Very little-- almost nothing : death, philosophy, literature / Simon Critchley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Critchley, Simon, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy, Modern.

Literature, Modern--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Nihilism.

Death.

Physical Description:

xxviii, 276 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2004.

Summary:

"Very Little ... Almost Nothing "puts the question of the meaning of life back at the center of intellectual debate. Its central concern is how we can find a meaning to human finitude without recourse to anything that transcends that finitude. A profound but secular meditation on the theme of death, Critchley traces the idea of nihilism through Blanchot, Levinas, Jena Romanticism and Cavell, culminating in a reading of Beckett, in many ways the hero of the book. For this Second Edition, Simon Critchley has added a revealing and extended new preface, and a new chapter on Wallace Stevens which reflects on the idea of poetry as philosophy.

Contents:

Preamble: Travels in Nihilon 1

(a) Philosophy begins in disappointment 2

(b) Pre-Nietzschean nihilism 4

(c) Nietzschean nihilism 8

(d) Responding to nihilism: five possibilities 11

(e) Heidegger's transformation of Nietzschean nihilism 15

(f) Heidegger contra Junger 18

(g) Impossible redemption: Adorno on nihilism 21

(h) Learning how to die

the argument 29

Lecture 1 Il y a 35

(a) Reading Blanchot 35

(b) How is literature possible? 40

(c) Orpheus, or the law of desire 48

(d) Blanchot's genealogy of morals: exteriority as desire, exteriority as law 52

(e) Il y a

the origin of the artwork 56

(i) first slope

Hegel avec Sade 57

(ii) second slope

a fate worse than death 63

(iii) ambiguity

Blanchot's secret 71

(f) The (im)possibility of death

or, how would Blanchot read Blanchot if he were not Blanchot? 77

(g) Holding Levinas's hand to Blanchot's fire 85

(i) a dying future 85

(ii) atheist transcendence 89

Lecture 2 Unworking romanticism 99

(a) Our naivete 99

(i) Kantian fragmentation 102

(ii) deepest naivete

political romanticism 105

(iii) Hegel, Schlegel 110

(iv) romantic modernity 113

(b) Digression I: Imagination as resistance (Wallace Stevens) 114

(c) Romantic ambiguity 123

(i) the fragment 125

(ii) wit and irony 131

(iii) the non-romantic essence of romanticism 135

(d) Cavell's 'romanticism' 138

(i) the romanticization of everyday life 138

(ii) Emerson as the literary absolute 141

(e) Digression II: Why Stanley loves America and why we should too 147

(f) Cavell's romanticism 154

(i) I live my scepticism 155

(ii) Cavell's tragic wisdom 157

(iii) finiteness, limitedness 161

Lecture 3 Know happiness

on Beckett 165

(a) Beckett and philosophical interpretation 165

(b) The dredging machine (Derrida) 169

(c) The meaning of meaninglessness and the paradoxical task of interpretation (Adorno I) 172

(d) Hope against hope

the elevation of social criticism to the level of form (Adorno II) 181

(e) Nothing is funnier than unhappiness

Beckett's laughter (Adorno III) 184

(f) Storytime, time of death (Molloy, Malone Dies) 188

(g) My old aporetics

the syntax of weakness (The Unnameable) 195

(h) Who speaks? Not I (Blanchot) 202

(i) No happiness? (Cavell) 207

Lecture 4 The philosophical significance of a poem

on Wallace Stevens 215.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-269) and index.

ISBN:

0415340489

0415340497

OCLC:

53903878