Review
"This is a very brave book ... it makes philosophical conversation possible again after two decades of pragmatist intolerance."
-Roger Poole, Parallax
"(T)his is an often beautifully written philosophical act of mourning ... It also commands respect because it obliges one to examine the fictions one employs to avoid really doing philosophy. Critchley's steadfastly post-Kantian rejection of theological answers to the questions he asks is very welcome."
-Andrew Bowie, Radical Philosophy
..."manages with some aplomb, to pull off the extraordinarily difficult task of saying something new and interesting about Beckett and Blanchot."
-Martin McQuillan, New Formations
"Critchley keeps his writings for the most part powerful and elegant, wide-ranging but well-focussed. The book is at all times sibylline, moving, insightful, explorative."
-Colin Davis, French Studies
"Simon Critchley's readings of Schlegel, Blanchot and Beckett are remarkably nuanced and perceptive. Much more than an excellent companion to the study of the intertwinings of philosophy and literature, it is an admirable meditation on the ubiquity of finitude and its ungraspability."
-Jacques Taminiaux, Boston College
-Roger Poole, Parallax
"(T)his is an often beautifully written philosophical act of mourning ... It also commands respect because it obliges one to examine the fictions one employs to avoid really doing philosophy. Critchley's steadfastly post-Kantian rejection of theological answers to the questions he asks is very welcome."
-Andrew Bowie, Radical Philosophy
..."manages with some aplomb, to pull off the extraordinarily difficult task of saying something new and interesting about Beckett and Blanchot."
-Martin McQuillan, New Formations
"Critchley keeps his writings for the most part powerful and elegant, wide-ranging but well-focussed. The book is at all times sibylline, moving, insightful, explorative."
-Colin Davis, French Studies
"Simon Critchley's readings of Schlegel, Blanchot and Beckett are remarkably nuanced and perceptive. Much more than an excellent companion to the study of the intertwinings of philosophy and literature, it is an admirable meditation on the ubiquity of finitude and its ungraspability."
-Jacques Taminiaux, Boston College
Product Description
If one is to look to where philosophy begins, one must understand the significance of death or finitude for philosophy as well. Beginning with first use of the concept of "nihilism" or finitude for philosophy, Very Little... Almost Nothing surveys the works of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Blanchot, Levinas, Cavell and Beckett, considering the contribution of these writers to the question of finitude and allowing us to analyze the relationship between philosophy and literature anew.
Philosophical modernity may be thinking through of the death of God, but as Simon Critchley argues, this offers little comfort in the face of an uncertain world. Critchley calls upon literature not to restore meaning to life but to show the meaninglessness of life as an achievement, the achievement of the ordinary or the everyday.
