Peter Catapano & Simon Critchley: Music & Mysticism

Sat, Mar 16 2024
10:30 pm – 11:00 pm
Central Library

Night in the Library


Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor

Mysticism is about existential ecstasy, finding or recovering an intensity of experience. Embracing mysticism can refresh our thinking and allow us to live deeper and freer lives. Mysticism lives on in music. Listening to the music we love animates the world, holds us in an emotion and allows access to something larger than the self. The talk will include selections of music.

Peter Catapano is an author, editor, musician and would-be mystic. He is the co-founder with Simon Critchley, of The New York Times philosophy series The Stone, and the co-editor of the three anthologies derived from the series, including, most recently, Question Everything, published by Liveright/Norton. He waxes (and wanes) philosophically on Substack at Question Everything with Peter Catapano, and composes and performs musical experiments in mystical cooperation with his alter ego Minus the Tyrant.

Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. His books include Very Little…Almost Nothing (1997), Infinitely Demanding (2007), The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009) and The Faith of the Faithless (2012). He has also written a novella, Memory Theatre (2015), a book-length essay, Notes on Suicide (2020) and studies of David Bowie, Football and Apply-Degger (Onassis, 2020). More recent books are Tragedy, The Greeks and Us (Pantheon, 2019) and Bald (Yale, 2021). He was series moderator of ‘The Stone’, a philosophy column in The New York Times and co-editor of three volumes connected to the series, most recently Question Everything (2022). He is 50% of an obscure musical combo called Critchley & Simmons, whose new album, Gone Forever, is released in 2024. Mysticism – The Experience of Ecstasy will be published by The New York Review of Books (USA) and Profile (UK) in 2024, as well as a book on tragedy called I Want Die, I Hate My Life with ERIS.

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Add to My Calendar 03/16/2024 10:30 pm 03/16/2024 11:00 pm America/New_York Peter Catapano & Simon Critchley: Music & Mysticism

Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor

Mysticism is about existential ecstasy, finding or recovering an intensity of experience. Embracing mysticism can refresh our thinking and allow us to live deeper and freer lives. Mysticism lives on in music. Listening to the music we love animates the world, holds us in an emotion and allows access to something larger than the self. The talk will include selections of music.

Peter Catapano is an author, editor, musician and would-be mystic. He is the co-founder with Simon Critchley, of The New York Times philosophy series The Stone, and the co-editor of the three anthologies derived from the series, including, most recently, Question Everything, published by Liveright/Norton. He waxes (and wanes) philosophically on Substack at Question Everything with Peter Catapano, and composes and performs musical experiments in mystical cooperation with his alter ego Minus the Tyrant.

Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. His books include Very Little…Almost Nothing (1997), Infinitely Demanding (2007), The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009) and The Faith of the Faithless (2012). He has also written a novella, Memory Theatre (2015), a book-length essay, Notes on Suicide (2020) and studies of David Bowie, Football and Apply-Degger (Onassis, 2020). More recent books are Tragedy, The Greeks and Us (Pantheon, 2019) and Bald (Yale, 2021). He was series moderator of ‘The Stone’, a philosophy column in The New York Times and co-editor of three volumes connected to the series, most recently Question Everything (2022). He is 50% of an obscure musical combo called Critchley & Simmons, whose new album, Gone Forever, is released in 2024. Mysticism – The Experience of Ecstasy will be published by The New York Review of Books (USA) and Profile (UK) in 2024, as well as a book on tragedy called I Want Die, I Hate My Life with ERIS.

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