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Peter Critchley

Good Work

Updated: Feb 5, 2022



Good work


I like these words that Ursula Le Guin spoke in her acceptance speech upon receiving The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014:


Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.


I have tried my very best as a writer to do these very things, affirming freedom, democracy, and hope against fear under the sign of necessity. The years since 2014 have seen new fears added and old fears intensified. Fear now seems to be the first option across the spectrum of politics for want of a positive vision with appetitive quality and social content. It seems the perfect tool of political management for an age in which political strategists are almost totally divorced from citizens. I am intrigued to explore what it is to be a realist of a larger reality. I suppose it all depends on what we conceive to constitute ‘real grounds for hope.’ I have my view: affirming freedom and democracy, and the ethico-social infrastructure that support and sustain both, and the transcendent source and end that enfolds, nourishes, moves, and fulfils all things. I have always been a realist of a larger reality, something that has had me locating the recovery of the political within a projection of reconnection, social restitution, metabolic restoration, and metaphysical reconstruction. It takes a leap of faith to get to where we need to be. Of course, the more logic and evidence (and indeed (appropriate) technology) we have on our side, the less of a leap we will have to make. But leap we must, and move in the first place. Scientific knowledge and technological know-how are fine for what they are, but they are not virtues in themselves – they lack the appetitive quality of true virtues. Science and technology give us the ability to act, but do not in themselves make us want to act. To adapt Chesterton here, you won’t find truth with logic and evidence if you haven’t found it without them – and if you are not motivated to find truth as a truth-seeker in the first place.


I assembled this outline of my work for the reason I have been exchanging messages with eco-authoritarians who insist that the ecological problems the world faces are such that ‘we have to slam the brakes on now. We will still crash but might survive.’ I think that slamming the brakes on, crashing the economy, and closing society down in this way most certainly will bring on the catastrophe predicted, sending all the figures on poverty, disease, education etc that have been going in the right directions for a century and more into sharp reverse. I note the extent to which extreme measures are justified by reference to ‘survival.’ Of whom?


Put simply, the problem is one of how we are able to obtain the voluntary restraint of greed from a wide range of individuals across the global population. That patently cannot be done in the context of present society, based as it is on the freedom of individuals to choose the good as they see fit, in both the moral and the economic marketplace. If we remain within the ‘marketplace,’ then we are left reliant on notions of enlightened self-interest, hoping that different individual goods sum to the common good without the need for conscious public intervention. Unfortunately, this is not happening. Instead, there is a self-cancellation which will ensure mutual destruction.


The present social identity is such that the short term and long term interest and the individual and the social good do not coincide, meaning that behaviours for long term social and planetary health entail a level of self-sacrifice on the part of the individual that is irrational in the present context. It is pointless in the circumstances to appeal to the good will and humanitarian concern of individuals. Unless social forms and relations are changed to create the identity needed, any collective actions for long term good will be rejected in large part and have to be imposed by authoritarian means. My training in history and High Politics tells me not to trust the authoritarians to do good with power - always power dynamics take over those holding power to overcome any plans for the good they may have (presuming they are sincere in the first).


I noted that some of those making the case for authoritarian imposition did argue that all the assumptions of the current polity and economy needed to be replaced in order to create a culture that is in accord with planetary boundaries. That is my view. Hence I look at both social formation and character formation together. I was told twenty years plus ago that this is a long-term solution at a time when we have lost the long-term. I argued back that it is possible to take the measures that need to be taken now in the context of the long term transformations - social and moral, external and internal together, establishing the only secure basis for attunement. My view has been dismissed time and again by the practical men and women of the world, anxious for action 'now!' They will default to an authoritarian position for want of moral/appetitive/motivational, sociological, and economic content.


I shall sum the main themes of my work as best I can and encourage those who agree and are searching for answers to investigate further:

Social theory and critique; ecology; political philosophy and ethics; environmental politics and ethics; urban studies; ancient and classical philosophy; early modern and modern philosophy, ethics, and political theory; praxis philosophy; Economics; Politics; Historical Studies; History of Ideas; Materialist Dialectics as the democratisation of power and politics against the rule of scientistic philosopher-kings; Bridging theoretical and practical reason; and Freedom as the Appreciation of Necessity, with the accent on appreciation; scientific and moral truth/knowledge; overcoming the fact and value dualism; the need to cultivate the inner motives; the need to combine the exteriority and interiority of things; the need for dialectic and disclosure to tease out truth; truth-seeking; the need to proceed from first principles and firm foundations; the necessity of virtue; ecological virtues as qualities for successful living; happiness as flourishing in a public context; nature via nurture; establishing the happy habitus in which the virtues can be known, learned, acquired, and exercised; character-construction; establishing the character forming culture and discipline of family, work, community, place, and polity; character formation and social formation as integrating personal and social responsiveness and responsibility; co-responsibility; character and the common good; the cultivation of virtues within the forms of the common life; fostering creative human agency; the logic of collective action: resolving the paradoxes of individual freedom and collective unfreedom; overcoming alienating dualisms and separations; materialist dialectics; the moral sense of place; finding meaning through metaphor; the ethics of enchantment; economics, ethics, and ecology; sovereignty, subsidiarity, and democratic will; political control and the globalisation of economic relations; recovering the economics of the good; sustainable living; real growth and qualitative development; the qualitative dimension of wealth; the new economics of prosperity beyond the delusions of quantitative measures; the new path to prosperity: learning to collaborate and share; socially useful production; the cooperative commonwealth; the economics of purpose; The Republic in an age of moral ecology; Ecopolis; self-regulation and the virtuous eco-community; metaphysical recovery and reconstruction; giving practical force and democratic content to the terms of political and ethical discourse; ecological virtue; the need for behavioural and societal change to proceed hand-in-hand; a society of doers and of volunteers; the case for constituting a voluntary rational self-restraint as against the imposition of an involuntary external restraint; the commitment to a participatory social order in which individuals act well by virtue of dispositions rather than obedience to external directives; climate politics as the reconstitution of public life; The Republic in an age of social ecology; Green Republicanism against Anti-Political Extremism: a critique of the authoritarian, elitist, and coercive implications of the politics of non-politics; The case for a civic environmentalism and a moral ecology; rational environmentalism which steers beyond the twin reefs of scientism, culturalism, and naturalism; Individual Choice, Moral Responsibility and Collective Action - Changing Ourselves and Changing the World; communing together; beyond enlightened self-interest; the Field of Practical Reason; the need to foster moral capacity alongside technological capacity; political change as the key to addressing climate change; the need to foster the political will and motivation; the need to bridge the fields of theoretical reason (our knowledge of the external world) and practical reason (ethics and politics); the need to connect scientific knowledge and technological know-how with ethics and politics within the motivational economy of human beings: integrating ability, capacity, will, artifice, motivations; building the political will and legitimacy for collective (climate) action; the politics of love and of friendship; civics; civic engagement; establishing a genuine public community as against environmental philosopher kings and rescue squads; against eco-authoritarianism; politics for the restoration of ecological hope; the unity of social formation and character formation (the unity of personal and social responsibility); taking practical reason seriously; making facts existentially meaningful; fostering the springs of action; inspiring environmental action; eco-praxis; making eco-citizens; the global civil society movement; networking and communing; existential truth; ecological restoration as a restorying; fostering the inner motives and virtues for collective (environmental) action; giving rational freedom appetitive resonance and force; fostering transformative motivations within communities of practice and communities of character; communalism and democratic confederalism; for the healing: the need to bridge divides and build commonalities; reasons, emotions, and motivations; the ecology of hope; looking after the human (moral, social, political) environment; the need to pay attention to the health and quality of the human environment as well as the natural environment; good government and representative government; rational freedom, public happiness and virtue; against sophism in ethics and politics; pleonexia and public life; against the moneyed nihilism corrupting public life; reconstituting public life; free choice and state authority: for genuine common force as against the external collective force generated by subjective choice; repersonalisation, responsibility, and establishing society on the principle of self-assumed obligation; rehabilitating the ethical life; virtuous communities fostering habits of the heart; the quest for community, meaning, and belonging; restoring the moral compass; liberty and license as generating a collective unfreedom; beyond libertarianism; for civility, public life, and reason; a positive and lasting peace in the presence of justice; restoring trust and connection in a new social order; liberty as licence destroys freedom; truth matters and is a work of reason; the moral law; social action and internationalism; love and the just society; the survival of the most loving; resolidifying; Social theory and critique; ecology; political philosophy and ethics; environmental politics and ethics; urban studies; ancient and classical philosophy; early modern and modern philosophy, ethics, and political theory; praxis philosophy; Economics; Politics; Historical Studies; History of Ideas; science and religion; God, gods, and goddesses; material sufficiency and virtuous actions within right relationships; a life that is simple in means but rich in ends.



Bibliography and Word Count


Materials gathered here can be found on my Academia, Humanities Commons, and ResearchGate pages and on my Being and Place site. The fact that I range across disciplines interweaving as I go makes it difficult to organise these texts under headings. It’s all here: Rational Freedom; metaphysics and metaphysical reconstruction; ethics; the ontology of the good; the moral ecology; moral architectonics; social ecology; environmental critique; literary ecology; poetry; communitarianism; visions, virtues, and values; spirituality; institutional economics; political economy and its critique; aesthetics; social restitution and metabolic restoration.





Essays in Environmental Critique (2022) 245 pages 87,641 words







Dante's Ecology of the Heart: The Topos of the Heart in the Work of Dante Alighieri (2021) 46 15,105















The Ecology of Good (2020) 435 162,890















The Economics of Flourishing (2019) 221 75, 549













The Climate Commitment: The Need for Common Agreement and Climate Action: Comments on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord (2017) 444 148,313











Ecological Humanism (2016) 114 40,616





Being at One (2015) 30 7,386











Dante: The Living Hope (2013) 462 124,817













Dante’s Enamoured Mind (2013) 462 124,817































The City of Reason (2004) 1350 459,259













































8,238,869


Philosophy as Projection – In Search of Sensible Transcendence 347 118,487


8,357,356


Dante

Music and Metaphysics 665 pages, 202,209 words

Politics and Ethics 523 177,059

The Comedy 1,100 319,575

Dante’s Dream of Rational Freedom 658 229,466

Walking and Talking with Dante - Endless Love on the Unending Road 227 74,460


3,173 pages 1,002,769 words

9,658,740 words


There are also one million words at least in my Marx research folders, existing only in print form. There is also a thesis I wrote for the Masters in Library and Information Management, The Public Library as a Community Information Intermediary. I abandoned the thesis as a hopeless vision of the future – computers would win – and abandoned the course as boring. But that must be at least another 100,000 words. I think I am entitled to round these numbers up at a perfect 10 million.


PAPERS

Notes on Montesquieu (2019)


THE EARTH AS A COMMON TREASURY FOR ALL (2017) 9,069


Erasmus: Citizen of the World (2016) 51,531


Anne Conway and the Fellowship of All Creatures: Reworking the Western Philosophical Canon (2015) 6,358


Liverpool: City of Life (2015) 9,760


We are One (2014) 8,976


The Shadow of the Future - Witness Against the Beast (2013)


The Visionary Materialism of William Blake (2013) 19,706


The Socratism of Immanuel Kant (2012) 9,907


Kant and Virtue (2012) 10,000


The Brain in a Vat (2011) 6,000


An Introduction to the Philosophy of Aristotle (2011) 6,592


ETHICAL AND CULTURAL RELATIVISM (2011) 3,456


God: Who, What and Where? (2011) 6,286


RATIONALISTS AND EMPIRICISTS (2011) 3,678


Pythagoras and the Harmony in All Things (2011) 10,346


Heaven's Performance: Review of Here on Earth by Tim Flannery (2010)


When the Tank Runs Dry (2010) 2,284


Art as Life, Life as Art (2010) 13,136


Goddesses, Animality, and Nature (2010) 18,297


Why Philosophy (2010) 9,876


Kant and the Architectonics of Reason (2007) 14,979


Rainbow Rising (2006) 8,463


Plato - The Architect of Rational Freedom (2004) 9,412


William Godwin and Political Simplicity (2004) 14,063


The Rational Community of Jurgen Habermas (2004) 5,181


The Stationary State of John Stuart Mill (2004)


Martin Heidegger : Ontology and Ecology (2004)


New Social Movements and the Urban Public Realm (2004)


Rousseau on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind (2003) 10,639


Machiavelli and the Citizen Ideal (2004) 18,535


Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (2003) 2,859


Rousseau : Autonomy and Authority (2003)


Rousseau and the Quest for Human Happiness (2003)


Hegel and the Embodiment of Freedom (2001)


Kant : Reason as the Realisation of Nature (2001) 15,482


The Rational Freedom of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2001) 4,345


Jurgen Habermas and the Rational Utopia (2001) 13,220


The Rational Freedom of Plato and Aristotle (2001) 13,114


Aristotle and the Public Good (1995) 15,052


A Guide to the Eurovision Song Contest (2012) 124 44,966

Eurovision 256 63,025


Word Total

458,593


Being and Place Essays


PHILOSOPHY

Hearing the Deep Cry of Meaning (Frankl and the quest for meaning) 15,985

Words in-Action (writing as acting). 17,476

A Few of us have Many Eyes (seeing through the mind's eye). 4,271

Scientific and Moral Truth (the fact-value dualism) 34,973

What Place Value in a World of Fact 16,159

Facts, Truths, and Inner Motives 13,250

The Blight of Essentialism Hunting (a defence of essentialist metaphysics). 4,410

Dialectic and Disclosure (teasing out truth). 4,975

Wittgenstein, Bewitchment, and Silence 16,492

Science and Questions of Value, Significance, and Meaning 1,342

The Slenderest Knowledge of the Highest Things (Aquinas and Descartes) 8,565

First Principles and Firm Foundations 2,168

Seeing the Light 3,462

There are No Facts, Only Interpretations 1,573


Word Total

145,119


Virtue Ethics

The Necessity of Virtue 291

Nature via Nurture 352

A Call to Virtue 2,329

Kant, MacIntyre, Virtue and the Enlightenment project 1,271

Character and the Common Good (MacIntyre and the cultivation of the virtues within the forms of the common life). 2,850

The Virtues of Alasdair MacIntyre and Lewis Mumford 8,967

Word Total

16,060


Plato and Aristotle

Pythagoreanism Over Time 903

Socrates and Moral Knowledge 1,239

The Return of Aristotle 2,644

Aristotle's Flourishing 475

Aristotle and the Reenchantment of Nature 3,455

Plato and Democracy 1,913

Plato Theory of Forms 553

Plato, Art, and Eternity 1,255

Plato's Cave, Objective Reality and Morality 848

Aristotle's Flourishing (Edward Feser) 660

Word Total

13,943


Reason and Reality

Why Philosophy 5,755

The Most Influential Living Philosophers 12,831

Levels of Cognition (the ascent from instinct and desire at the level of immediacy up to reason and intellect). 329

Philosophy and Science 2,327

Being at One 1,602

Being in Touch with Life (Montaigne) 9,670

Between you and reality is a pile of books 1,843

Spectators under Eternity or Participants within the Creative Universe 2,228

Hegel, Objectification and Alienation 671

Reason and Alienation 1,143

Toward Reason existing in Rational Form 4,576

If Reason were enough (Kant, ethics, and religion) 4,044

Spinoza and God/Nature 3,189

Rousseau, Natural Law and Rational Freedom 36,539

The Rational Utopia 498

The Rational Universe, Creative Human Agency and the Logic of Collective Action 4,324

The Whole World Order, against the delusions of separation 16,596

From Core to Infinity (a dialogue on mathematics and creativity) 15,177

Heart, Hand and Head 962

Non-Dualism, the Advaita and Dvaita 5,319

The Game of Life: Response to Chess as Applied to Feminism 5,619

Alternatives from out of the Heideggerian Corpus 267

Superintelligence (developing the relation between truth, politics, and people). 8,700

The Religious Roots of Rational Freedom 688

Materialist Dialectics 4,384

The Return of Materialist Dialectics 2,682

Word Total

151,965


POETRY, ART, AND LITERATURE

Dante and Marx 7,529

Dante's Sweet Symphony of Paradise 17,867

Dante's Sweet Symphony 5,224

Fire and Ice where would Dante place all of us who are borrowing against this Earth… 8,068

For lovers of William Blake – because he kept the divine vision in time of trouble 2,406

The Unveiling of a Gravestone to William Blake 1,024

The Light Within (Blake and the awakening of the soul against the Megamachine). 4,245

In The World of Waldo Williams (the work of the great poet of the Preseli Mountains, Wales). 5,105

Marc Chagall - art as a state of soul 555

Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo 3,681

Robinson Jeffers and the Poetry of Place (falling in love outwards). 4,625

Poetry and the Moral Sense of Place 2,204

The Poetry of Earth (Can poetry save the Earth?) 6,033

Ruins (the finite and the infinite). 808

Samuel Palmer Mysterious Moonlit Dreams 415

Song of the Earth (Earthcare as soulcare). 830

The Imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma (In Praise of Ursula Le Guin) 3,764

Natural Anarchy (Tolkien's mythos vs neurotic power worshippers and controllers). 2,406

Ecopoetics: Disclosing the Hidden God in Nature 2,442

Finding Meaning through Metaphor (Metaphors grow the mind, feed the soul, and deepen empathy for the planet). 1,749

Tolkien and the Ethics of Enchantment 5,298

William Morris and Eco-Criticism 180

The Beautiful Madness of Don Quixote 2,193

The Golden Bough 1,951

Dante's Sweet Symphony - Organisation of Materials – book outlines – 13,763

Dante's Journey - The Sweet Symphony of Paradise 13,652

Dante's Sweet Symphony - vol 1 music 623

Dante and Shakespeare 2,109

Dante Integral 9,842

Word Total

130,591


Gerrard Winstanley

Gerrard Winstanley and the Wealth of the Commons and the Weal of the Commoners 7,187

Love, Liberty and Law 31,364

Spirit, Reason, Nature, Freedom 42,000

The True Commonwealth of Gerrard Winstanley 644


The Commonwealth of Gerrard Winstanley 81,887

The Peaceable Commonwealth of Gerrard Winstanley 41,620

Word Total

204,702


ECONOMICS

Economics, Ecology and Ethics 2,869

Markets and Morality: Where do public virtues come from? 2,827

Sovereignty, Subsidiarity, Democratic Will (Political Control and the Globalization of Economic Relations) 22,776

The Economics of the Good (Adam Smith) 9,264

Marx, ecological rift and the social metabolic order 6,920

Aspects of Green Economics 6,710

Green Economics and Sustainable Living 2,339

The Case for Green Energy 578

Amory Lovins and Natural Capitalism 1,150

The Madness of Capitalist Reason (the demand that Reason take rational social form). 3,991

Reform and Reformation (the case for social transformation). 5,261

Real Growth and Qualitative Development 1,490

The New Economics of Prosperity (the qualitative dimension of wealth, exposing the delusions of quantitative measures) 4,242

The New Path to Prosperity 4,928

We have to learn to Collaborate and Share (Stephen Hawking – we need to rethink our attitude toward wealth). 1,047

Comm- 149

Socially Useful Production (a New Lucas Plan). 3,208

Workers of all lands unite - and build the cooperative commonwealth 2,968

The Economics of Purpose (E.F. Schumacher and R.H. Tawney). 3,096

Shrug and Move On (Ayn Rand). 2,070

Converging Crises show that we need an Entirely New Economic System 2,900

Word Total

90,794


ECOLOGY

Heaven’s Performance (A review of Here on Earth by Tim Flannery). 8,259

The World We Could Have Had 730

Unchaining the World 3,870

Balance 1,161


Climate Change and Global Heating

Global Heating – a Guide to the Arguments 1,764

Can Climate Crisis be Avoided? 3,692

Teetering on the Brink of Climate Catastrophe 961

Seven Years to Save the Planet ...(Ourselves ...) 2,580

The Final Curtain, or the Need for a Biospheric Politics 3,294

Eco-Catastrophe in Our Lifetimes 4,676

Giddens’ Paradox 1,097

Countdown to 2017 4,200

Social Cost of Climate Change too Low 66

The Scream Piercing Through Nature 2.083

Ocean Acidification and Mass Extinction 1,257

Eco-Catastrophe in the Oceans 4,676

The Missing Science of Ian Plimer 6,859

The National Climate Assessment 2,936

The Fog of Denial 4,841

Human Link to Climate Change Stronger than ever 982

Politics and the Climate Countdown 965

Countdown to Eco-Catastrophe 1,295

50 Months Left to Tackle Climate Change 940

Warming Seas and Vanishing Fish 866

All that is Solid Melts into Air – and Water 3,208

We have changed the face of the Planet 2,762

Arctic Sea Ice Melts to its Lowest Recorded Level 1,128

Climate Change – the Undeniable Truth 2,468

Sceptical Scientists see the Light after Climate Change Study 1,289

Best evidence yet for Global Heating 939

Changes: Climate Change, System Change, Civilizational Change, Self-Change 9,667

Class, Capital, Climate Change, and Common Good 2,295

Tell the Truth - The Capital System is the Problem 1,633


Climate Politics

Pure Wind, or the Need for an International Green Infrastructure 1,127

Why are we letting the Big Emitters Control our Future? 3,196

Sceptical Environmentalism 4,558

Dupes, Idiots, and Climate Change Deniers 2,710

Lies, Damned Lies, and Journalism 12,149

Nuclear Nihilism 9,026

Public Responsibility – Time to Share the Burden of Proof 4,167

Paris Climate Talks doomed to failure 554

The Climate Commitment 7,255

Earth to Trump 3,039

Ignoring climate injustice is not a viable survival strategy 4,147

Pentagon chief says climate change threatens national security 1,360

High Politics and Green Truths (the need for ‘Green truths’ cross the bridge into the field of practical reason and engage with the people). 6,810

Word Total

149,541


The Republic in the Age of Moral Ecology

Ecopolis (Self-Regulation in the Eco-community) 12,071

Metaphysical Recovery and Reconstruction (giving practical content to the terms of ethical discourse) 7,357

Ecological Virtue (Stephen Emmott and the need for behavioural – and societal – change). 2,438

The Age of Moral Ecology (a society of doers, a society of volunteers, a participatory social order in which individuals act well by virtue of dispositions rather than obedience to directives). 4,632

Climate Politics as the Reconstitution of Public Life 4,116

The End (the reaction of alien nature as the return of the repressed). 1,680

The House you will Build (Isaiah's exhilarating vision of social and ecological harmony, a new Jerusalem of justice and joy). 3,613

The Green Republic (The Republic in an Age of Social Ecology) 7,315

Green Republicanism against Anti-Political Extremism (a critique of the authoritarian, elitist, and coercive implications of the politics of non-politics). 21,696

A Civic Environmentalism and a Moral Ecology 11,222

A Rational Environmentalism (a defence of rational freedom against scientism and naturalism). 6,462

Word Total

82,602


The Logic of Collective Action

System Change or Climate Change 1,675

Individual Choice, Moral Responsibility and Collective Action - The Improbabilities of Changing Ourselves and Changing the World. 9,425

Knowledge and Opinion 1,448

To Be Pieces of the Solution 2,120

Commoning Together 2,850

Reclaiming Politics from Game Playing (the restoration of politics to its ancient meaning of creative self-actualisation within public life). 6,069

The Critique of Enlightened Self-Interest 2,388

Word Total

25,975


The Field of Practical Reason

Men and Their Machine Gods 1,798

And who will our saviours be? (the need for moral capacity as well as technological capacity). 236

Save the Planet and we Save the World Economy 2,603

Worldchanging 2,960

Political Change the Key to Addressing Climate Change 3,119

Bridging Theoretical and Practical Reason (the need to connect scientific knowledge and technological know-how with ethics and politics within the motivational economy of human beings).2,206

Politics, Psychology and Physics 5,401

Building the Political Will and Legitimacy for Climate Action 1,164

Climate Accord and the Politics of Friendship 12,924

Climate Mobilization and Leap 1,097

Scientists, Experts, and Civic Engagement Walking a Fine Line 611

Coercive Environmental Collectivism advancing the Corporate Form (for a genuine public community against environmental philosopher kings and rescue squads). 32,526

Laying the Bogey of Eco-Authoritarianism to Rest 30,487

Politics for the Restoration of Ecological Hope 15,787

System Change and Social Transformation 17,919

Re-politicizing the Environment 2,832

The Price of Political Deficiency (being alert to the dangers of the corporate appropriation of the environmental cause). 3,393

From Green Gloom to Green Growth 21,287

Extinction Pacification (against an anti-politics of climate truth that puts politics and people on ice). 12,809

Seeing Through the Encroachment of the Environmental Megamachine 38,624

Less a Forest than a Thicket of Greenwash 3,348

The Unity of Social Formation and Character Formation 1,735

The Dangers of Corporate Climate Diversion, Conversion, and Perversion 3,877

Climate Mobilization and Transformation 6,565

Classless and Hapless 9,081

Against Environmentalist Non-Politics 13,220

Climate Rebellion - Going Beyond the Default Options 1,366

Exposing the 'non-political' politics of the 'classless' class 3,806

Taking Practical Reason Seriously 3,445

Against Homo Superior 3,923

Naturism, Romanticism, and Technocracy 2,298

Word Total

262,477


Making Facts Existentially Meaningful

Being Human 282

Climate Crisis as the Opportunity to Become Human 1,248

The Theology of Enough 3,363

The Transformations of Humanity 3,096

Fear and Selfishness and the Environmental Crisis 577

The End of Nature Without as the End of Nature Within 3,458

Estrangement and Extinction 1,583

The Shadow of the Future: Witness Against the Beast 5,943

Apocalypse 4,875

The Dialogical Moment 1,555

Climate Change Begins at Home 856

Reformation Against Abstraction 2,883

Word Total

29,713


The Springs of Action

Why has the campaign to get the public on board with regard to climate change failed 957

Inspiring Environmental Action 2,926

Eco-Praxis 5,672

Making Eco-Citizens 3,940

The Global Civil Society Movement 2,958

Fact, Value and Political Ideology 3,854

Geddes and Mumford (large views in the abstract and the concrete: unity in diversity). 1,265

Moral Concern and Earthcare 5,017

Here Comes the Flood (dispossession, denaturalisation, and dehumanisation). 4,459

The Existential Truth About Climate Change 7,591

Collective Grief, Love, and Joyful Hope 1,729

Flourish Well or Abandon Hope 9,180

Should we be Optimistic 3,243

Laudato Si' anniversary (For what do we cherish enough to act). 12,181

Pope Francis, climate change, Marx, and morality 16,480

Spiritual Ecology 1,015

Ecological Restoration as a Restorying 6,807

Fostering the Inner Motives and Virtues for Environmental Action5,137

Fostering Transformative Motivations Within Communities of Practice 2,526

God's Invitation to Play (The Beauty that lights the path to the Truth and Goodness of the World) 10,161

God and Nature Come Alive in Relationships (Spinoza's God/Nature as only half a God). 2,462

Communalism and Democratic Confederalism - Reflections on Murray Bookchin 8,314

Cae Mabon - a Welsh Shangri-La 3,102

To Care for the Other (the need to bridge the empathy gap). 4,386

For the Healing (the need to bridge divides and build commonalities.) 5,274

Reasons, Emotions, and Motivations 4,846

The Ecology of Hope 6,008

Word Total

141,491


The Failures of Environmental Politics

A View Out of Dante - Aquinas on Fire in California 4,073

Fighting Fires 7,398

Naïve Cynicism or Practical Idealism (the need for a politics of practical and active hope). 8,433

Let us not speak of them (against self-perpetuating, self-consuming cycles of climate despair). 8,105

To walk like ghosts .. or get politically engaged again 2,874

Sic Transit Gloria Civilisation 741

Dangers and Wrong Paths (The paradox of Enlightenment - modernity's downfall as lying in its advance). 9,978

Looking after the Human Environment (the need to pay attention to the health and quality of the human environment as well as the natural environment). 4,711

Word Total

46,313


POLITICS

By Wisdom and Labour 1,475

Hope not Hate 5,202

Against Theopolitical Fundamentalism 15,376

Right-Wing Ideology Trumps Common Purpose 10,763

Aristo-Populism (beyond a liberalism that is degenerating into corrupt elites and angry mobs). 2,916

Ending the Politics of Illusion (the impossibilities of politics when we talk ‘at’ rather than ‘to’ each other). 13,615

Enthusing the People (Lewis Mumford) 4,085

The Need for Institutional and Structural Transformation 25,159

My Conception of Socialism 11,215

Pushing water uphill (speaking for the people who were left behind – as one of them). 4,798

Remembering Joel Kovel (pioneer eco-socialist, visionary traveller and friend). 3,130

Study War No More 2,277

The Document of Citizenship 1,067

Recovering the Ethical Dimensions of Socialism 2,013

Time for a Transformation 10,100

It's Called Socialism 389

The Bare Faced Lies of the Rich and Powerful and their Lickspittles 8,111

The Eco-Socialism we Choose 2,097

Reclaiming Socialism, Reframing Conservatism 2,207

Revaluing Labour: Reflections on the St Helens Workers' Memorial, or the Peter Critchley Gardens of Earthly and Heavenly Delights 4,494

Rebuilding Labour's Foundations: Resolidifying 1 3,006

The Labour Metaphysic and the Redemptive Myth of Wealth: Resolidifying 2 4,873

Word Total

138,370


REPUBLICAN VIRTUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM

Good Government or Representative Government 2,748

Public Happiness and Virtue 1,976

Rational Freedom and Public Happiness 996

Neither yes nor no - against sophist politics 1,876

Pleonexia and Public Life (against the moneyed nihilism corrupting public life). 4,400

Free Choice against State Authority (for genuine common force as against the external collective force generated by subjective choice). 2,910

Into the Liberal Inferno (the rise of an illiberal liberalism) 5,826

Liberal Impotence, Liberal Hypocrisy, Liberal Violence 3,084

Modern Liberal Society - Immoral and Lawless 2,748

Support and Stability 427

Living in the Sociopathological World 933

The Sick Society 2,329

A Deeper Freedom 608

Reconstituting Public Life 4,859

Reconstituting Public Life through Socialist Transformation 2,771

Repersonalisation, Responsibility and Self-Assumed Obligation 6,844

Responsibility 1,581

Toleration a virtue? 489

Bigotry Speaking Out of Privilege 2,275

Rehabilitating the Ethical Life 4,107

Virtuous Communities fostering Habits of the Heart 3,810

The Politics of Love - Affirming Possibilities for a One Nation Green Conservatism 11,005

Socialism and Liberalism 14,403

The Quest for Community, Meaning, and Belonging 1,335

Glastonbury is Rubbish 3,170

Insidious Ideology 1,719

Restoring the Moral Compass 4,682

Emerging from Under the Shadow of Modernity 21,306

Liberty and Licence 482

Thoughts on Tocqueville, Democracy, and Transcendent Standards 9,458

A Society of Idiots 8,930

Beyond Libertarianism 6,887

Goodbye to Statues, Goodbye to you 33,360

For Civility, Public Life, and Reason 26,133

A Positive and Lasting Peace in the Presence of Justice 25,008

Free to Choose 4,026

Restoring Trust and Connection in a New Collaborative Social Order 2,523

Donald Trump and the International Institutional Order 8,302

Liberty as Licence Destroys Freedom 6,573

Bullies, Liars, and Trolls 3,545

Classless Politics in a Class Society 2,800

Socialism or Barbarism: Liberal Centrism Cannot Hold 2,565

How the Sophist Politics of the Contemporary 'Left' Liberates the Rich and Powerful 6,587

Rational Freedom: Establishing Autonomy and Authority in Balance 10,002

Redeeming Empty Promises 21,918

Beyond the Endless Cycle of Power/Resistance 5,291

Word Total

299,606


RELIGION

Theism and Atheism

In the image of, but not identical 604

Religion and (the Limits of) Reason 44,556

Hell is a Human Invention, and a Humanist Reality 1,131

Merry Christmas, Mr Critchley 30,820

The Death of God and the Abolition of Religion 15,258

Nothing Worldly Lasts Forever - Notre Dame 22,897

Traditional Cures for Modern Ills 6,004

Truth Matters and is a Work of Reason (Aquinas College 1,557

Hell is so Boring! 2,972

Leap of Faith 4,362

The Inversion of the Moral Law 4,969

Christian Democracy in the Collision of Moral and Economic Imperatives 1,984

God and Nature exist in Relationships 2,462

Pope Francis' Letter to Global Popular Movements 2,327

Catholic Social Action and Internationalism 5,924

Reinstating the Marginalized, and casting off those who work to keep people marginalized 14,178

Word Total

162,005


Religion and Reality

How real do you want it? 9,526

Practices Beyond Perceptions and Conceptions 2,172

Real Reformation 3,293

Love and Knowledge 2,259

Love and the Just Society 5,198

The Survival of the Most Loving 1,764

Peace with the Creator, Peace with the Creation 12,001

Biological Necessity, Moral Choice and Climate Crisis 4,006

Maritain the Martian 2,737

When all else has fallen, love still stands 8,825

Word Total

51,788


Politics and Peace

An Easter Prayer 4,932

Peace on Earth 579

The Peace of a Good God 9,731

Remembrance 7,803

Who would Jesus vote for? 8,118


Being Thankful, Expressing Joy

The appetite for joy pervading all creation 6,202

Viktor Frankl and the Reasons to Choose Life 2,739

The Little Village Church with the Big Heart 1,492

The Submerged Sun of Wonder 1,912

Erasmus, a life devoted to reason and faith 4,337

Freedom through Service 364

Giving thanks for the wonder that never ends 4,228

Valuing What we Make 846

Why we are born, Whence we come, Wither we go 1,270

Being Who You Are 5,837

The Love that Seeketh not its Own 13,695

Bodying Forth Truth with a Transcendent Purpose 4,041

I Hope for Nothing. I Fear Nothing. I am Free 753

Moving Thoughts 1,826

A well-paced and non-surprising environment 2,408

Kafka and Life's Journey 821

If This is the End 3,944

Taking Care 1,796

Seeing the Light 3,462

Word Total

61,973


MUSIC

Adieu l'artiste - Charles Aznavour 5,226

Elvis as a Musical Education 5,016

Eurovision Song Contest Top Twenty Five 2,738

Happy Birthday Jacques Brel 2,272

Miles to Go is Miles Away 8,955

My Favourite Christmas Songs 16,700

Paddy McAloon - Pop's Great Lost Voice 2,206

Reflections on Françoise Hardy's Personne d’Autre 10,110

Revolutionary Spirit - Liverpool 1976-1988 4,811

Solid Air, The Soul of Romantic Melodies 21,757

Françoise Hardy Discography 8,346

Charles Aznavour - Select Discography 1,226

Françoise Hardy in Manchester! 2,902

Sammes Old Song 3,583

The Desperate Ones 281

Françoise Hardy Best Songs 3,348

The Sweeping Seductive Melodies of Ennio Morricone 2,159

The Woman with a Million Unwritten Poems in Her Voice 2,382

My Andrea Bocelli Collection (My personal guide) 3,191

Love and Light, Hope and Healing: Andrea Bocelli's 'Music for Hope' 1,100

The Sweet, the Sad, and the Sentimental 4,860

Colin Vearncombe - a Wonderful Life 2,588

Word Total

115,757


MY PHILOSOPHICAL WORK

Forthcoming Work in Being and Place 7,950

Being and Place - A lean and logical plan and outline

Being and Place - Writing and Publishing Plan 624

Being and Place Outlines 7,420

Being at One 3,089

My latest work 1,159

An Editing and Publishing Plan 2,490

Significant and Meticulous 428

Dispensing My Mind 921

The revolution will neither be monetized nor academically peer reviewed ... and neither will I 6,726

Word Total

30,813


AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Name Your Park 1,557

A Place of Joy and Learning - and Critical Thinking and Problem Solving 4,210

Barriers to Actively Seeking Work 10,035

Calling St Helens (my granddad in Burma during WWII) 2,531

Christmas in Liverpool (the story of my heart attack) 1,924

Fantasy Football 1,567

We are all of us much more beautiful than we are told 3,604

Goodbye Brian Cant 3,062

Liverpool Champions of Europe 7,482

Memories of Hillsborough 4,270

Truth, Justice and Love – My Hillsborough Statement 813

Love of Home, Love of Place 10,033

The e-Akademeia – aims of my Tutoring Business 923

To be given yet another life 1,021

Top 0.1% 6,407

In Praise of My Good Self 13,018

Word Total

72,457


Posts from 2021

The Church and Housing 4,377

What are the Worst Years for an Aspie? 2,429

Writing Dante 9,177

Dante’s Politics of Love 3,119

Llandudno Ladies 1,657

Imagine Religion - and Politics 2,670

Men as Gods 644

Dante's Sweet Symphony of Paradise (the musical volume of my 4 vol Dante) 623

Politics is much more difficult than Physics 883

The Final Word on Hillsborough : Unjust to the Bitter End 5,254

To Live in Truth and Love 2,726

Educating the Whole Person 666

Looking for the Heart of the Heartless World 3238

The Corruption of Science, Politics, and Ethics 1903

Know Thy Enemy 505

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 1921-2021 2424

To be God's partners in Creation 1199

Pushback Against the Anti-Politics that is Tearing Society Apart 3838

Editing the Endless Love on the Unending Road 9,713

From the Dark Forest to the Eternal Rose - Editing Dante 5,197

Dante Update 814

Free Speech and Good Speech 1,671

Observations on current controversies over Free Speech 3,777

Transcendent Standards or a world of pure contingency and arbitrariness 1,496

Dante and the Baptistry 2,238

Free Speech 2,585

La Question 846

Dante : Love and Justice over Fear and Hatred 8,559

Beyond Symptoms 3,402

Biblical truth? 455

Make Orwell Fiction Again 4,507

Conspirituality: a Modern Distemper 3,395

Dante The Poet of Reality 1,648

Dante the Christian Humanist 2,404

Thoughts on Dante 3,975

Existential Self and Society 2,562

Dante's Symphony – explorations 4,209

Teasing Out Truth: A Word in Praise of Sophism 5,133

The Nativity as the Rebirth of Hope 2,790

Industry and Europe - Industrial Strategy in a Globalised Economic Environment 1,985

Rational Freedom: Reconciling Autonomy and Authority 10,003

Track List for the Billy Maher Show Radio Merseyside as the 14th December 2019 became the 15th 265

The Peter Critchley Design for Health and Happiness 2,777


Word Total

133,738


(The ‘Design for Health and Happiness’ is a much shortened – and censored - version of a more detailed document entitled ‘Arteries and Extremities.’ That document contains all the physiological descriptions and explanations. 27,191 and growing daily as a health journal)

Word Total

27,191


Being and Place Word Total

2,679,436

ENTIRELY ELVIS

ELVIS' GREATEST MOVIE SONGS 1,240

For LP Fans Only 2,534

Elvis’ Worst Song 4,639

ELVIS MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS RANKED 1,533

A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE ELVIS MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS 4,478

The Identity of Elvis 2,018

The Best Film Game 992

ELVIS THE LIBERATOR AND INTEGRATOR 1,969

NAILING THE LIE THAT ELVIS PRESLEY WAS RACIST 6,854

THE LIE OF THE LAND 8,808

LOOKING BACK, BRINGING IT BACK 1,078

THE ALTERNATE 1971 ELVIS CHRISTMAS ALBUM 1,313

ELVIS CHRISTMAS DUETS - A REVIEW 2,446

THE TWENTY ELVIS CHRISTMAS SONGS 2,717

ELVIS SINGLES, EPS, AND LPS DISCOGRAPHY IN ORDER OF RELEASE 112,475

Guitar Man 5,782

For the Asking 6,007

THE GRACELAND RECORDINGS OF 1976 2,233

GOODBYE TO LOVE 7,651

ELVIS FOLK 7,008

FRANÇOISE SAYS ELVIS IS WORTH EVERY FRANC 938

ESSENTIAL ELVIS: A GUIDE TO THE ALBUMS OF ELVIS PRESLEY 14,384

"OUR" MUSIC - WHY RAY CHARLES IS WRONG ABOUT ELVIS 1,759

ELVIS PRESLEY THE HEART SINGER 224

THE ELVIS CHRISTMAS SEASON BBC TV 1977 2,711

GUILTY PLEASURES IN THE ELVIS CATALOGUE 5,748

AN APPRECIATION OF THE MUSICAL LEGACY OF THE ELVIS SIXTIES SOUNDTRACKS 13,525

ELVIS - THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS, AND OUGHT NOW TO BE 2,240

HALLELUJAH - LEONARD COHEN IS A 'HUGE FAN' OF ELVIS 6,690

TREAT ME NICE 6,218

THE LAST FAREWELL 3,943

AS LONG AS A MAN HAS THE STRENGTH TO DREAM 7,952

UNTIL IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO GO 2,800

ELVIS SONGS A TO Z 12,342

COLLECTING ELVIS ON VINYL IN THE 1990s 23,203

ELVIS' GOLDEN RECORDS 6,189

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FILMS OF ELVIS PRESLEY 40,241

ELVIS PRESLEY DISCOGRAPHY IN RECORDING SESSION ORDER 7,683

MY YOUNG DAYS AS AN ELVIS COLLECTOR 19,377

ESSENTIAL ELVIS 29,566

ELVIS PRESLEY DISCOGRAPHY 10,104

ELVIS AS A MUSICAL EDUCATION 5,162

ELVIS' 60 GREATEST 2,022

ELVIS ALL OVER THE WORLD 1,081

THE SWEET THE SAD AND THE SENTIMENTAL 4,911

ELVIS SONG LIST WITH LYRICS 115,631

THE DEFINITIVE ELVIS PRESLEY 12,900

THE ALBUMS OF ELVIS PRESLEY IN ORDER OF RELEASE 56,926

Word Total

600,251


Elvis the Book

ELVIS THE VOICE 20,570

ELVIS THE DREAMER 5,427

ELVIS THE INFLUENCER 22,812

ELVIS THE IMPACT 6,232

ELVIS THE EDUCATOR 5,874

ELVIS THE INTEGRATOR AND INNOVATOR 8,693

ELVIS THE LIBERATOR 4,359

ELVIS THE APPROPRIATOR? 4,207

ELVIS THE INTEGRATOR 9,475

NAILING THE LIE THAT ELVIS WAS RACIST ONCE AND FOR ALL 10,839

ELVIS TRIBUTES 12,373

ELVIS THE OPERA SINGER WITH BLUES AND SOUL 22,157

ELVIS AND OTHER KINGS .. AND QUEENS 2,908

ELVIS THE DEMOCRAT AND THE DEMOCRATIZER 3,125

ELVIS THE CITIZEN - ELVIS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD 3,451

ELVIS THE ACTOR 1,297

ELVIS AND COMIC CONNECTIONS 614

ELVIS THE PERFORMER 2,600

ELVIS THE SEEKER 2,336

ELVIS THE PERSON AND ELVIS THE ICON 4,827

SEX, DEATH, AND THE LIFE THAT COMES AFTER 2,615

Word Total

156,791


Word Total Elvis

757,042



Llandudno Journal 44,495 (growing daily)

Lockdown Diary 2 (from November 4 2020) 375,495

Lockdown Diary 1 (to August 2020) 189,247

Journal Total

609,237


Totals

Search me. I studied accounts once and miraculously passed all the modules until I withdrew, complaining to the course director that this was the most unutterably boring subject I had ever studied. But I have something like these totals:


Books

10,623,128


Papers

458,593


Being and Place

2,679,436


Entirely Elvis

757,042


Journal Total

609,237


Irreducibly Polynomial (AS biography)

Total

326,130


The Peaceable Commonwealth of Gerrard Winstanley

Total

188,521


Total

15,651,959


The next two items are estimates. With respect to the journal, the words per line and lines per page vary over the decade. I have 67 books in my possession, with a significant number back home (30 or more). With respect to the Elvis manuscript, there are more than two thousand A4 printed pages, single line spacing.


1990s Journal

34 lines per page

10 words per line

120 pages per book

100 books

Total

4,000,000


Elvis manuscript

2,000 plus pages, 42 lines per page, 9 words per line.

Total

756,000.


Personally, I think we could round this up to 5,000,000.


Conclusion

In conclusion, I can account for having written 15,651,959 words. There is a cold, clinical precision to numbers that somehow underestimates their warm existential truth, not to mention its mad unfolding. So I shall put it, fittingly enough, into words – that’s fifteen million words plus. Then there are the 1990s journals and the Elvis manuscript. I think I can safely claim to have written 20 million words. And this is not including my work at various colleges and universities. I was a prodigious note-taker at every academic institution I attended. I also filled folders full of computer commands.


Writings on Gerrard Winstanley

A common treasury for all 15,598

Brave community The Digger Movement in the English Revolution 6,555

Eduard Bernstein Cromwell and Communism 11,185

Gerrard Winstanley and the Republic of Heaven 24,426

Imagination and Reason 245

McIntosh Monbiot and Winstanley 3,578

Reading on Winstanley 2,626

Republic of equals 11,508

Tawney and Weber 1,104

The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley 2,150

The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley and Digger Communism ed 41,425

what do we know of Winstanley's life 2,391

winstanley and blake notes 3,296

Winstanley and Communalism 11,600

Winstanley and socialism 12,138

winstanley, george, marx 3,577

Winstanley 11,645


Radicalism and Reverence phil structure 3,456

Radicalism and Reverence structure 2,335

Radicalism and Reverence 2,622

Winstanley, Spirit Reason and Freedom 1,182

Winstanley's Communitarian Enlightenment 1,343


Gerrard Winstanley and Quakerism 988

Gerrard Winstanley Very English radical 865

Winstanley and The Diggers 10,062

Winstanley came to see this New Age as an Age of Reason 621


Total

188,521


One final point, this document is 6439 words long, words I should add to the final total. I now see a future which involves me counting every word I write. 25 million is the next target on the horizon. I very nearly had a park named in my honour back in 2016. I made the list but missed out. One day. On this day, I can say with certainty: I can walk away now, knowing that I gave it my all. I will write no more forever.




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