Book Announcement
Problem, Life, Deception
Dear reader. In this week or the next, depending on practicalities, I will publish a collection of essays in paperback. These are by and large the essays you can find on this Substack, be it often highly edited and with new content added. The collection will also include two texts as of now not to be found on this Substack: A Tyranny of Problems, and As much appearance, as little problem. Publishing will be done via Amazon, and I look forward to sharing the link with you whenever it is ready. As much as it is practical to be able to upload my texts to the internet, I wanted to have a physical manifestation of them too, hence the book. Perhaps you think alike.
The collection is titled Problem, Life, Deception: Philosophical Essays. These are the themes that have occupied my writing from when I first started Tólma up till now.
What is a problem? And what role do the problems we posit play in the shaping of our lives? Furthermore, does it matter how we conceptualize our concept of a problem? Here, philosophy reaches deeply into our lives. With the help of Kant, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Michel Meyer, and others, I investigate these questions, and how they pertain to current “problems.” The problems we ask spring forth from the lives we live, and determine the solutions we seek. “What is a problem?” “Which life poses the problem?” Questions most important, lest we be deceived into seeking solutions for a life that seeks only death.
“Life”, most important, most general, that from which all our concepts spring, around which all our concepts revolve, and the expression of which, is deeply influenced by our concepts. Guided by Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life, I engage the question concerning life: what is it? And is there the possibility for a concept of life? Is it even possible, for philosophy, to take life as an object of inquiry? I relate these questions to Henry’s diagnosis of Barbarism: life turning against Life. A condition which has reached unprecedented heights in our time, heights still unimaginable in Henry’s time. What is the barbarism of today? Most important to know. Yet we must remember, barbarism is always second, so what came before? What came before, and what will come before. Next to Henry, we are guided here by philosophers like Descartes and Nietzsche, and artists like Kandinsky and Fen de Villiers.
Deception. To live is to be deceived, says Plotinus. As much as this is true, we cannot shake the conviction that deception has reached unprecedented heights in our times. We investigate thus, the deception we live through, the conjurers we are confronted with, but never losing sight of the a-historical character of deception. The world wants to be deceived, it is said. But as much as we are deceived, it is always we, ourselves, that let ourselves be deceived. It is we, who want to be deceived. A dynamic of wanting-to-be-deceived, not only psychological, but also metaphysical, and perhaps most deeply grasped in the concept to which I owe my activity: τόλμα (tólma). A daring, to look there where one should not look. An audacity, to leave the certainty of the One, and enter the deception of the World. Peculiar to the reality of deception, is that it forces the soul inward, to seek for a certainty that knows not of the slightest deception. Is it a coincidence that, historically speaking, the times of the greatest confusion correspond to the emergence of the greatest inner certainty? Descartes, our prime example. If philosophy is the love of wisdom, the search for truth, then it is most important to ask ourselves, how does the soul come to love wisdom? How does the philosopher come to search for truth? Is this not, by a wanting to escape from deception? A daring, to leave behind the false certainties of opinion, and search for a certainty of thought? τόλμα, daring. It is certain that this concept is necessary to explain the Ancient spirit, its darkest depths and its brightest heights. It is certain also, that this necessity pertains to us, too.
It has been my pleasure to share my writings with you, and I would be honoured if you decide to acquire a physical version of my writings. Of course, my activities do not cease after this publication, and I look forward to thinking and writing much more in the years to come. Below you can find the cover and table of contents for the upcoming publication.
Tólma
Contents:
I On two ways of reading philosophy
II A tyranny of problems
III Painting immanence
IV Confidence as first philosophy
V Culture and barbarism
VI τόλμα
VII Rank, problem, power
VIII Decipimur specie recti
IX Force and form
X Concept and character
XI Life under siege
XII Freedom, problem, pandemic
XIII On certainty and doubt
XIV Underground
XV A dynamic of deception
XVI On evil
XVII The question as symptom
XVIII All the earth as his fatherland
XIX As much appearance, as little problem
XX Existence, Insistence
XXI A disease of deception
XXII Its own mode of deceit