Quotes by Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley

Also, rights are not things that are given in the heavens. Rather, they are levers for political articulations, which enables what was previously invisible to become visible.

Heaven

Political

Rights

Any philosophical and theoretical assurance that laughter is unique to the human being becomes somewhat unsure when one turns to the anthropological literature.

Laughter

Philosophical

Unique

Being anthropologically respectful of all faiths means being committed to none, and being left to drift without an anchor for one’s most deeply held beliefs. To have such an anchor means being committed to a specific community. The only way Obama can overcome his sense of detachment and resolve his mother’s dilemma is through a commitment to Christianity.

Commitment

Mean

Mother

For authoritarians such as Lenin and Žižek, the dichotomy in politics is state power or no power, but I refuse to concede that these are the only options. Genuine politics is about the movement between these poles, and it takes place through the creation of what I call “interstitial distance” within the state.

Creation

Distance

Movement

For me, philosophy is an activity of thought that is common to human beings. Human beings at their best.

Being Human

Common

Philosophy

Here we observe the basic obsessive fantasy of Žižek’s position: do nothing, sit still, prefer not to, like Melville’s Bartleby, and silently dream of a ruthless violence, a consolidation of state power into one man’s hands, an act of brutal physical force of which you are the object or the subject or both at once.

Dream

Hands

Men

I am opposing it with an idea of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers, that is, a history of mortal, fragile and limited creatures like you and I. I am against the idea of clean, clearly distinct epochs in the history of philosophy or indeed in anything else. I think that history is always messy, contingent, plural and material. I am against the constant revenge of idealism in how we think about history.

Philosophy

Revenge

Thinking

I guess what happens to a lot of people as they get older is that they get more conservative, but with me, the opposite is the case.

Conservative

Opposites

People

I think governments are quietly terrified. There’s massive unemployment, a recession they don’t know how to deal with, and the measures they’ve taken are not working yet, and maybe they’re not going to work. There’s a prospect of significant social disorder.

Government

Taken

Thinking

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.

Anxiety

Boredom

Phrases

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Acceptance

Adjusting

Answers

Anxiety

Art

Atheism

Attachment

Being Human

Boredom

Brain

Color

Commitment

Common

Community

Conservative

Country

Creating

Creation

Currents

Dark

Disappointment

Distance

Dream

Dying

Emotional

Europe

Facts

Father

Government

Hands

Heart

Heaven

Justice

Knows

Laughter

Levels

Limits

Lonely

Looks

Management

Mean

Meaning Of Life

Men

Mirrors

Modern

Mother

Movement

Nihilism

Odd

Oneself

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Quotes by Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley

Also, rights are not things that are given in the heavens. Rather, they are levers for political articulations, which enables what was previously invisible to become visible.

Any philosophical and theoretical assurance that laughter is unique to the human being becomes somewhat unsure when one turns to the anthropological literature.

For me, philosophy is an activity of thought that is common to human beings. Human beings at their best.

I guess what happens to a lot of people as they get older is that they get more conservative, but with me, the opposite is the case.

I think governments are quietly terrified. There’s massive unemployment, a recession they don’t know how to deal with, and the measures they’ve taken are not working yet, and maybe they’re not going to work. There’s a prospect of significant social disorder.

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.

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