Very Little...Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy)

229 Pages·1997·1.16 MB·English

by  Simon Critchley

Very Little…Almost Nothing

‘A wonderfully lucid and readable account of the issues that, despite the modesty of
Simon Critchley’s title, are of infinite concern and urgency to thought today. His book
deserves to be debated at length not only by those who have an interest in philosophy,
but by everyone—whether their involvement is in literary criticism, literary theory, or
simply in reading itself—who has a care for the possibilities and the demands of
tomorrow.’
Leslie Hill, University of Warwick

This book is haunted by an image: that of death. If we are to understand where
philosophy begins, we must understand the significance of death or finitude for
philosophy. Beginning with a consideration of the first use of the concept of nihilism
in philosophy, Very Little…Almost Nothing moves through the work of Nietzsche
and Heidegger before considering Blanchot, Levinas, Cavell and Beckett. The
contribution of these writers to the question of death or finitude is considered, which
in turn allows us to view the relation between philosophy and literature anew.
The focus of the book is religious disappointment and the consequent problems
this creates for meaning. The task of philosophical modernity may be a thinking
through of the death of God, but as Simon Critchley argues, this leaves us with an
atheistic philosophy which offers little comfort in the face of an uncertain world.
The possibilities that literature has to offer are thus called upon not to restore meaning
to life, but precisely by viewing the meaninglessness of life as an achievement, the
achievement of the ordinary or the everyday.
Very Little…Almost Nothing opens up new means of understanding important
contemporary issues such as the death of man, the end of history or the end of philosophy
and will fascinate those interested in philosophy, literature and cultural theory.
Simon Critchley is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex. He is the author
of The Ethics ofDeconstruction, and co-editor of Re-Reading Levinas, Deconstructive
Subjectivities, Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings and A Companion
to Continental Philosophy.
Warwick Studies in European
Philosophy

Edited by Andrew Benjamin
Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick
This series presents the best and most original work being done within the European
philosophical tradition. The books included in the series seek not merely to reflect
what is taking place within European philosophy, rather they will contribute to the
growth and development of that plural tradition. Work written in the English language
as well as translations into English are to be included, engaging the tradition at all
levels—whether by introductions that show the contemporary philosophical force
of certain works, or in collections that explore an important thinker or topic, as well
as in significant contributions that call for their own critical evaluation.
Very Little…Almost Nothing

Death, Philosophy, Literature

Simon Critchley

London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1997 Simon Critchley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Critchley, Simon, 1960–
Very little—almost nothing: death, philosophy, literature/
Simon Critchley.
p. cm.—(Warwick studies in European philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Philosophy, Modern. 2. Literature, Modern—History and criticism.
3. Nihilism. 4. Death. I. Title. II. Series.
B791.C75 1997
149'.8–dc21
96–39076
CIP

ISBN 0-203-05011-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-20792-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-12821-8 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-12822-6 (pbk)
In memory of William James Critchley
Born 10th February 1929
Died 28th December 1994

Contents

Abbreviations ix
Preamble: Travels in Nihilon 1
(a) Philosophy begins in disappointment 2
(b) Pre-Nietzschean nihilism 3
(c) Nietzschean nihilism 6
(d) Responding to nihilism: five possibilities 9
(e) Heidegger’s transformation of Nietzschean nihilism 13
(f) Heidegger contra Jünger 15
(g) Impossible redemption: Adorno on nihilism 18
(h) Learning how to die—the argument 24
Lecture 1: Il y a 31
(a) Reading Blanchot 31
(b) How is literature possible? 35
(c) Orpheus, or the law of desire 42
(d) Blanchot’s genealogy of morals: exteriority as desire,
exteriority as law 45
(e) Il y a—the origin of the artwork 48
(i) first slope—Hegel avec Sade 49
(ii) second slope—a fate worse that death 54
(iii) ambiguity—Blanchot’s secret 60
(f) The (im)possibility of death—or, how would Blanchot read
Blanchot if he were not Blanchot? 65
(g) Holding Levinas’s hand to Blanchot’s fire 73
(i) a dying future 73
(ii) atheist transcendence 76
vii
Contents
Lecture 2: Unworking romanticism 85
(a) Our naïveté 85
(i) Kantian fragmentation 88
(ii) deepest naïveté—political romanticism 90
(iii) Hegel, Schlegel 94
(iv) romantic modernity 96
(b) Digression I: Imagination as resistance (Wallace Stevens) 98
(c) Romantic ambiguity 105
(i) the fragment 107
(ii) wit and irony 112
(iii) the non-romantic essence of romanticism 115
(d) Cavell’s ‘romanticism’ 118
(i) the romanticization of everyday life 118
(ii) Emerson as the literary absolute 120
(e) Digression II: Why Stanley loves America and why we should too 125
(f) Cavell’s romanticism 131
(i) I live my scepticism 132
(ii) Cavell’s tragic wisdom 133
(iii) finiteness, limitedness 137
Lecture 3: Know happiness—on Beckett 141
(a) Beckett and philosophical interpretation 141
(b) The dredging machine (Derrida) 145
(c) The meaning of meaninglessness and the paradoxical task of
interpretation (Adorno I) 147
(d) Hope against hope—the elevation of social criticism to the level
of form (Adorno II) 154
(e) Nothing is funnier than unhappiness—Beckett’s laughter
(Adorno III) 157
(f) Storytime, time of death (Molloy, Malone Dies) 160
(g) My old aporetics—the syntax of weakness (The Unnameable) 165
(h) Who speaks? Not I (Blanchot) 172
(i) No happiness? (Cavell) 176
Notes 181
Acknowledgements 206
Index 208
viii
Abbreviations

AE Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (Martinus
Nijhoff, The Hague, 1974).
AF Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Athenäum Fragments’ in Philosophical Fragments,
trans. P.Firchow (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1991), pp.
18–93.
AL Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, L’absolu littéraire (Seuil,
Paris, 1978).
AST Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C.Lenhardt (Routledge & Kegan
Paul, London, 1984).
AT Theodor Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 7
(Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1970).
BF Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, ‘Brief an Fichte’ in Appelation an das Publikum.
Dokumente zum Atheismusstreit Jena 1798/99 (Reclam, Leipzig, 1987),
pp. 153–67.
CF Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Critical Fragments’ in Philosophical Fragments, trans.
P.Firchow (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1991), pp. 1–16.
CP Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems (Faber, London, 1955).
CPP Emmanuel Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. A.Lingis
(Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1987).
CR Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason (Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1979).
DEE Emmanuel Levinas, De l’existence à l’existent, 3rd edition (Vrin, Paris,
1986).
DQVI Emmanuel Levinas, De Dieu qui vient à l’ idée, 2nd edition (Vrin, Paris,
1986).
ix