Simon Glendinning is an English philosopher who is a Professor of European Philosophy and head of the European Institute at the London School of Economics. He has also studied at the University of Oxford, and the University of York. His work focuses on the idea of “Philosophy of Europe” and how we conceptualize European identity and thought.
1. What made you want to pursue a life in academia, particularly in philosophy?
“At least part of the answer here is: laziness. Having done well in my undergraduate BA in Philosophy at the University of York, I was urged by one of my teachers there, Marie McGinn, to go to Oxford to do the BPhil in Philosophy. I did that. And then I did the DPhil in Philosophy there too. After that ‘a life in academia’ was basically the only life that was available to me without more ado, the only life that I was already prepared for. Pursuing it was the line of least resistance, or at least the path most travelled and well-trodden. I trod it.”
“But there was some other particular thing too: philosophy. I really loved it. Or perhaps more accurately, I would often find myself utterly absorbed by it. I still do. I read, I write, I teach. And philosophy is at the heart of all of that, still today when I read and write and teach things about Europe, working on the Philosophy of Europe in a European Institute not on European Philosophy in a Philosophy Department.”
2. What are some valuable insights from your study of Europe for those interested in philosophy?
“First, that Europe is itself a philosophical phenomenon. Europe is not to be identified as an independently specifiable (geographical) place where philosophy (in that name) was elaborated and developed. No, the cultural identity of what has called itself ‘Europe’ is inseparable from the cultivation of philosophical ideas concerning the forms of individual and social life thought proper to what Europeans, in their various languages, called ‘Man’.”
“Second, that this in some ways extraordinary philosophical legacy is deeply problematic. It has hard-wired a conception of human progress and perfectibility into European cultural identity in a way that systematically represents Europe as the avant-garde of that development; Europeans conceiving themselves the radiating centre of human progress, the apogee of civilised and rational existence.”
“Third, that this philosophical legacy is not just Greek (ontological) but also Christian (theological). Onto-theology is the dominant formation of European thought about the world and the significance of our lives. It is the world-understanding of what Jacques Derrida calls ‘the epoch of Christian
creationism […] when it appropriates the resources of Greek conceptuality’. That Greco-Christian synthesis spread out first as Western Christendom. Note, however, that Christendom being potentially universal – tied to the universal mission of Christianity, a truly global mission – meant that one could envisage a whole world that is Christian or Greco-Christian.”
“Fourth, in the Reformation breakup of Western Christendom, the favoured geographical word of Christian scholars, ‘Europe’, became the new name for this Greco-Christian space. That European world also saw its destiny in an attained world-wide-isation. In the wake of Europe’s modernity, the
promise of the religious character of a globally attained human universality was increasingly conceived in terms of the promise of the exemplary rational character of a regionally attained pacific union – a model for all others to follow.”
“Fifth, it is not just Europe as a cultural region but the European Union as a political project that has its roots in philosophy. And it is a still recognisably Greco-Christian project too: the Euronormativity of Europe’s missionary and colonial modernity still readable in conceptions of contemporary Europe as, precisely, a normative power.”
“Sixth, the philosophical discourse of a universal history of ‘Man’ is a discourse of Europe’s modernity – and it is exhausted. We live in the time of its unravelling, with nothing to replace it. One way of putting that point is to say we live in an age between ages. I think we do.”
3. What do you believe is the future of Europe?
“In a scathing assessment of ‘the existing literature on the EU and European integration’ in his controversial introduction to Eurowhiteness, Hans Kundnani notes that ‘the obvious connections between the terms “European” and “white”, has received surprisingly little attention’. Indeed.”
“Those who call themselves (to be) ‘Europeans’ have barely begun to think better or recover themselves (each myself) better in this respect – especially considering that some of the most vehement anti-racists in Europe have exactly the same biologistic conception of race as the race extremists: still dividing humans along skin-and-body defined lines, ‘black men’, ‘white men’, etc., without, for example, qualifying any of that with the rider that we are speaking of human beings who have been and still are racialised in this specifically biologistic way.”
“We are a long way from elaborating a thought of ‘race’ in Europe (and not only in Europe) that would free it from being linked to what is perceptible in human corpses – the endless production of which has been a totally non-coincidental but terrifyingly regular activity of biologistic racists of European origin. Some may regard any thought of ‘race’ as a line of thought not to take. I’m not so sure. But it is undeniable that, alongside (or somewhere inside) its Greco-Christian universalism, there was a genuinely fearful biologistic racial essentialism at the root of modern European conceptions of what were conceived as qualitative differences to others. Whether it includes a reconceptualised understanding of race, there is no doubt that coming to terms with the legacy of Europe’s missionary and colonial culture, a European ‘way to be’ that condemned the lives of so many non-Europeans to violence, humiliation and death, remains a crucial task still ahead of us.”
“My own view is that we can see in Europe today a chance to be attentive to a new but still distinctively European calling: a calling that calls for a way to be in which people in Europe’s old nations are connected, above all, by elective affinities; by a feeling of belonging that has nothing whatsoever to do with the old European biologistic and naturalistic conception of race.”
“I say ‘chance’ – but I should add that if that chance is not taken, European places may be pretty much done for as places that have a future or that can create a future. Concerned that democracy in his day was only hastening a sort of collapse for Europeans, Nietzsche called for the guiding leadership of what he called ‘spiritual tyrants’ to turn things around; those who aspire for each in the all to be as much as possible ‘set free from the crowd’. It’s a challenging thought for every possible reason one can imagine. However, I do not think Nietzsche’s vision of a European future led by such ‘spiritual tyrants’ should be excluded from every conception of a just democratic set-up. Indeed, it does not seem to be completely excluded from the set-up that Nietzsche himself explicitly conceived as ‘a democracy to come’, a democracy that he thought worth striving for: one in which the decisions conceived as most important are those that attempt to ‘secure and guarantee’, for each in the all, ‘as much independence as possible in their opinions, way of life and occupation’ – a set-up which is, at least in these respects, pretty much the opposite of anything one might call a ‘tyranny’ in the standard political sense. I think the social condition that I mentioned above – one marked by a distinctively European calling for a way to be in which people in Europe’s old nations are connected, above all, by elective affinities – might be one where elective belonging to a Nietzschean democracy could be the basic form of elective belonging.”
4. As the Head of the European Institute at LSE, where do you believe the place is for academic philosophy in relation to the public intellectuals on social media today?
“As Head of the European Institute at LSE? Odd, no? So, instead, let’s ask: As an academic philosopher, does being the Head of the European Institute at LSE affect the way you see philosophy in relation to the public intellectuals on social media today? Ok. As Head of the European Institute, I certainly see a lot more activity on social media than just the philosophy parts of it. And from where I stand for that reason, I see two things about academic philosophers on social media: first, they often engage in (more or less) private conversations that are or are about philosophical position-taking; and second, they also often engage in (more or less) public conversations that are or are about political position taking. What I take from both of these is that most academic philosophers want nothing more than to be part of a crowd. I find it intellectually claustrophobic and narrow. On the other hand, I also see wonderful exceptions – philosophers whose contributions to public life I genuinely admire and respect. Good for them.”
5. What would be your advice to someone who wishes to make a career out of philosophy?
“Yes. Do that.”
6. If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be and why?
“But I meet all the author’s I want to meet ‘virtually’ already and whenever I want – by reading their work. However, I do have one problem that makes those meetings more challenging for me than they might otherwise be. I am basically only competent to read things in English. Forgive me, but my fantasy preference here would be for the (unfortunately all dead) authors of the texts I most want to meet ‘virtually’ to participate closely in the translation of their work into English. That would be amazing. (I do understand that another solution would be for me to learn to read languages other than English…)”
7. Is 21st-century philosophy useful to humanity?
“Philosophy will (indirectly) remain useful to humanity in the future in the same way as it has been (indirectly) useful to humanity in the past: by resolutely resisting being (directly) useful. Philosophy really is fundamentally untimely: not just ‘ahead of its time’ but somehow remaining ahead of us, still to be read.”
