Dead Clever It's the Great Modern Taboo, but It Lies at the Heart of Philosophy. A New Book Surveys How Great Thinkers Have Dealt with Death. Paul Dalgarno Meets Its Author

Summary

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TWO things kept needling at Simon Critchley while he was writing The Book Of Dead Philosophers: his own "awful fear of death" and his role as a contemporary British philosopher. Despite those concerns, he brings the deaths of his predecessors to life in 190 or so energetic bursts that he hopes "might begin to enable us to face the reality of our death". A miscellany of sorts, the book differs from more punitive tomes on popular philosophy not only in its accessibility but in its sprawling cast: alongside the usual suspects - Descartes, Rousseau, Kant - is a wealth of obscure, lesser-known thinkers and a higher than usual female contingent.

"The history of philosophy is always seen as a history of ideas distinct from the people who had those ideas, " says Critchley. "I wanted to rewrite that history as a history of philosophers. We think of these people as experts with wonderful opinions on things but they are the same flawed, fragile creatures as everybody else."

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Extract

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Dead Clever It's the Great Modern Taboo, but It Lies at the Heart of Philosophy. A New Book Surveys How Great Thinkers Have Dealt with Death. Paul Dalgarno Meets Its Author

Starting from the premise that all philosophy, at heart, is a contemplation on death, Critchley explores the theme of what a good death means through the musings of those already been, come and gone. "The ideal of the philosophical death involves dying without fear, " he e...

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