Problem, Life, Deception: Philosophical Essays
We live in an age of deception, “nudged” to comply to problems set by others. Barbarism, say some. What to do, when life and thought are driven underground? A pandemic of problems, in which trusting this world amounts to death, and the soul is forced to seek for a certainty that knows not of this world. Cogito, perhaps.
Guided by the thoughts of such diverse philosophers as Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Henry, Plato, and Plotinus, and the visions of artists like Hieronymus Bosch, Dostoevsky, and Kandinsky, the essays collected here search for a resistance against deception. But what is the nature of deception? And what kind of life lets itself be deceived? In this dynamic, a grand role is taken up by the problems we set for ourselves. The problems we posit spring forth from the lives we live, and determine the lives we seek. But what is a problem? And which life poses the problem? Most essential questions, lest we be deceived into seeking a life that knows only death.
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