As Thacker notes, every philosopher begins by rejecting a commonly held article of truth, and Ligotti’s is a whopper: the idea that, as he puts it, “being alive is all right.” In his view, consciousness is an evolutionary misstep best corrected by voluntary extinction. His central problem with consciousness is not unlike the one of language that Fish identifies in Milton: it can’t actually do its job. Just as language transgresses against God by asserting itself, consciousness exists in constant and anxious opposition to the knowledge of its own inevitable death. To be conscious of one’s
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