The World Is Gone

Exploring the existential implications of the Covid-19 crisis through meditations

Part personal memoir, part philosophical reflection and written in the midst of the pandemic in 2021, The World Is Gone employs the Robinson Crusoe fable to launch an existential investigation of the effects of extreme isolation, profound boredom, nightly insomnia, and the fear of madness associated with the loss of a world populated by others.

Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Gregg Lambert is Dean’s Professor of Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University. His most recent University of Minnesota publications include The Elements of Foucault (2020) and Philosophy after Friendship: Deleuze’s Conceptual Personae (2017).

Preface: To My Fellow Castaways

First Day: The Darkening of the World (Heidegger)

Second Day: Existence without Existents (Levinas)

Third Day: The Two Ecstasies of Extreme Solitude (Heidegger and Levinas)

Fourth Day: A World without Others (Tournier)

Fifth Day: The Schizoid and the Depressive (Deleuze)

Sixth Day: The Worst-Case Scenario Lullaby (Bonaparte)

Seventh Day: Robinson? C’est Moi!

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