André Gide once said that “the real value of an author consists in his revolutionary force, or more exactly… in his quality of opposition. A great artist is of necessity a ‘nonconformist’ and he must swim against the current of his day.” What Gide says about “the great artist” applies to the great philosopher, too. The ability to “swim against the current” should be seen as an absolute prerequisite for the thinking profession. A thinker will make no difference unless she goes against what her society treasures and celebrates as established knowledge, and exposes the substantial herding involved not only in its making, but also in the rituals of its preservation and sanctification. While deeply rooted in biology and useful for survival, herding can have devastating consequences when it comes to philosophical reflection.
Costică Brădăţan is a Professor of Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University and an Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has also held faculty appointments at Cornell University, University of Notre Dame, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Miami University, and Arizona State University, as well as at various universities in Europe, South America, and Asia.
He is the author or editor (co-editor) of more than a dozen books, among which Dying for Ideas. The dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (Bloomsbury, paperback, 2018) and In Praise of Failure. Four Lessons in Humility (Harvard University Press, 2023). He is currently at work on two new book projects: Against Conformity (Princeton University Press) and The Prince and the Hermit (Penguin, UK & WW Norton, USA).
Brădăţan also writes essays, book reviews, and op-eds for such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Globe & Mail, TIME Magazine, Boston Review, Aeon, Literary Review, Times Literary Supplement, Commonweal Magazine, and Times Higher Education. His work has been translated into many languages, including German, Italian, Hungarian, Turkish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Farsi.
He is the philosophy/religion editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and the curator of two book series: Philosophical Filmmakers (Bloomsbury) and No Limits (Columbia University Press).
Image credit:
Excommunicated Spinoza, 1907 painting by Samuel Hirszenberg. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons