Activity

For St Augustine, to attend to objects in themselves reflects a carnal, fallen mode of existence; instead, we must read them semiotically, as pointing beyond themselves to the divine text which is the universe

In the conflict between Western capitalism and radical Islam, a paucity of belief squares up to an excess of it.

‘ontological anxiety’: namely, the feeling (sometimes accompanied by a particularly intense hangover) that one is a pointless, superfluous being

The philosopher must simply wage a ceaseless, Canute-like war against them – a battle which Wittgenstein sees as a kind of linguistic therapy, and which Derrida terms ‘deconstruction’.

Nietzsche, however, believed neither in mega-entities nor in everyday ones. He thought the very idea of there being distinct objects, such as God or gooseberries, was just a reifying effect of language.