We sometimes behave as though we had the certainties of our ancestors, yet we have none of them, and none of their consolations. Even the bleakest philosophers of nineteenth-century Germany look plagued with certainty and consolation beside their descendants today. Today German philosophy, like the philosophy of the rest of the continent, has been ravaged not just by doubt (as it should be) but by decades of deconstruction. It has pulled itself and everything else apart, without having any notion of how to put anything – let alone itself – back together again. Instead of being inspired by the spirit of truth and the search for the great questions, the continent’s philosophers have instead become entranced by how to avoid questions. Their deconstruction not only of ideas but of language has led to a concerted effort never to get beyond the tools of philosophy. Indeed, avoidance of the great issues sometimes seems to have become the sole business of philosophy. In its place is an obsession with the difficulties of language and a distrust of all fixed things. The desire to question everything in order never to get anywhere appears to be the point, perhaps in order to defang both words and ideas for fear of where both might lead. Here too there is a vastness of self-distrust.

It was some years ago, during a conference at the University of Heidelberg, that the full catastrophe of modern German thought suddenly came upon me. A group of academics and others had gathered to discuss the history of Europe’s relations with the Middle East and North Africa. It soon became clear that nothing would be learned because nothing could be said. A succession of philosophers and historians spent their time studiously attempting to say nothing as successfully as possible. The less that was successfully said, the greater the relief and acclaim. No attempt to address any idea, history or fact was able to pass without first being put through the pit-stop of the modern academy. No generality could be attempted and no specific could be uttered. It was not only history and politics that were under suspicion. Philosophy, ideas and language itself had been cordoned off as though around the scene of a crime. To any outsider the edges of that scene were clearly visible. The job of the academics was to police the cordons, all the while maintaining some distractions in order to at all costs prevent wanderers from stumbling back onto the terrain of ideas.