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Homo Sacer and the Invention of Reading

The final installment of our 2024 annual letter.

Author

Justin Murphy
February 02, 2025

Today I’m writing you with our monthly seminars for Q1 and Q2, and I’ll say a few words about the January print newsletter shipping out on Monday morning.

Seminars for Q1 and Q2

In the first half of 2025, we’ll continue our seminar series and collective research into what I’m beginning to call technologies of philosophy.

The seminars we did last year were really great. I can say that I made genuine progress in my own thinking, and I know that many of you did, too. We read more than we typically do, and we read more deeply than we typically do.

This year, we’ll continue our investigations into parrhesia (frank speech) through texts like Plato's Gorgias and The Gospel of Mark, while also reflecting on some of the contemporary politics of technology.

We will continue our Return to the Masters, though I must say the contemporary context has suddenly become more interesting than I can remember in my adult life. The opportunity for serious political-philosophical advancement feels quite tremendous.

So from Plato's examination of rhetoric and truth-telling in the Gorgias, we will fast-forward all the way up to Alexander Karp’s forthcoming book on the place of Silicon Valley in the world today (Karp is CEO of Palantir but also a PhD in Social Theory). We’ll continue to explore Nick Land's accelerationism, and we’ll also begin to explore the work of Giorgio Agamben, for reasons that will become quite clear, I think.

For more information on each, click through. Seminars are free for members. RSVP at the links.

Ivan Illich, St. Hugh, and the Unreasonable Power of Reading

The January issue of the print letter is about the invention of reading.

Reading is actually a very bizarre and unnatural activity. A lot of strange factors had to be organized mentally, and ideas established, for bookish “reading” to become a common activity of educated people.

Someone had to invent it, and the person who invented it is someone most of you have never heard of. And the underlying conditions and requirements of reading—what you’re actually doing when you do serious reading—are way crazier than people realize.

My main source for the January print letter is Ivan Illich's book, In the Vineyard of the Text. It’s an incredible book with some of the most significant and esoteric insights I've discovered in recent memory.

It’s about a 12th century monk—Hugh of Saint Victor—the man who invented reading as we think of it today.

The story of St. Hugh basically shows that bookish reading—the serious, reflective engagement with text that we love and esteem today—was invented as a form of communion with God. And I’m not talking about Scripture, I mean the secular pursuit of knowledge.

The particular magic of reading that people still feel today—whether they are religious or not—has a very specific and technical character. Serious reading is uniquely, almost unreasonably powerful mentally and emotionally because it is, in fact, communing with God. Screened media is quite different, as Illich explains, also for precise reasons.

This was the most remarkable thing I learned last month so, as per the promise of the print letter, that is what I’m shipping to your doorstep on Monday. In a short, personal letter that you can hold in your hands and enjoy in about 10 minutes.

(If you want that, you have to become a member now before I download the current state of the mailing list tonight or tomorrow morning.)

I hope to meet you in one of the seminars, or in one of the group writing sessions, that we host in the community.

Now that we’re back on track, shipping the book is next.

2025 is the year of the independent scholar.

More soon.

Sincerely,

Justin Murphy