My instinct as a philosopher is that we are effectively approaching a multicentric world, which means we need to ask new, and for the traditional left, unpleasant questions.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.

Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

There is an initial modesty in Liberalism. Liberalism was not originally a doctrine of "man is the king." No, it was a very modest attempt to build a space where people could live together without slaughtering one another.

When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks.

Come on. I don't have any problem violating my own insights in practice.