Disappointment, Philosophy, Thinking

  Interview with Jill Stauffer, believermag.com. August 2003.

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• I've always been very keen on Pascal, and what I'm most keen on in Pascal is his emphasis upon human wretchedness. He has a phrase which goes something like 'Anxiety, boredom and inconstancy, that is the human condition' and I've always been very partial to that.

  Simon Critchley

  Boredom, Anxiety, Phrases

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• There are lots of stories about how philosophy begins. Some people claim it begins in wonder; some people claim it begins in worry. I claim it begins in disappointment.

  Simon Critchley

  Disappointment, Philosophy, People

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederström, Todd Kesselman (2011). “Impossible Objects”, p.31, Polity

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• Genuinely great humour recognises the world it's describing and yet we are also called into question by it. That's what great art should do. That's what great philosophy should do. The one thing about humour is that this is an everyday practice that does this.

  Simon Critchley

  Art, Philosophy, Practice

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• I think that when people are at their best, when they are thinking, reflecting, cogitating, then they are doing philosophy. So I don't see philosophy as an academic enterprise.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, Thinking, People

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Philosophy isn't programmed into us, and a lot of the forces of our culture steadfastly work against it. Philosophy, for me, is a way of resisting the nihilism of the present by making, creating, affirming. By going on.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, Creating, Nihilism

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederström, Todd Kesselman (2011). “Impossible Objects”, p.46, Polity

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• Peace is nothing more than the regulation of the psycho-political economy of awe and reverential fear, of using the threat of terror in order to bind citizens to the circuit of their subjection.

  Simon Critchley

  Order, Political, Citizens

  Simon Critchley (2008). “Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance”, Verso Books

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• Philosophy, for me, is a way of relearning to look at the world, a world that is familiar to us, that we know, that is shared by all human beings and also by nonhuman beings.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, Looks, World

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• When the animal becomes human, the effect is pleasingly benign and we laugh outloud, "Okay come clean now. This isn't really about hunting, is it?" But when the human becomes animal, the effect is disgusting, and if we laugh at all, then it is what Beckett calls the "mirthless laugh", which laughs at that which is unhappy.

  Simon Critchley

  Animal, Hunting, Laughing

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• Philosophy is the art of dying.Philosophy is an activity that has always been concerned with how one seizes hold of one's mortality, and I see myself continuing a very ancient tradition that goes back to Socrates and Epicurus, which is that to be a philosopher is to try and learn how to die. In learning how to die, one learns how to live.

  Simon Critchley

  Art, Philosophy, Dying

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• We might even define the human as a dynamic process produced by a series of identifications and misidentifications with animality.

  Simon Critchley

  Might, Identification, Process

  Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy Simon Critchley, Simon Critchley (2011). “On Humour”, p.39, Routledge

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• Obama dreams of a society without power relations, without the agonism that constitutes political life. Against such a position one might assert that justice is always an agon, a conflict, and to refuse this assertion is to consign human beings to wallow in some emotional, fusional balm.

  Simon Critchley

  Dream, Emotional, Justice

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• Philosophy teaches us to look at the world again. It brings out at a theoretical level what all plain, common, ordinary people, in a sense, know already.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, People, Ordinary

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederström, Todd Kesselman (2011). “Impossible Objects”, p.44, Polity

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• We live in a world that is dominated by science. And that's not a bad thing - not at all. But one of the problems with the scientific worldview is that it leads human beings to have an overwhelmingly theoretical relationship to the world. For example, I no longer accept my being in the world practically and then try to describe that or elucidate that; rather, I see the world theoretically as colors and objects and representations which are fed through my retina into the brain.

  Simon Critchley

  Color, Brain, Trying

  Interview with Jill Stauffer, believermag.com. August 1, 2003.

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• The influence of being in New York, made me realize a lot of the ethical and political ideas I want to push or promote are best articulated within an anarchist program.

  Simon Critchley

  New York, Ideas, Political

  "Demand Everything! An Interview With Philosopher Simon Critchley". Interview with Anders Gullestad, www.truth-out.org. May 15, 2010.

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• Philosophy for me is essentially atheistic. Now that's an anxious atheism. It's an atheism that is anxious because it inhabits questions that were resolved religiously in the pre-modern period.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, Atheism, Modern

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