Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley (born February 27, 1960) is an English philosopher currently teaching at The New School who writes primarily on politics, religion, ethics, and aesthetics. Critchley works from within the tradition of continental philosophy. He argues that philosophy commences in disappointment, either religious or political. These two axes may be said largely to inform his published work: religious disappointment raises the question of meaning and has to, as he sees it, deal with the problem of nihilism; political disappointment provokes the question of justice and raises the need for a coherent ethics.