THE ICONOCLAST (w/ Samuel Barnes)
An Iconoclast is technically someone who attacks or criticises cherished beliefs or institutions. In this conversation, I discuss with Samuel Barnes about his new book, The Iconoclast: An Anti-Philosophy. For Barnes, an iconoclast, philosophy is not found in clinging to axiomatic presupposition (beliefs), or in philosophical schools building walled gardens (institutions), but rather in privileging the intellectual grind without axiom or walled enclosure towards generating more and more questions towards the meta-question uncaring of human life itself. The philosophical iconoclast must constantly battle the dogmatism of axiomatic presupposition and constantly think through tranquil walled gardens towards endless philosophical fog. He claims that the reward at the end of philosophical thought is not a beautiful enclosed thought system or an intelligent community of spiritual unity, but the call of the meta-question which will finally destroy us and our hopeless philosophical pursuits. From where will the Iconoclast appear?