A philosophy course in six and a quarter hours

Witold Gombrowicz is mistakenly regarded merely as a writer, but he was one of the greatest intellectuals of twentieth-century Europe, who found in philosophical fiction the key to conveying to us what he saw: the world as a ‘problem relating to form’. A fierce critic of systems of thought and flowery rhetoric, he was the first to realise that the hallmark of Modernity was the rejection of Maturity. And he transformed Immaturity into a category, shaping "Ferdydurke"—a sublime doughnut with a hole, a novel of burning topicality, contemporary with the day after tomorrow—around this insight. He saw individuals devoid of Fathers and Laws throwing themselves into the arms of totalitarianism and being devoured by cheap ideologies that reduced them to an infantilised parody of themselves, whilst they bellowed at the top of their voices about the Proletariat, the Fatherland, Youth and Consumerism – but it was all just grimacing. ‘Mine is the cry of an individual lamenting dissolution,’ he wrote.

And since we are in the midst of a cultural crisis in the West, since people are captivated by men of order and grand gestures who promise the eternal youth of the past (always alive, always here), and since the man who ought to be leading the whole world is pushing a pram with himself inside whilst shouting – spitting out his dummy – that he is the best, this sweltering August might be the best time not to complain about the heat, but to put it to good use: to take stock of our beloved Western culture, returning to the fundamentals. How might Gombrowicz assist us in this regard? Because, to distract himself from his illness, he wrote a short and thoroughly delightful work entitled "A Course in Philosophy in Six and a Quarter Hours". His final work: six mini-lessons brimming with humour, rigour and irony, which he unfortunately did not manage to complete. But in his Diary he had already written the conclusion, which goes like this: ‘The main problem dominating the entire Western episteme is that the more intelligent a thought is, the more stupid it is’.

Witold Gombrowicz

Bompiani, 160 pp., 12 euros