34 Quotes by Eugene Thacker

What Kant refers to as depression is simply this stark realization: that thought is only incidentally human. It would take a later generation of philosophers to derive the conclusion of this: that thought thinks us, not the reverse. Legend.

Whether we can “save” the planet is one question – whether the planet needs saving is another.

In short, when the non-human world manifests itself to us in these ambivalent ways, more often than not our response is to recuperate that non-human world into whatever the dominant, human-centric worldview is at the time.

Two kinds of pessimism: “The end is near” and “Will this never end?

The question that runs through these disputatio is the following: What if “horror” has less to do with a fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life?

An oft-mentioned example in this regard is the Medieval practice of catapulting corpses. The primal scene in this regard is the 14th century Italian trading post at Caffa, on the northern border of the Black Sea. Ongoing skirmishes between Italian merchants and Muslim locals led, in one instance, to the catapulting of plague-ridden corpses by the latter, over the fortress walls of the former.87.

Happiness is the feeling you have just before something goes wrong.

When solutions produce problems, when thought flounders in the absence of order, unity, and purpose, when healthy skepticism turns into pathological sarcasm – this is usually when pessimism enters the fray.

It seems to have no motive, no vendetta, no program of action, other than simply that of “being ooze.