Infinitely Demanding

"Infinitely Demanding" (2007) is Critchley's attempt to reconstruct a viable ethics and politics after what he sees as the exhaustion of both Marxism and liberal democratic triumphalism. The core argument runs roughly as follows:

The Ethical Subject and the Infinite Demand

Drawing heavily on Levinas, Critchley argues that the ethical subject is constituted through an encounter with a demand that exceeds our capacity to fulfill it. The demand comes from the other—the face of the suffering other makes a claim on us that we can never adequately meet. This is what makes the demand infinite: not that it's quantitatively endless, but that it's structurally unfulfillable. We're always already in debt.

This produces what Critchley calls the "dividual"—a split subject, divided between the self and the demand placed upon it. Ethical subjectivity isn't about self-sovereignty or autonomy but about this constitutive inadequacy, which he frames through the concept of approval: we seek approval from a source (conscience, community, an ideal) that we can never fully satisfy.

Political Upshot: Anarchic Meta-Politics

Critchley proposes what he calls an "anarchic meta-politics"—a politics of resistance and interstitial distance from the state rather than a politics of seizing state power. He's skeptical of revolutionary programs that claim to deliver justice and instead valorizes movements that maintain fidelity to the infinite demand without pretending to finally satisfy it.