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If you haven’t painted grey, Cézanne said, you are not a painter. Perhaps the same could be said of thinking itself. Why should a single colour be a criterion?  This statement is not a proposition but a provocation. Yet thought repeatedly returns to grey. Think of the colour of the shadows in Plato’s cave. Hegel writes:

“When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey, it cannot be rejuvenated but only known.”

Grey is not a colour one encounters directly. It appears in weather, dust, concrete, old photographs, and the residue left behind. It is neither night nor day, neither black nor white, neither despair nor optimism. Grey is what emerges when oppositions grow tired of themselves. Perhaps philosophy turns grey because it arrives too late, when life has already grown old.

In the tropics, grey is the colour of approaching rain, overcast afternoons, unfinished buildings, and the map-like shapes that humidity slowly draws upon walls. One does not choose grey. One eventually notices that one has been living inside it for some time, despite the sunburn.