Impossible objects are those about which the philosopher, narrowly conceived, can hardly speak: poetry, film, music, humor. Such «objects» do not rely on philosophy for interpretation and understanding; they are already independent practices and sites of sensuous meaning production. As Elvis Costello has said, «writing about music is like dancing about architecture.» We don't need literary theory in order to be riveted by the poem, nor a critic's analysis to enjoy a film. How then can philosophy...
What Shakespeare's greatest play tells us about the modern world Arguably, no literary work is more familiar to us than Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. Everyone can quote at least six words from the play; often people know many more. In this riveting and thought-provoking re-examination, philosopher Simon Critchley and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster explore Hamlet’s continued relevance for a modern world no less troubled by existential anxieties than Elizabethan London. Reading the...
Investigation into the dangerous interdependence of politics and religion. The return to religion has perhaps become the dominant cliché of contemporary theory, which rarely offers anything more than an exaggerated echo of a political reality dominated by religious war. Somehow, the secular age seems to have been replaced by a new era, where political action flows directly from metaphysical conflict. The Faith of the Faithless asks how we might respond. Following Critchley’s Infinitely...
