The Regime of Nothing

In the last fiction, David is now ten and falls ill with a serious disease, a form of neuropathy, must be hospitalized, and he eventually dies. The many conversations in the book about dying and death, and whether David has a “message,” confront the reader with issues of redemption, consolation, and despair, and are treated here as reflections on literary meaning, the status of art in the modern world, and finitude. Special attention is given to Simón’s view that if there is nothing to be said about death, then there is nothing for philosophy to say at all (except that there is nothing to be said about anything that matters, nothing philosophical (or rational) anyway). Philosophy’s goal would be to destroy the illusion that there could be traditional, or rationalist philosophy.