Simon Critchley's Blog

An exhilarating account of Bowie’s spirituality and the quasi-religious nature of his work, from Space Oddity to Blackstar

It has become a tired cliche among fans to say that everything went wrong in the world after Bowie died in 2016. It also misses the point: rather than being one of the last avatars of a liberal order that has crumbled around our ears, Bowie prophesied the mayhem that has replaced it.

In his later years, he thought that we had entered a zone of chaos and fragmentation. This is what allowed him to be so prescient about the internet – not its promise, but its menace. There is no plan and no order. There is just disaster and social collapse. Those looking for reassurance should not listen to Bowie (please listen to something, anything, else). His world, from Space Oddity through to the background violence of The Next Day and Blackstar, was always drowned or destroyed or incinerated: “This ain’t rock’n’roll, this is genocide” as he exclaims at the beginning of Diamond Dogs.

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How Heidegger turned Descartes upside down, so that we are, and only therefore think

I talked in my first blog entry about Heidegger's attempt to destroy our standard, traditional philosophical vocabulary and replace it with something new. What Heidegger seeks to destroy in particular is a certain picture of the relation between human beings and the world that is widespread in modern philosophy and whose source is Descartes (indeed Descartes is the philosopher who stands most accused in Being and Time). Roughly and readily, this is the idea that there are two sorts of substances in the world: thinking things like us and extended things, like tables, chairs and indeed the entire fabric of space and time.

The relation between thinking things and extended things is one of knowledge and the philosophical and indeed scientific task consists in ensuring that what a later tradition called "subject" might have access to a world of objects. This is what we might call the epistemological construal of the relation between human beings and the world, where epistemology means "theory of knowledge". Heidegger does not deny the importance of knowledge, he simply denies its primacy. Prior to this dualistic picture of the relation between human beings and the world lies a deeper unity that he tries to capture in the formula "Dasein is being-in-the-world". What might that mean?

How do we find ourselves in the world, and how can find our freedom here?

As I already tried to show, Heidegger seeks to reawaken perplexity about the question of being, the basic issue of metaphysics. In Being and Time, he pursues this question through an analysis of the human being or what he calls Dasein. The being of Dasein is existence, understood as average everyday existence or our life in the world, discussed in the last entry. But how might we give some more content to this rather formal idea of existence?

Heidegger gives us a strong clue in Division 1, Chapter 5 of Being and Time, which is a long, difficult, but immensely rewarding chapter and where things really begin to get interesting. The central claim of this chapter - which is deepened in the remainder of Being and Time - is that Dasein is thrown projection (Dasein ist geworfener Entwurf). Let me try and unravel this thought.

Anxiety is the philosophical mood par excellence, the experience of detachment from which I can begin to think freely for myself

As I showed in the last blog, moods are essential ways of disclosing human existence for Heidegger. Yet, there is one mood in particular that reveals the self in stark profile for the first time. This is the function of anxiety (Angst), which Heidegger calls a basic or fundamental mood (Grundstimmung). Safranski rightly calls anxiety "a shadowy queen amongst moods".

Far from being morbid, Heidegger's conception of living in the knowledge of death is a liberating one

As I said some 6 weeks ago, in my first blog on Heidegger, the basic idea in Being and Time is very simple: being is time and time is finite. For human beings, time comes to an end with our death. Therefore, if we want to understand what it means to be an authentic human being, then it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our death. This is what Heidegger famously calls "being-towards-death". If our being is finite, then an authentic human life can only be found by confronting finitude and trying to make a meaning out of the fact of our death. Heidegger subscribes to the ancient maxim that "to philosophise is to learn how to die". Mortality is that in relation to which we shape and fashion our selfhood.

For Heidegger, the call of conscience is one that silences the chatter of the world and brings me back to myself

After the existential drama of Heidegger's notion of being-towards-death, why do we need a discussion of conscience? As so often in Being and Time, Heidegger insists that although his description of being-towards-death is formally or ontologically correct, it needs more compelling content at what Heidegger calls the "ontic" level, that is, at the level of experience. Finitude gets a grip on the self through the experience of conscience. For me, the discussion of conscience contains the most exciting and challenging pages in Being and Time. Let me try and sketch as simply as possible the complex line of Heidegger's argument.

Time should be grasped in and of itself as the unity of the three dimensions of future, past and present

To try and compress 437 dense pages of Being and Time into eight brief blogs was obviously a difficult exercise from the start. But, I must admit, this was also part of the attraction. Despite the limits of this virtual medium, I hope that something of the book has been conveyed in a way that might encourage people to read more and further. Being and Time is extraordinarily rich, difficult and systematic work of philosophy that repays careful reading and rereading.

That Heidegger continues to arouse controversy and heated misunderstanding is evidenced by some of the responses to these blogs. All I would ask is that Heidegger's detractors (you know, the "this is bullshit" brigade) take the trouble to read his work with a little care and to pause before reacting.

Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it, we learn again and again

What will be the defining issues of the coming decade? Consider the following three trends. First, ever-growing environmental devastation. Second, continuing growth of the already cavernous social inequalities between the rich and the poor that lead the rich to fear the poor and live in seclusion from them. Third, the further erosion of any remaining faith in liberal democracy and the precipitous slide away from "democratic capitalism".

If one has an interest in confronting and even reversing these three trends, then what is to be done? The first step is a systematic avoidance of the question of the future. That is, we have to resist the idea and ideology of the future, which is always the ultimate trump card of capitalist narratives of progress.

The political response to 9/11 has been pitiful. A new series invites leading thinkers to challenge conventional narratives

The 10 year distance from the attacks of 11 September 2001 gives us an opportunity to reflect on the significance of that day's violence. Common sense asserts that our world is changed for ever because of 9/11. But if true, shouldn't we have spent more time considering the stakes of the event? The attacks were abhorrent and criminal, but our response so far represents a profound failure of the political imagination.

The many human faces to the tragedy provided a passing glimpse into a genuine ethical response mobilised by grief. But all too quickly the mourning ended as matters turned to the usual militarism. The invasion of Afghanistan, the illegal bombardment of Iraq, the establishment of torture camps and, most recently, the execution of Osama bin Laden.

Disaffected by a politics that only serves power, the people are reclaiming democracy. Where next to occupy the Olympics?

The Arab spring, notably in Egypt and Syria, seems to be running out of steam. The vivacious drive of the Occupy movement has faltered and it is not clear what new life will appear. Can popular protest regain its energy and inspiration, or is that it?

Rather than retreating into the comfort of despair or cynicism, perhaps this is a moment in which we can try and gain a broader view of matters.