Who Can I Fuck?
Simon CritchleySuch is the fatal circuit of what Michel Foucault calls the Christian hermeneutics of desire opposed to the pagan aesthetics of existence. In a seminar at New York University in 1980, Foucault is reported to have said that the difference between late antiquity and early Christianity might be reduced to the following questions: the patrician pagan asks, “Given that I am who I am, who can I fuck?” The Christian asks, “Given that I can fuck no one, who am I?” Foucault’s insight is profound, but let me state categorically and without a trace of irony that, as a committed atheist, I side with the deep hermeneutics of Christian subjectivity against the superficial pagan aesthetics of existence. The question of the being of being human - who am I? - that begins with Paul and is profoundly deepened by Augustine arises in the sight of God. The problem is how that question survives God’s death. This is Rousseau’s question in his Confessions, it is Nietzsche’s question in Ecce Homo, and it is Heidegger’s question in Being and Time. In my less humble moments, I think of it as my question as well. Whether or not he exists, we are slaves to God.
Copyright © 2009 Simon Critchley
In September 2008, Simon Critchley inaugurated the How to Live project with a secular sermon on the theme of how to live. The above is an exclusive extract from a new project. In 2010 Simon will be touring the UK (with Shahidha and Nemonie) in the new How to Live Ambulance. An appointment register for the Open Heart Surgery will be available soon.
Simon Critchley is chair of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York. He is currently at work on two new projects: one on the faith of the faithless, and one on being inauthentic.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“I side with the deep hermeneutics of Christian subjectivity against the superficial pagan aesthetics of existence.”
Of course you do. So do most atheists. Without it all you have is the incoherence and absurdity of atheism.
“Whether or not he exists, we are slaves to God.”
Truer words were never spoken on an atheist blog. When tragedy strikes, the thoughts of both believer and non believer turn to God, though for strikingly different reasons.
January 24th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Thanks for this insightful, albeit brief post, Simon.
I have a question, and a contra hyperthesis.
Why are the “pagan aesthetics of existence” at all “superficial”? (And why “aesthetics”? But alright — this be a brief blog post. We move on.)
Or let’s put it this way. If I found out who I am (which never ends, this finding) not through a self-investigation of a core being that reveals a truth to my subjectivity (which would presuppose a method with an end and a being with a truth at its centre), but undertake this finding, *necessarily* through relations with/in the other, through not only language but body — ie, let’s say by fucking / eating the other, by presupposing the other as that which is incorporated within me to make me “me” — then am I not also engaged in a “deep hermeneutics”?
And is this hermeneutics not pre-Christian, or rather, is it not also pagan? Is the Christian really all that removed from the pagan, in this sense?
The difference would be this: does not Christianity merely deny the other(s) around us, in their collective role of in-forming my being, and turn the question of my being toward an absent master signifier, God himself, who must hold the answer to my existence?
“The question of the being of being human - who am I? - that begins with Paul and is profoundly deepened by Augustine arises in the sight of God. The problem is how that question survives God’s death.”
But this presupposes God (a) lived and (b) died. If God never lived, never was within existence as the supreme deity as-such, then the problem is not how the question of being human survived God’s death, but how God’s absence to begin with inaugurated the question.
And to get at that, perhaps one needs to first re-evaluate what one has already thrown out with the first “commitment” to a Christian hermeneutics (despite being atheist) — the supposed “superficiality” of “pagan aesthetics.”
Enough monodiscourse on Xtianity. There are other gods. And others around us, with whom we fuck, who fuck us up, whom we know fuck all about.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
In 2010 when the entire Great Tradition of humankind is freely available to anyone with an internet connection why do you only appeal to the half-baked ideas about Truth and Reality that have ALWAYS mis-informed the CHristian tradition?
There is nothing “deep” about Paul whatsoever. In fact I would argue that his half-baked ideas were/are the primary source of all of the inevitable horrors done in the name of Christianity.
And of the current crisis in Civilization altogether.
He effectively turned the truly radical Spirit-Breathing Spiritual Way taught and demonstrated by Saint Jesus of Galilee into a would be world-conquering, power and control seeking political “religion”.
The inevitable legacies are which are conveyed in these two stark references.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel13.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/cruelty.html
Such are also the power and control seeking agenda(s) that right wing Christians are now loudly championing.
January 25th, 2010 at 12:58 am
Seeing as the pagan question: “Given that I am who I am, who can I fuck?”, can be occasionally answered no-one, one could argue there still remains a pagan aesthetics of experience haunting the Christian deep hermeneutics of subjectivity, just as even though God may be dead, his Holy Spirit still haunts us today.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Thank you for lighting a lantern in the bright morning, Professor Critchley. That we are slaves to God whether or not he exists, and even if we ourselves have killed him, is one of Nietzsche’s most shattering teachings and one that I come back to every time I hear atheism proclaimed because it shows that whether or not God exists is the wrong question.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:53 pm
“It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything — they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything — they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.” –G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
April 8th, 2010 at 9:59 am
In response to the comments above:
Makarios says we all “turn to God at death.” Right. That cliche, unlike its subject matter, just won’t die. Since the cliche expects no response, then I’ll just say, “Whatever.” Rather comical and not very profound, don’t you think?
Veen, I believe Critchley was speaking figuratively when he wrote “how that question survives God’s death.” So there is no assumption on his part of a life and death of God. But your flip-flop of the thought is interesting. And I concur with your final words, there are things out there that “fuck us up,” I just don’t think they’re gods.
John says why waste time with their half-baked beliefs, because the “political religions” have done many bad deeds in the past and present. I agree. However, I don’t think we can dismiss outright what religious thinking and theology have contributed to our world. It would be nice, but I don’t think most of the world could even approach that yet. We should be “careful what we wish for” in that regard, who knows what would supplant the present conditions.
Stroller sees an entanglement of the juxtaposed beliefs, but does the “Holy Spirit still haunt us today”? I don’t know completely what is meant by that, but it sounds like seeing ghosts. I guess we do deal with that overarching idea everyday, but “haunt” seems to me to be an innapropriate choice of words.
Joseph seems to be isolating the more historical ideas behind Paganism and Christianity. I believe, however, that Critchley was intending to use the terms in a modern sense and in the modern atmosphere and practicalities of our lives. If you take “when the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold (Joseph)” and bring it to a modern canvas, then it is out of place and untrue. Modern folks that are not Christian look into the cosmos and are in awe. We are struck with its beauty and it offers innumerable questions and possibilities to our minds. “Cosmic contentment” is indeed a timeless thing.
Noah Gabriel seems to hit at what Critchley was proposing, the main thing isn’t whether God exists or not, but “what now?” for a person like Critchley, Gabriel, or me.
I think I’ve been in that position since I was about sixteen years old or so. In some ways we are slaves to the idea, since it is ingrained in us by elders when we have no power to refute the teaching. As an adult, I have gone round and round with the ideas of God and it has been worth the time and thought. Sometimes I believe the only way to get around it is to just go on as if the idea isn’t there. Live life as best you can and don’t regard or reckon with any God ideas whenever you can. Of course, you can’t control the external forces or the other people that come into your life and bring up the God ideas, they are there and also part of our world. But I’ve found that I can go long stretches where God doesn’t even appear on the horizon. I think that might be the best an atheist can do in our present world.
April 8th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Excuse me, I didn’t notice the the cited name after Joseph’s posting. Apparently that is a complete copying of G.K. Chesterton’s words.
Nonetheless, I’ll consider my comments a posthumous letter to Chesterton about something not really important to him anymore. Then again, how would I know?
My sentiment toward Joseph’s implications by posting Chesterton’s passage is still the same. The context of the passage is a bit off the mark when compared to Critchley’s short paragraphs.