{"id":17118,"date":"2024-10-30T09:41:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T13:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=17118"},"modified":"2024-10-30T09:41:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T13:41:24","slug":"episode-610-simon-critchley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-610-simon-critchley","title":{"rendered":"Episode 610 – Simon Critchley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 610:
\nSimon Critchley<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_610_-_Simon_Critchley.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“The history of philosophy is largely a bunch of blokes with their treatises, and there’ll be one or two women here and there, but in mysticism there’s a tradition where women have a central function: they’re the agents of it, the messengers on it, the commentators on it, too. That allows you to form a counter-tradition to the dominant philosophical and theological tradition.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With his fantastic new book, MYSTICISM<\/a> (NYRB), philosopher Simon Critchley<\/a> explores mystic traditions from medieval Christianity to the present. We talk about the evolving definition of mysticism, its female-centric history, how it’s not just the moment of revelation but the adoption of a form practice (like Julian of Norwich’s half-day of revelations and ~40 years of theological examination of them), and whether today’s aesthetic experiences can truly be a substitute for the religious transcendence of the past. We get into attention as a form of mysticism and close reading as a form of attention, how we can try to overcome this age of distraction upon distraction, what it means to de-create our creaturely self and ‘get out of our own way’, how philosophy treated religion as bonkers, and why he’s drawn to the weirdness of Christianity. We also discuss how he’s made a publishing career out of death, how we each faced our theoretical deaths and found liberation in their wake, the music he makes with his oldest friend, John Simmons<\/a>, how Brian Eno’s concept of a Scenius<\/a> is hard to create virtually, how his life and his teaching have changed since the pandemic began, The Time He Got To Meet Nick Cave (grr!), and a lot more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read MYSTICISM<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“Mysticism addresses something deep and personal in people, and that interested me. It allows them to scratch an itch they didn’t know they had.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n