The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out. — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
For me, philosophy is an activity of thought that is common to human beings. Human beings at their best. — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Philosophy isn't programmed into us, and a lot of the forces of our culture steadfastly work against it. Philosophy, for me, is… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
I think that when people are at their best, when they are thinking, reflecting, cogitating, then they are doing philosophy. So I… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Philosophy teaches us to look at the world again. It brings out at a theoretical level what all plain, common, ordinary people,… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
I have argued that philosophy doesn't begin in wonder or in the fact that things are, it begins in a realization that… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Genuinely great humour recognises the world it's describing and yet we are also called into question by it. That's what great art… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Philosophy, for me, is a way of relearning to look at the world, a world that is familiar to us, that we… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Philosophy for me is essentially atheistic. Now that's an anxious atheism. It's an atheism that is anxious because it inhabits questions that… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
There are lots of stories about how philosophy begins. Some people claim it begins in wonder; some people claim it begins in… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
If I had a religious experience, what I know for sure is that I would stop doing philosophy and would start doing… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
For me philosophy begins with these experiences of disappointment: a disappointment at the level of what I would think of as "meaning,"… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Philosophy is the art of dying.Philosophy is an activity that has always been concerned with how one seizes hold of one's mortality,… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
The other side of my work is political disappointment - the realization that we are living in an unjust world. "Blood is… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
I am opposing it with an idea of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers, that is, a history of… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
There's a floating distraction in the contemporary world, life at a distance enabled by technology. I want people to commit at the… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
Any philosophical and theoretical assurance that laughter is unique to the human being becomes somewhat unsure when one turns to the anthropological… — Simon Critchley Copy Share Image
If I had a religious experience, what I know for sure is that I would stop doing philosophy and would start doing religion, teaching… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
We live in a world that is dominated by science. And that's not a bad thing - not at all. But one of the… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
The current situation with regard to theory is odd and maybe defined by a paradox. — Simon Critchley Copy Share
There are two forms of disappointment that interest me: religious and political disappointment. Religious disappointment flows from the realization that religious belief is not… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
If the denial of death is self-hatred, as it is to deny our freedom and live in fear of death (which is to say,… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
Philosophy for me is essentially atheistic. Now that's an anxious atheism. It's an atheism that is anxious because it inhabits questions that were resolved… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
For me philosophy begins with these experiences of disappointment: a disappointment at the level of what I would think of as "meaning," namely that,… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
Obama dreams of a society without power relations, without the agonism that constitutes political life. Against such a position one might assert that justice… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
The influence of being in New York, made me realize a lot of the ethical and political ideas I want to push or promote… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
The other side of my work is political disappointment - the realization that we are living in an unjust world. "Blood is being spilled… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
Melancholia for Freud is the relationship that the subject takes up with respect to itself from the position of what he calls conscience or… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
When the animal becomes human, the effect is pleasingly benign and we laugh outloud, "Okay come clean now. This isn't really about hunting, is… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
My favourite writer is Beckett and I keep going back to wallow in his work like a deep pool of dark humour or like… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
In the US, what passes for Christianity - and it is, to say the least, a highly perverse, possessive individualist and capitalist version of… — Simon Critchley Copy Share
