Starred review from May 1, 2021
A genial exercise in public philosophy by an admittedly tonsorially challenged practitioner. To engage in philosophy in public, writes Critchley, is akin to sticking your head out the window and engaging passersby. But, he adds, "If you stick your head out the window, something foul-smelling is likely to land on it." People are argumentative and contrarian, especially in the digital realm, and they forget a key Socratic tenet of the discipline: The unexamined life isn't worth living. Happiness is a central issue here, and one of its hallmarks is quiet time for contemplation, easily ruined by the impinging demands of daily life: "The cell phone rings, the email beeps and one is sucked back into the world's relentless hum and the accompanying anxiety. Not that tucking yourself away from the world is a guarantee for happiness or even decency. As Critchley notes, Rousseau, that most eminent of philosophers, was a deeply unpleasant man, "self-obsessed and totally paranoid," who stuck all five of his children in an orphanage. Happiness can be a subset of the Greek concept of glory, which boils down to how you'll be remembered after you're dead. It can be accomplished by a certain amount of old-fashioned cynicism of the Diogenes variety, which we need more of "in a world like ours, which is slowly trying to rouse itself from the dogmatic slumbers of boundless self-interest, corruption, lazy cronyism and greed." Ever current, Critchley closes with a meditation on Covid-19 and the anxieties it induces, which he encourages his readers to grapple with rather than self-medicate away. Along his path, he pauses to wonder whether philosophy has progressed at all over the centuries; to appreciate David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, which "he reportedly planned as a message to his fans from beyond the grave"; and to allow, with Pascal, that we're weak and wretched beings but eminently improvable. There's much good food for thought--and for better thinking--in Critchley's rambles.
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