Remembering Ladson Hinton
July 2026
In his essay “Fools, Foolishness, and Feeling Foolish” Ladson writes:
We, of all professions, need the creative, the disorderly fertility, the lifegiving touch of the fool. We fall otherwise into a sterile structure, petty power conflicts and sort of priestly provincialism. (p. 45)
I give Ladson lots of credit for steering me clear of the dreary fate of sterile structure, petty conflicts, and priestly provincialism by inviting me to carry on a conversation that lasted many years and blossomed into an important and unexpected friendship.
I had seen Ladson lecture and was intrigued by his erudition, humor, and interdisciplinary sensibility, but it never occurred to me to reach out to him. However, one day I received an invitation to meet for breakfast on a Saturday morning at the Coastal Kitchen, a restaurant near his house on Capitol Hill.
Our initial conversation lasted nearly three hours. After that we agreed to meet monthly to keep talking. We had a ritual of meeting at the Coastal Kitchen until it became too difficult for Ladson to hear so we moved our meeting to his dining room table where he would serve a large cup of coffee and croissants. When Covid came, we would meet by Facetime, and it was a joy when we could meet again in person. We continued to meet when he moved to Horizon House and stayed in touch as long as we could after he went to live his final days in California.
Ladson was a great conversationalist and storyteller. I learned about his early life growing up in Arkansas, and about his colorful family, including his father and grandfather. I heard about his days in the Army and some the forensic cases he encountered while stationed in Germany. I heard about his philosophy studies, especially studying Husserl and Heidegger. And I heard about his psychiatric training and many stories about the generation of Jungians that had been his teachers. Ladson was generous in expressing and sharing his life experiences. But Ladson was just as committed to asking questions. He was constantly asking me questions, drawing me out, encouraging me to express myself and to take another look at something that he considered important and overlooked.
We talked a lot about politics and culture, about film and music. About history and anthropology. And we talked about family. Every time I saw him Ladson would give me an update on the activities and achievements of his sons. I was moved by how proud he was of each of them. He also loved talking about his large extended family and his grandchildren.
Ladson would send me papers he had found on the internet on a regular basis. We talked a lot about philosophy. He introduced me to work of Bernard Stiegler, among others. He asked me to read what he was writing, and he always wanted to read what I was writing. This was an enormously supportive part of our relationship, and Ladson would always encourage me to express myself and to keep developing my own voice.
In the beginning, I didn’t appreciate how important the figure of the Fool was or could become. Looking back, I see now how every conversation was in some way an encounter with the possibilities of the fool. Ladson saw the creativity of cracking up the familiar and the expected. He wanted to transmit a genuine generative openness. Describing the Tarot fool Ladson writes:
This fool is usually pictured staring off into space, about to step over the edge of an abyss, a pole and sack over his shoulder, a dog as a companion who may be pulling down his pants to bare his buttocks.
This situation expresses the transcendent perspective of the fool. He is about to step into an abyss – an act fatal to the usual mortal. But, as we know, the fool is always miraculously saved from destruction… This illustrates the transcendent aspect of the fool, the unknown factor which transcends the dichotomies of consciousness and saves him – or us—when, like Parsival, he wholeheartedly embraces the quest of individuation.
When one trusts and accepts the strange pathways of individual destiny, one feels foolish in one’s own eyes and the eyes of the collective. But then one is open to the numinous, the non-ordinary—that which one can’t force to happen… (p.45-46)
It was the presence of the numinous, and the non-ordinary, not as idealized concepts, but as ordinary moments that count that Ladson felt compelled to try to express. He would often say that he felt such moments were neglected or undervalued and yet they form the background that makes life worth living. Do you know what I mean? He would ask. I would demonstrate that I did by sharing an experience of my own. Sharing personal realizations delighted him.
Our conversations were at once serious, substantive, intellectual, searching, and, at the same time, playful, spontaneous, transgressive, and often very funny.
I recall one day Ladson said to me. “Jeff, I’ve decided to form a club. I’m going to call it The Crazy Motherfucker’s Club. I’d like you to be a member”. I said, “Who else is going to be in this club?” Ladson said, “I don’t know. I’m asking you first.” I said, “I need to know who else would be in a club like this”. Ladson said, “Do you know anyone in your institute?” I quickly said no. “Who would you include then,” he asked. “They are all dead” I said. “Well, give me a name to start with”. “How about Socrates, I said”. “He was a crazy motherfucker, said Ladson, laughing. So, it turned out, all the members of the club were dead. They included, Jesus, Machiavelli, Dostoyevksy, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Freud, Jung, Bion and the artist Basquiet. I was so pleased by this idea that I had a T-Shirt made for Ladson that said CMFC with a picture of a unicorn on the front.
It was Ladson’s capacity to play that influenced me most, over time. He loved to play with ideas. He was genuinely curious about trying to make sense of what seemed the absurd situation of human beings. He liked to explore big concepts like temporality or Anthropocene or nature of violence. He liked to dig into ideas like memory or Pharmakon or neoteny. He would be delighted when I knew something about the thinkers he cared about. For example, one day I mentioned that I was reading about Bergson and he launched into a spirited discussion about Bergson’s ideas on laughter.
He would weave in stories that moved back and forth between personal memory or anecdote and cultural critique and philosophical reflection. It was the freedom of his thought that was so helpful to me. Exchanging and exploring ideas became like a game, a kind of fun that I suppose is quite rare for most people.
Ladson would say to me “What you are talking about in your group (meaning my institute)? Are there any exciting new ideas bubbling up? No, I thought as much. But one can hope. Don’t you think there should be more exciting news ideas? What gets in the way? Don’t you think we should be more curious about each other’s experiences?” “How are you going to help your group grow?”
We also talked a lot about shame. One of his beautiful reflections on shame is connected to the fool. He writes:
Ultimately, the experience of foolishness, of shame is the experience of ontological limitation: our focused awareness, our ego-consciousness, our kingly demeanour, are never more than partly in control. Potential life is so much more than we can ever comprehend or be… To see this head-on fills one with an intense feeling of shame and limitation. It is the fool, spouting his absurd poetry, mimicking our mechanical illusions of control, speaking from the endless depths of imagination who brings us to feel shame. The fool reminds us that we are the limited creatures that we are; the fool may finally appear as death, the ultimate limitation.
He continues:
All this sounds rather heavy and deflating. Of course, it is true that we are all fools, full of petty strivings, ludicrously inflated, flies on the vast body of the Godhead. Yet, as we also know, foolery and humour are generally immensely invigorating, lifegiving, renewing. The fool who mocks us, frees us. A deflated ego becomes permeable, reopened to the creative depths.
I never felt mocked by Ladson. I think he was on a kind of quiet rescue mission. First to show me the prison of my conventional expectations, then to hand me the keys (a genuine reverence for curiosity and creativity), then to be a kind of guide on the path, holding the lamp of aesthetic appreciation and ethical responsibility for real critical thinking. He was there, every meeting, gently encouraging me to stumble and to dance through the tunnel of my inhibitions and see what might be waiting for us on the other side.
Ladson was a man genuinely exploring his own way, and his own voice. It was a voice with its own texture and flavor, embodied, complex, mercurial, generous and expressing a liberating aspiration and flashes of wisdom of an authentic fool.
Ladson’s presence in my life was creative, fertile, sometimes disorderly, and ultimately deeply life-affirming. I’m very grateful to him. I miss him. And the memory of our friendship will always be alive in my heart.
July 2026
In his essay “Fools, Foolishness, and Feeling Foolish” Ladson writes:
We, of all professions, need the creative, the disorderly fertility, the lifegiving touch of the fool. We fall otherwise into a sterile structure, petty power conflicts and sort of priestly provincialism. (p. 45)
I give Ladson lots of credit for steering me clear of the dreary fate of sterile structure, petty conflicts, and priestly provincialism by inviting me to carry on a conversation that lasted many years and blossomed into an important and unexpected friendship.
I had seen Ladson lecture and was intrigued by his erudition, humor, and interdisciplinary sensibility, but it never occurred to me to reach out to him. However, one day I received an invitation to meet for breakfast on a Saturday morning at the Coastal Kitchen, a restaurant near his house on Capitol Hill.
Our initial conversation lasted nearly three hours. After that we agreed to meet monthly to keep talking. We had a ritual of meeting at the Coastal Kitchen until it became too difficult for Ladson to hear so we moved our meeting to his dining room table where he would serve a large cup of coffee and croissants. When Covid came, we would meet by Facetime, and it was a joy when we could meet again in person. We continued to meet when he moved to Horizon House and stayed in touch as long as we could after he went to live his final days in California.
Ladson was a great conversationalist and storyteller. I learned about his early life growing up in Arkansas, and about his colorful family, including his father and grandfather. I heard about his days in the Army and some the forensic cases he encountered while stationed in Germany. I heard about his philosophy studies, especially studying Husserl and Heidegger. And I heard about his psychiatric training and many stories about the generation of Jungians that had been his teachers. Ladson was generous in expressing and sharing his life experiences. But Ladson was just as committed to asking questions. He was constantly asking me questions, drawing me out, encouraging me to express myself and to take another look at something that he considered important and overlooked.
We talked a lot about politics and culture, about film and music. About history and anthropology. And we talked about family. Every time I saw him Ladson would give me an update on the activities and achievements of his sons. I was moved by how proud he was of each of them. He also loved talking about his large extended family and his grandchildren.
Ladson would send me papers he had found on the internet on a regular basis. We talked a lot about philosophy. He introduced me to work of Bernard Stiegler, among others. He asked me to read what he was writing, and he always wanted to read what I was writing. This was an enormously supportive part of our relationship, and Ladson would always encourage me to express myself and to keep developing my own voice.
In the beginning, I didn’t appreciate how important the figure of the Fool was or could become. Looking back, I see now how every conversation was in some way an encounter with the possibilities of the fool. Ladson saw the creativity of cracking up the familiar and the expected. He wanted to transmit a genuine generative openness. Describing the Tarot fool Ladson writes:
This fool is usually pictured staring off into space, about to step over the edge of an abyss, a pole and sack over his shoulder, a dog as a companion who may be pulling down his pants to bare his buttocks.
This situation expresses the transcendent perspective of the fool. He is about to step into an abyss – an act fatal to the usual mortal. But, as we know, the fool is always miraculously saved from destruction… This illustrates the transcendent aspect of the fool, the unknown factor which transcends the dichotomies of consciousness and saves him – or us—when, like Parsival, he wholeheartedly embraces the quest of individuation.
When one trusts and accepts the strange pathways of individual destiny, one feels foolish in one’s own eyes and the eyes of the collective. But then one is open to the numinous, the non-ordinary—that which one can’t force to happen… (p.45-46)
It was the presence of the numinous, and the non-ordinary, not as idealized concepts, but as ordinary moments that count that Ladson felt compelled to try to express. He would often say that he felt such moments were neglected or undervalued and yet they form the background that makes life worth living. Do you know what I mean? He would ask. I would demonstrate that I did by sharing an experience of my own. Sharing personal realizations delighted him.
Our conversations were at once serious, substantive, intellectual, searching, and, at the same time, playful, spontaneous, transgressive, and often very funny.
I recall one day Ladson said to me. “Jeff, I’ve decided to form a club. I’m going to call it The Crazy Motherfucker’s Club. I’d like you to be a member”. I said, “Who else is going to be in this club?” Ladson said, “I don’t know. I’m asking you first.” I said, “I need to know who else would be in a club like this”. Ladson said, “Do you know anyone in your institute?” I quickly said no. “Who would you include then,” he asked. “They are all dead” I said. “Well, give me a name to start with”. “How about Socrates, I said”. “He was a crazy motherfucker, said Ladson, laughing. So, it turned out, all the members of the club were dead. They included, Jesus, Machiavelli, Dostoyevksy, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Freud, Jung, Bion and the artist Basquiet. I was so pleased by this idea that I had a T-Shirt made for Ladson that said CMFC with a picture of a unicorn on the front.
It was Ladson’s capacity to play that influenced me most, over time. He loved to play with ideas. He was genuinely curious about trying to make sense of what seemed the absurd situation of human beings. He liked to explore big concepts like temporality or Anthropocene or nature of violence. He liked to dig into ideas like memory or Pharmakon or neoteny. He would be delighted when I knew something about the thinkers he cared about. For example, one day I mentioned that I was reading about Bergson and he launched into a spirited discussion about Bergson’s ideas on laughter.
He would weave in stories that moved back and forth between personal memory or anecdote and cultural critique and philosophical reflection. It was the freedom of his thought that was so helpful to me. Exchanging and exploring ideas became like a game, a kind of fun that I suppose is quite rare for most people.
Ladson would say to me “What you are talking about in your group (meaning my institute)? Are there any exciting new ideas bubbling up? No, I thought as much. But one can hope. Don’t you think there should be more exciting news ideas? What gets in the way? Don’t you think we should be more curious about each other’s experiences?” “How are you going to help your group grow?”
We also talked a lot about shame. One of his beautiful reflections on shame is connected to the fool. He writes:
Ultimately, the experience of foolishness, of shame is the experience of ontological limitation: our focused awareness, our ego-consciousness, our kingly demeanour, are never more than partly in control. Potential life is so much more than we can ever comprehend or be… To see this head-on fills one with an intense feeling of shame and limitation. It is the fool, spouting his absurd poetry, mimicking our mechanical illusions of control, speaking from the endless depths of imagination who brings us to feel shame. The fool reminds us that we are the limited creatures that we are; the fool may finally appear as death, the ultimate limitation.
He continues:
All this sounds rather heavy and deflating. Of course, it is true that we are all fools, full of petty strivings, ludicrously inflated, flies on the vast body of the Godhead. Yet, as we also know, foolery and humour are generally immensely invigorating, lifegiving, renewing. The fool who mocks us, frees us. A deflated ego becomes permeable, reopened to the creative depths.
I never felt mocked by Ladson. I think he was on a kind of quiet rescue mission. First to show me the prison of my conventional expectations, then to hand me the keys (a genuine reverence for curiosity and creativity), then to be a kind of guide on the path, holding the lamp of aesthetic appreciation and ethical responsibility for real critical thinking. He was there, every meeting, gently encouraging me to stumble and to dance through the tunnel of my inhibitions and see what might be waiting for us on the other side.
Ladson was a man genuinely exploring his own way, and his own voice. It was a voice with its own texture and flavor, embodied, complex, mercurial, generous and expressing a liberating aspiration and flashes of wisdom of an authentic fool.
Ladson’s presence in my life was creative, fertile, sometimes disorderly, and ultimately deeply life-affirming. I’m very grateful to him. I miss him. And the memory of our friendship will always be alive in my heart.