Simon Critchley's Blog, page 3

Being and Time, part 1: Why Heidegger matters Simon Critchley

The most important and influential continental philosopher of the last century was also a Nazi. How did he get there? What can we learn from him?

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was the most important and influential philosopher in the continental tradition in the 20th century. Being and Time, first published in 1927, was his magnum opus. There is no way of understanding what took place in continental philosophy after Heidegger without coming to terms with Being and Time. Furthermore, unlike...

Simon Critchley: Oscar Wilde shows us faith without belief

Oscar Wilde's radical reinvention of Christianity while he lay in Reading Gaol is a profound justification of faith

On 19th May 1897, Oscar Wilde was released from prison after two years' detention for acts of gross indecency. He handed a manuscript of some 50,000 words to his loyal friend and sometime lover, Robert Ross. This was to prove his last prose work before his death in Paris three years later and the only piece that he wrote during imprisonment. The text was an extended epistle to...