Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960) is an English philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA.

Challenging the ancient tradition that philosophy begins in wonder, Critchley argues that philosophy begins in disappointment.

Two particular forms of disappointment inform Critchley's work: religious and political disappointment.

While religious disappointment arises from a lack of faith and generates the problem of what is the meaning of life in the face of nihilism, political disappointment comes from the violent world we live in and raises the question of justice in a violently unjust world.

In addition, to these two regions of research, Critchley's recent works have engaged in more experimental forms of writing on Shakespeare, David Bowie, suicide, Greek tragedy and association football.

Simon Critchley was born on 27 February 1960, in Letchworth Garden City, England, to a working-class family originally from Liverpool.

He is a fan of Liverpool Football Club and has said that, it ‘may be the governing passion of my life.

My only religious commitment is to Liverpool Football Club.’ In grammar school, he studied history, sciences, languages (French and Russian) and English literature.

During this time, he developed a lifelong interest in ancient history.

After intentionally failing his school exams, Critchley worked a number of odd jobs, including in a pharmaceutical factory in which he sustained a severe injury to his left hand.

During this time, he was a participant in the emerging Punk scene in England, playing in numerous bands that all failed.

While the music failed, there was a silver lining to the experience: a newfound love for Chinese food, inspired by Warren Zevon.

After studying for remedial 'O' and 'A' level exams at a community college while doing other odd jobs, Critchley went to university aged 22.

He went to the University of Essex to study literature, but switched to philosophy.

Amongst his teachers were Jay Bernstein, Robert Bernasconi, Ludmilla Jordanova, Onora O’Neill, Frank Cioffi, Mike Weston, Roger Moss, and Gabriel Pearson.

He also briefly participated in the Communist Students' Society (where he first read Althusser, Foucault, and Derrida) as well as the Poetry Society.

After graduating with First Class Honours and winning the Kanani Prize in Philosophy in 1985, Critchley went to the University of Nice, where he wrote his M.Phil.

on overcoming metaphysics in Heidegger and Carnap with Dominique Janicaud.

His other teachers were Clement Rosset and André Tosel.

In 1987, Critchley returned to the University of Essex to write his PhD, completed in 1988, which was to become the basis for The Ethics of Deconstruction.

Critchley became a university fellow at University College Cardiff in 1988.

In 1989, he returned to the University of Essex as lecturer and where he would become reader in 1995 and full professor in 1999.

During this time he served first as deputy director (1990–96) and then as director (1997–2003) of the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (1st ed., Blackwell, 1992; 2nd ed., Edinburgh University Press 1999; 3rd ed., EUP 2014)

Since its original publication in 1992, The Ethics of Deconstruction has been an acclaimed work.

Against the received understanding of Derrida as either a metaphysician with his own ‘infrastructure’ or as a value-free nihilist, Critchley argues that central to Derrida's thinking is a conception of ethical experience.

Specifically, this conception of ethical experience must be understood in Levinasian terms in which the other calls into question one's ego, self-consciousness, and ordinary comprehension.

Critchley argues that this Levinasian conception of ethical experience informs Derrida's deconstruction and develops the idea of clôtural reading.

'Very Little ...

He has held visiting appointments at Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität (1997–98, 2001), University of Nijmegen (1997), University of Sydney (2000), University of Notre Dame (2002), Cardozo Law School (2005), University of Oslo (2006) and University of Texas (2010).

Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature' (Routledge, 1997/2nd expanded ed., Routledge 2004)

Critchley's second monograph begins from the problem of religious disappointment, which generates the question of the meaning of life.

Through a long preamble on nihilism, Critchley rejects the view that an affirmation of finitude can redeem the meaning of life.

From 1998 to 2004, he was Directeur de Programme at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris.

Since 2004, Critchley has been professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, at which he became the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy in 2011.

From 2009 to 2015, he ran a summer school at University of Tilburg.

He is also a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School.

Since 2015, he has served on the board of the Onassis Foundation.

In 2021, Critchley was named by Academic Influence as one of the top 25 most influential philosophers of today.

He discusses his biography in a recent episode of Time Sensitive.