“Life sucks. Then you die.” When my father first uttered these words, they were not meant to be depressing or sad. He was merely stating a fact, hoping that my siblings and I would understand that life would hurt no matter what we did. This fact became a family motto of sorts, something uttered whenever major or minor tragedy struck, a maxim we could all rely on to get through whatever happened to be ailing us. After reading Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism, I think Eugene Thacker would agree with this axiom.
Thacker’s newest book is at times infuriating and maddening, but is also brilliant in its premise and construction. It is broken into two parts—”On Pessimism” and “The Patron Saints of Pessimism.” “On Pessimism” is a litany of aphorisms, short, almost staccato musings, and passages both illuminating and haunting, all trying to explain pessimism as philosophical. I use the word trying not because Thacker fails in this task, but because he admits early on that it is an impossible task. After all, how can one separate the bad attitude inherent within pessimism from its more philosophical qualities? To answer this question, Thacker asks another: “Do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood?”
Towards the beginning of “On Pessimism,” Thacker adequately outlines both what is wrong with pessimism and why it should not (and cannot) be dismissed so easily: “We didn’t really think we could figure it out, did we? It was just passing time, something to do, a bold gesture put forth in all its fragility according to rules that we have agreed to forget that we made up in the first place.” He is speaking of philosophy in general, presenting pessimism as both a refutation and recognition: a refutation of all possible answers, no matter how ridiculous or logical they might seem; and a recognition that no answer that can be conjured up by finite human beings will suffice for any of the questions that have plagued our species for the entirety of its existence.
The aphorisms themselves range from several pages long to mere sentence fragments, sometimes sounding angry, other times bitter, and most of the time morose. The “bad attitude” of pessimism seeps out of each and every one of them, a contradiction Thacker acknowledges without reveling in. It is this acknowledgement that makes the whole work profound, his knowing that these little scraps of insight can be read and interpreted as little more than frustrated musings of someone who has lived one too many shitty days, while at the same time rending into bloody strips much of what we would consider philosophy. These aphorisms clarify thoughts recorded in earlier works, specifically the idea that human knowledge has a horizon or limit, by deconstructing conventional wisdom, showing that the ugly parts that make up the uglier whole of philosophical inquiry are but specks of dust and that there is a very real possibility that all thought is all for naught.
He opens “The Patron Saints of Pessimism” by admitting that he is unsure of the best way to catalog thinkers that make up the pessimist school of thought (if such a school can be said to actually exist). So he opts for the hagiography, noting that the hagiography is not akin to the biography because they are not comprehensive or chronological. Instead they “highlight particular moments in the life of a saint, but they do so in an anecdotal, almost haphazard way.” This sense of uncertainty in how best to proceed with this section is indicative of Infinite Resignation as a whole, Thacker often mired in indecision because he knows that any answer he proposes is suspect, that it can be picked apart, that it will not suffice.
While I enthusiastically grappled with this book, trying hard and failing to keep up with the wildly intelligent philosopher that wrote it, both he and I would admit that it is not a book for everyone. Infinite Resignation belongs on the shelf next to the likes of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, thinkers that Thacker quotes extensively, and it deserves to be studied and debated by rigorous students of philosophy. Thacker is the kind of thinker that should be high on the list when future generations are compiling collections of philosophers of the early 21st Century that need to be studied. I can only hope that he is not lost to obscurity like many of the patron saints of pessimism and only discovered long after his death.
Infinite Resignation is not an easy book to read, but show me a book of philosophy worth wrestling with that is not also difficult to examine and study and I will call you a liar. Like all great works of philosophy, this book will force readers to question their long-held beliefs in the way the world works and the way the world ought to work, but it’s brilliance lies not in a combative kind of prose or a holier-than-thou style; Thacker’s voice is quiet, a desperate whisper into the void that is both haunting and heartbreaking, a resigned sigh in the face of nothing and everything that evokes empathy and understanding.
A part of me wonders what Eugene Thacker would think of my family’s motto, that he would likely agree with it. But he would probably add something to it, something akin to life would not suck at all if we had never been born in the first place.
Buy Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism (Repeater Books, 2018) here.
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