On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons (Session 4)

Reza now. Except Reza maybe. Reza doesn't, okay. Hello and welcome to the fourth session of On the Practical Necessity of Heaven Demons by Reza Nicaristani. I'm now going to pass the mic. Reza, please take it away. Reza Nicaristani, Thank you very much everyone. So today, We are going to talk about a spirit possession. The problem of a spirit possession in line with some of the ideas that we have been talking

about with regard to the question of will, sin, defilement, and obviously the question of autonomy. How to enrich autonomy rather than to think of it as free choice, which is the lowest form of the will. So I know that there are some presentation and reply today. Maybe we should start with that and then I will continue. But before that, any

Any questions, any sort of slander, curse or remark from the previous sessions? Nothing, no one? Richard? You want me to slander you based on the previous sessions? Yes, curse would be fine, but slander is more preferable. My girlfriend and I are actually translating a set of Akkadian demon summoning spells

from French into English. If I get them done, I'll be sure to use one of them to curse you in the whole class later. The thing is that French curse never works because if they did, they had a better position on the world map. We're going to treat you like the Medes and the Babylonians did. be scared babylonians actually uh you know that babylonians the reasons that they became more powerful in terms of religious export was precisely because they did a better con

in the sense that they brought all the demons under the umbrella term of God. So God was the legion itself. It's always best to, you know, it's just like oil or petroleum. You know, with petroleum comes a lot of ingredients. Always give them just some trademark and then you can actually, you know, pass some of the rat poison through that channel to all other civilizations and Babylonians were great at that but the thing is that they absolutely had no chance against the Persians cultural or military at that time and Cyrus II conquered no Babylonian empire because Cyrus II

and managed to fuse his proto-Zoroastrian. In fact, it is very controversial to call him Zoroastrian because he was not Zoroastrian. He was proto-Zoroastrian. His vision of proto-Zoroastrian is ambigualism. Imagine two great organized, fucked up monotheistic cults finally unite. well obviously no civilization can stand against that in terms of the cultural impact of that. No Babylonians literally imploded from within to the point that when the final battle emerged

hardly any people, you know, in the context of that time were killed. People started to open the gates of Babylon to him and he became just a father for them, precisely because he had done so much religious propaganda ahead of his incursion, the Mesopotamia, that it was just like he has already been deemed as some sort of Messiah for them. No Babylonians were actually extremely decadent.

A good comparison of actually no Babylonian empire would be American empire in today's 21st century. Fundamentally decadent, fundamentally individualistic, having no visions. And then they basically complained that why barbarians are at our gate. Well, there is a reason. barbarians feast on decrepit civilizations. Wasn't this the premise of the famous Alexandrian poem about how the

barbarians aren't actually coming and that's the worst of all possible fates? Yes, yes. Nothing renews anymore. Absolutely. Did we talk about about Constantin Cavafy's poem, Waiting for the Barbarians. You are familiar with Dino Boutsati's thing, Dino Boutsati's novel, Waiting... The Tartar Steps. The Tartar Steps. So the Tartar is basically based on this poem by Constantine Cavafy called Waiting for the Barbarians. The poem is exactly like Dino Boutsati's novel that civilization, the integrity of the self,

integrity of the civilization always feeds on the threats of outlanders, barbarians. For Greeks it was the Etrurians, the Etroscans. For any civilization it would be a different thing. And the poem goes, goes, goes, nothing happens. The barbarians never show up. But just the moment when the narrator thinks that they will never show up, it will be revealed that they have always been at the doorstep of civilization. It's just that you didn't see them. Just like, you know, Boutsati's novel, then, you know, he leaves the fortress,

goes to his life and comes back when he is becoming retired just as he's packing his horse he sees activities just a few miles away tents of the tartars that they are basically being poised they are ready to poise a strike on the fortress civilization. By the way, this story is absolutely fantastic, including for our class. This

idea that usually in the folklore, in the mythological sense, the barbarians are demons are the legion, the whorless, the vermin, the yellow face, the red face, so on and so forth. These two pieces of work, one, Constantine Cavafy, Waiting for Barbarians, it's a poem, it's a very long poem, and the novel that is made out of it, the Tartarus Sip. And then there is also a movie made out of both of them, The Tartar Step, which is actually directed in Bam Citadel before Iran Revolution. Extremely majestic movie, fantastic for this idea that what is

actually a barbarian, what a barbarian can do to a civilization, and why is that civilization always have to, by their own principles, use the lexicon or the icon of the barbarian in order to survive. Sorry, can I talk? Absolutely. You know, if you talk about barbarian, I mean we should refer first of all to Medea, the strategy, because it's a symbolical person for ancient philosophy and arts, and if I'm

not mistaken, it was a very contradictable person first of all because she undermined all the law process, the implementation of the ancient people, Elydium people first of and after that I would say if you saw film by Dini R. Kahn La Decline de Ampera American What is the English title of that? The Declining of American Empire I think I have seen it I think I have seen it In my opinion I would suggest to see for everybody this film

it's about Canadian intellectuals Definitely I have seen it. Yes. Who met and talked about their sexuality. It's a very emblematic film because it was shooted in 1926 on the sunsets of Cold War when leftist intellectual did not have any hope hope except sexual revolution and the freedom that was a core element of sexual revolution. And they also talk about the American empire like some spaces that's inside of the circle

of barbarians when barbarians are invaded there and in my opinion it's a very crucial point for Is it kind of, isn't it also kind of like similar to the point that Dusan Makaviev makes in Swede's movie and his earlier works? yeah but but you know in my opinion uh first of all barbarians uh uh it's such a collective figure uh for any sort of uh european philosophy and thoughts in in common sense in order to or have a critical point of it yes uh andrei may ask where you are from from russia okay

Okay. So that explains a lot. Because you see Eastern European, and of course, you know, you being Russian, you know that quite well. Eastern Europeans are actually being proud of being barbarian. It's in the sense that, for example, when you see Serbian philosophers or Serbian poets or Montenegro. It's just as if civilization has emerged from barbarity and there is no dichotomy between them. You know, maybe, but if we talk about Russia, I think it's a very big topic. What does it mean to be barbarian? Because in Russia we live in the so-called epistemological

epistemological limb in that sense because on one hand we were considering themselves as a part of europe or you know on the other hand we have so-called a third way and it's a very barbarian way you know so-called we we live if you talk about the conjunction in relation with Western civilization, we leave some temporary parasites of this. Yes, now I can understand this. Okay, my apologies, I'm going to make it up to you for wasting your time, but I have actually a curious question for Andrei. In that sense,

what do you think of Dugin's philosophy? it can be called philosophy which is a controversial question well what can you ask? yeah in a way first of all if it's if they consider philosophy as things that's full of creativity you know it's like specific things between science and art of course it's it's very interesting first of all because it's a real riot of thought right but on other hand there are a few very crucial and dangerous dimension in that philosophy because any philosophy

in my opinion should or might be transformed to any form of political activity and and of course when it became a political activity we will face with a real eschatological things in applied way i suppose i see well you see i don't personally see him as a philosopher I, uh, by any sort of a stretch, I see him as a storyteller, uh, of, you know, quite extensive experience and power. And I think that, um, for the worse or the better, uh, he's definitely

a Russian storyteller. I mean, even the way that he synthesizes, even if they are wrong, they are fundamentally made in the cauldron of Russia. And they speak to Russian and Eastern European people very, very easily. I think that's actually his power. But yes, I do agree that, But you see, this is the thing that precisely because he's not a philosopher, he's a storyteller, he always wants to play certain kind of political role in the formation of the new world.

Yeah, but you know, if we talk about the Russian felt in common sense, of course, we always refer to Russian novel from 19th century. For example, what? Yeah, Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, for instance, yeah. And this is, that was a very synthesized thing between philosophy and storytelling. And according to the few version, It was a reaction of Hegel's statement that Russia is not a part of the end of history. Yes. And in my opinion, maybe Dugin has...

That's common roots, you know, because undeniably Russia now outside of producing philosophy and thoughts, and thoughts, and this is a specific way that synthesizes storytelling with very strong philosophical dimension. I see, I see. The only person that I have seen that had this kind of idea is Bakunin, you know, in that famous conversation with Marx, which we will come back when we are talking about the demons by Dostoevsky. Bakunin actually says that, yes, you might have the philosophy

of history, but I have the narrative of the history. And in the narrative of the history, the first communist revolution will not happen in Britain, but in Russia. And Bakunin was right. A storytelling might not be a truthful philosophy of history or concrete self-consciousness as Egel would have said it, but the thing is that that with the storytelling you get a kind of synthesis not fusion perhaps a

synthesis between tradition and revolutionary ideals this is both actually an enablement and something quite volatile at the end of the day Dostoevsky predicted that already in demons. What might happen? Okay, I agree. Well, I agree, but also, you know, in art and in Russia, it's a very specific thing for Russia, in intuition, first of all, and that's a strong trust to some predictable way of thinking, but in mystical way, first of all.

Yes, I would say that this is not really exhaustive or exclusive to Russia. I would say that Iran has it, Levant and certain points, parts of the Middle East have it, definitely certain parts of Far East Asia have it. I think that that is, I don't want to be too rash about it, but I would say that this is precisely because the idea of philosophy, philosophy as such rather than philosophy as a storytelling was never actually made in full light in these places

this doesn't mean it's bad it's just that what it is from a historical perspective Maybe I think if you addressed to me, I should think more about this. But in a way, it's a very specific question about that unconventional way of thinking. Yes. Yes, yes. In common sense and how we identify the legitimization of new regimes of thinking.

Absolutely. This is, I mean, this actually is really the core topic of the whole seminar, you know, the necessity of having d-men coincides with not just conventional thinking, theoretical reasoning, but also unconventional ways of practice. But what does it take at the end of the day? And that's the question that we should try to answer at the end. What does it take to integrate this kind of verve for unconventionality in thinking and

practice with systematic thinking, such that we don't become dugins again, or demons, as Zilfsky had it. But you know, if you go back to Dugin as a historical figure, because in my opinion, it's a key to contemplating, to understanding his way of thinking. Yes, no, absolutely. He's, I would say that he is really the encapsulation of a good part of the Russian Empire, Noah Empire. You know, he's a very emblematic figure.

If you talk about the thinker or such person who produce something, maybe narratives, yeah? If you see on evolution of his thoughts, he is just like a fluger who... I see. Yeah, who actually take some concepts, sometimes he can't understand what this concept means, or he provides very exotic, untypical interpretation of this and he's like just a mirror face, a mirror surface of what happened around.

But he's very interesting, especially I'm very close to his son and I realized that he's a part of very specific community. A very powerful one. Yes, yes, I understand. this is actually just I don't want to spoil this but this is actually what I want to talk about uh in the end sessions about Dostoevsky's demons particularly the figure of Estavrogin it's not Estavrogin is you know a devil nevertheless there's a demon in the Dostoevskyian or Doginian sense

But of course you choose exhausted phenomenon as a demon because demon it's always something between gods and other mystical preachers. Yes, this actually comes back, this I have noticed that this comes back to a certain kind of uh orthodox christianity uh you know uh when you think about it like peter iii i think you know uh the patriarchs before catherine uh you know made the coup d'etat uh the patriarchs

were were surrounding peter third were exactly like that in fact rasputin is nothing but an emblem of those patriarchs. So has Dugin. It's just that this history has changed, the era has changed, and they have to accommodate certain kinds of elements. But that's what you might call to be what you just said. That is really the encapsulation of what you might call to be Tezarist, early Tezarist, not later Tezarist, early Tezarist patriarch religion. Really, but also we should take into consideration that the figure of patriarch in the Orthodox

faith and the Orthodox tradition, also we didn't have a patriarch from Peter I to Stalin, because that institute was demolished by Peter I. Yes. under the influence of other factors not him yeah it was a very very political decision first of all and the figure of patra was encapsulated into the empire yes yes yes Yes, superb. Okay, maybe we should go with reply now or presentation, reply, whatever.

Hi, yeah. Yeah, I'm presenting the history of the Ava, but can you hear me? Yes, yes, yes. First, just a little bit of context. Flusser today is mostly known as a media theorist because he has more famous books, which are the books he wrote in Germany are about that. But he also had an impressive production in other areas, especially philosophy of language and epistemology and pioneered themes like theory fiction and a book called Philosophical Fictions and also Speculative Realism and Media Ecology and various things like that. this book, The History of the Devil, showcases this vanguardism, I think.

It actually reminds me a lot of early Razine Karistani, the first Razine Karistani. But like Flusser was really ahead of his time, is what I mean. He also proposed interdisciplinarity with so-called hard sciences in a way that reminds me more of Simondon than of Kittler, who is the guy people always associate him with. But he had this disdain for traditional academy and wrote very playfully, as if he was not trying to solve problems or close arguments or advance his career in any way, but just entertain ideas and see where they go.

really impressive that this book was written in 58, 58 57, way before post structuralism. It is already leaping ahead of it, like passing through it. And these earlier works of his went unsuspected for a long time because he was not well received in Brazil. Like he was expelled from USP, which is the University of Sao Paulo for two reasons, one being self taught and to something that maybe has a will make Reza happy for being a Heideggerian. Oh, yes. Yes, by then, the head of the departments of philosophy at the University of Sao Paulo were diehard Marxists and wouldn't allow for Heideggerians in their department. So after some decades of ostracism, Flusser flew to Germany,

where he found his deserved recognizement. now this book the history of the devil is about trying to find out how the devil acts in a macro perspective and what are his reasons for acting like that flusser starts out by defining god as transcendence as eternity and defining the devil as the opposite of that which is imminent and time for him god which is pure being is never in the world it is it is the dissolution of the world and the devil on the other hand is phenomenal world and wants to keep the word from diluting. That entails that quote-unquote the history of the devil is the history of progress and evolution is the major tool the devil uses to keep the world imminent to avoid its end and its redemption. The book is then structured as a history of the world

from non-organic forms in the beginning of the universe to complex human interactions and new media. And each chapter talks about a different deadly scene and how the devil developed these seven scenes to keep us entertained and keep the world going. There's a heavy influence of Buddhism and Manichaeism throughout the book, plus the paragraphs have a numbering that mimic Wittgenstein's Stratatus Logicus Philosophicus, but without really concatenating one paragraph to another. A figure is just sort of a joke on analytical philosophy, I guess. One important definition that Lucere makes right at the beginning is that sins are reversible. They

have a neutral counterpart, which is not morally charged. Like greed would be prudence, and lust would be instinct, and wrath would be dignity, and sloth would be meditative thought, and so on. He then starts reading the history of the world from the Big Bang and the formation of simple chemical elements as works of the devil. He says that reality was created due to the devil playing with a spin top that fell from the sky and started to spin maniacally and to shatter the material homogeneity of what was. He says that's why the world is not reduced to math. There's always some gaps left math can't encompass the whole world because it is imperfect because matter

has in it these vortexes that the devil's spin top has created so math can't really describe the world perfectly that's that's why there is like non-euclidean math afterwards and everything he goes on to redefine god as order and devil as disorder as order tries to reshape the world as to put an end to it and disorder is the normal state of the world. So he will equate God to inhibition. And actually he will only refer to God as inhibition from then on. He will not say God, he will just say inhibition. And for Flusser, this battle against inhibition, which is what he equates to the devil,

can be summarized as lust, which is the libidinal will to break barriers. and even minerals and protoplasm would be lustful as they would have a will to keep existing and keep resisting against non-existence, which would be God in this case. So the development of medicine for Flusser is inspired by the devil. The devil wants us to keep living so we can keep sinning and he will sacrifice the individual for the species and the species for the family and the family for the field and so on as to better facilitate our sinning. The history of the word for flusser is also the history of hunger. This is very interesting.

He says human beings are in the epics of evolution because we develop our neural systems, but because we develop our digestive system. He will say in another book of his, for example, that economy is the management of hunger. we are just distributing hunger through the world and almost all of our activities are motivated by hunger if not literal hunger at least hunger in the sense of a need for consumption life is this gigantic mechanism of gluttony for devouring the earth and spitting techniques and every being seems in house not in praise of the lord but in the praise of hunger that's a citation. He also makes an opposition between eating and yawning, similar to that which Deleuze

will later make about eating and talking. Flusser says we can't yawn if they keep on putting stuff in our mouths. We can never take a break from reality because we have this insistence desire for more. Another point he makes is about political history. He says that Marx and Hegel are glorifiers of the devil because they understood the fundamental transformative aspect of praxis which is a duality between greed and envy. Envy is what reforms society, is what creates myths through competition and elevation of one over the other and greed is what consolidates reforms and creates rituals to the conservation of hierarchies.

For him, you can only act politically by adhering to one of those which are both devilish. Or on the other hand, you can cede to pride and avoid putting yourself at risk, in which case you become a relativist or an enlightened opportunist, which is also a devilish position. So there's no escape from the devil there's only denying your satanic condition in favor of the nothingness of god those are the two options so to summarize for him humans would be this battlefield between the fight there's better if you wear the fight between god and the devil happens we will we will be the most advanced of battlefields in the world where this fight really takes place and the choice between

between God and the devil is the choice between affirming and denying life Fluciru is the side of the devil in this case which he believes is the side of sanity and the sign of language which is articulable reality besides being the side of science philosophy and art as a whole he says his personal sin is pride because he will never shut up humiliation and contriction are the end of the devil, but also the end of the mind because it implies a silence. So he, Flusser, would never go by that road. And to finish it, I would say just that Flusser is a Jew and very interested in Catholicism his whole life. And he has been

very ironic through this whole book. There's a very satirical tone here. And he even says that this philosophy that his philosophy is but a game uh but we shouldn't believe that he's completely dishonest or untrue here uh he really thinks there's something to this concept uh of the devil that should be re-appropriated and extracted to better uses uh he really thinks the devil has been characterized by organized religion and that there's a better way to understand the devil and that we can only become saints by actively practicing sins. And he ends the book with this. Thou shall be lustful without inhibition, be

wrathful without limits, thou shall eat all, envy all, and be greedy. And above all, thou shall be prideful and ever humiliate thyself. And thou shall become sad, and then thou shall reach the glories of salvation. That's it, I guess. Reza? Oh, sorry. I said thank you. Thank you very much. Can I ask the question or should I wait for the respondent and then ask? Let's wait for the respondent. So, yes. Okay. With Flosser. Actually, I just tweeted about this, like, you know, before the class, that he's actually

coming from a very long tradition of German philosophy, which is people usually associated with people like Schelling and stuff or Scheller, but that is not really the case. This is the kind of trend in Germany. He's not German. Sorry? But he's Czech. He's not German. Yes, but you should understand that the Czech were under the influence of the German philosophy back then. Essentially all the Austria-Hungarian empire created a massive amount of influence

for decades to come on those people. Nevertheless, the trend is running long throughout the veins of late 19th century philosophy. This kind of theological vitalism actually was being promoted first by none other than Ludwig, I always forget his name, Ludwig Klages.

I think there is actually a book translated by him in English. It's called Something Philosophy of Life. So within this book, you get a high dose of vitalism, high dose of theology. So, and you can see it, you know, that this kind of trend, this idea of synthesizing vitalism with theology has never perished. It is in fact right before our eyes at this moment.

about new materialism and all that kind of jazz. So what is the idea about this? So within philosophy of life, he talks about something quite interesting. He presents himself, Clagas presents himself, as probably one of the most staunch enemies of enlightenment.

That enlightenment, by definition, is against life. So this is actually why I'm talking about this, because I want to talk about possession. But this is a very curious form of possession. Whereas, for example, among the Assyrians, even for Socrates and ancient Greeks, possession by a daemon, by a genie, by a genie was a gateway to learn the mysteries of cosmos. It was essentially a trigger for

them to disenchant all their roots including God. But after the rise of Christianity, after the Middle Ages and post-enlightenment, the idea of possession a spiritual or a spirit possession was somehow turned 180 degree in the sense that the possessed is actually not that kind of Socratic

adventurist who goes on to disenchants all corners of the universe. It is the loneliest kind. This is what he talks about it. A loneliest kind that finds his peace in the loneliness which is humongous and which is called life. So the task of the possessed here is to not fight nature anymore but just simply to accept it for what it is.

And only through that he can get certain kind of mystical knowledge. So Clankes' debate starts with this idea that since enlightenment, the will to know has become a certain kind of sacrilege against life as such. And this kind of sacrilege against life always tries to poke holes within the organ of God, the realm of mysteries of

nature, the richness of it, it actually makes it impoverished. And to that extent, it is something of the devil. It is something as an impulse against life, right? You can see it even in Schopenhauer. Shetty fucking Schopenhauer. Yeah, Flusser- It's a kind of pessimism. Yeah, Flusser is really influenced by Schopenhauer, but he chooses the other side, you know? Yes, yes. He's more of a Schillerian type, actually, rather than Schopenhauer.

But nevertheless, the trajectory where they come from is the same. they all share the same kind of trigger, same kind of upbringing, philosophical upbringing, so to speak, or theological for that matter. Romulo, I have to ask, Simondon is one of my favorite philosophers and a, I think Bernard Stiegler is an idiot who gets everything wrong in Simondon because he basically bastardizes Simondon with his Heideggerian and Derridianism And Simon Don was utterly incompatible with Heidegger. He thought Heidegger got everything wrong about technology and philosophy. In fact, if Simon Don has any acquaintances, it's really with analytic philosophy and with Francisco Varela, Maturana, Ricardo Oldtribe, Milan Zeleni, the second order cyberneticists.

He really promoted this study of techniques and technology from their specificities. and he was really opposed to this understanding of automatism as an equivalent to you know internal regulatory systems so he and I just finished reading you know individuation which was just translated into English and so I've been spending a lot of time with Simon Don Obviously, Flusser is really, really lauded by media theory in Anglo-speaking world. There's this particular German branch of media theory you're probably familiar with. It was Friedrich Kittler and then the generation after Friedrich Kittler, Thomas Macho, Bernhard Siegert.

And then there's this other guy, Jeffrey Winthrop Young, who's not German, but he also really lauds Flusser. And they sort of brought Flusar back because Flusar at his time was seen as not a very rigorous philosopher. He was actually, you know, sort of seen as a bad philosopher, as a philosopher who was not very making arguments that were very pointed. But then the media theorists, particularly with his work on photography and his work on technologies of recording, thought that there was something important that Flusar had said and gone unrecognized. recognize. But you made a comment and you likened his system to Simon Don. And I don't really know what likelihood, what likeness there is between the two, but I'm willing to, you know, perhaps

be convinced. So I'd like to hear why you see this likeness with Simon Don. Yeah, I think my point is exactly that Flusser is not that philosopher that Germans made of him. He's not the philosopher of materialities of communication. You know, that was just this three last books that got published in German and got recognized. His first books were way more into philosophy of language and philosophy of nature. And yeah, I think the three books you mentioned and that influenced Keith Litter and the rest of the people are post-history and philosophy of the black box and the universe of technical images, right? But he has like this huge and non-translated and like unpublished actually in manuscripts and

and I'm into it because I am really deeply student Flusser where he tries to make these connections with other sciences, with biology, with chemistry, with physics, in a way that I think there's some, some philosophers were trying to make that turn. I think Simondon was one of them and Michel Serres and Flusser maybe, between a sort of no logical speculation about like being in existence to a more rigorous thought on nature and ontology, you know. And I also don't think you can make like, I don't think it's

productive to make this sort of like, oh, Flusser was a Heideggerian at first, then in Heidegger wasn't Simondonian, then Flusser must be Simondonian. Like, philosophy doesn't work that way. You have passages between philosophers, they are not like different teams facing each other. And I think I only have only linked Simon Dant to Flusser because of this. Both of them were like radical phenomenologists influenced and they turned into some sort of theory of nature. nature and Flusser actually I think the discovery of Flusser of a sort of thought about media was really counterproductive for him but yeah I think the comparison with Simondon is more general than

trying to make some sort of philosophical continuity you know. It's interesting about his early works I wasn't familiar and it's probably something that should be shined more light on because you really you're right is known for that latter half of his his literature and really known through the lens of secondary writers. Obviously, you're right about the bit about Heidegger and that comparison. The real thing I just meant to say, and I'll just leave my last comment, is that for Simon Don to understand techniques, to understand utensils, instruments, technologies, and systems theory writ large through the relational status and how they're networked is, is incorrect, like understanding techniques through their relations is incorrect.

That we shouldn't enumerate technical objects like the way that Heidegger describes the hut in the black forest or the tractor in the field. For Simondon, we have to oppose the reduction of sciences to technical objects where scientific knowledge actually merges with techniques as they fail to harmonize. Maybe we are a little bit going off tangent here. Well, that was my last question. Maybe I should take the mantle. Coming back to this presentation and the idea of spirit possession or demonic possession, as I mentioned, that there is a fundamental shift from earlier times

either in the Athenian society or among the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, to post-Christianity, particularly post-Enlightenment Christianity, namely a Christianity which is utterly conceived in reaction to Enlightenment. And Clagas is a distillation. Clagas' philosophy of life is a distillation of this kind of particular Christian philosophy, which is, you can see it in all sorts of anti-Promethean knee-jerk reactionism in today's philosophy.

one of i if i remember correctly one of the most striking sentences in that book is that that which is contained as distant is sacred to reach for that which is distant is demonic. So you see that enlightenment's inquisitive power now becomes tantamount to the force of the demonic. But through a twist,

so Clarius says that some reader should ask me what do I know about life that I can basically say that those who are doing this and that are against life as if the idea of life has come to me given to me as a whole and then he replies yes that the idea of life only comes to a person

to a deity as a whole to live the experience of life itself so you see it's just like utter religious Shetsha here. At the same time, he's trying to demonize enlightenment's impulse for disenchantment of all life. Namely, the exploration of that which is distant in his own vocabulary. And at the

other time he succumbed to a different kind of a demonic principle that the idea of life cannot be learned but can only be received as a whole to a deity through a life experience if this is not fucking demonic then what the fuck is it it. These are nice contradictions within these kinds of battle between this kind of theological vitalism, which is just goddamn organized religion, Catholicism par excellence, to to be honest with you, and the cruscating core of enlightenment.

Burn down all that is holy. So this becomes a different ethical question for us in terms of demonic possession. While in the past few sessions we were talking about individual ethics, now the question converges upon a different goal or trajectory, which is that of Prometheanism and vitalism, and vitalism, conceived in a theological sense, that which disenchants

and disenchantment is not equal to nihilism, by the way, that which disenchants all mysteries mysteries of life and selfhood and that which retains all mysteries by way of a deity which is another basically phrase for demonic possession. Essentially, in all these narratives, whether you are pro-enlightenment or anti-enlightenment, you are still possessed by a demon.

It's just that, what kind of demon is it? And where does it come from? How does it reveal itself to you? and what demands of you. Another thing is that Klygas has this really strange, almost cryptic, name for enlightenment, for disenchanting all mysteries of self and nature,

which is the core idea of enlightenment. He calls it the terrible symbol. The terrible symbol in the sense that what you get in Christian or monotheistic scenes of crucifixions of martyrdom so on so forth that it always beckons certain kind of tragedy for this species who have not

acquainted themselves with humbleness epistemological and pragmatic humbleness that for claggers is the very idea of the demonic in the new christian post-enlightenment sense the demonic becomes equated with that which has no foresight and even if had a foresight it still goes on and carries its job. That's a demon, that's what a demon is for Claggis, just like enlightenment.

Enlightenment knows that nature is such a brute. Nevertheless, enlightenment is brave enough, Promethean enough to go and interfere with nature at all costs, at all costs within its own ethical tradition, not free cost. So it seems that post- enlightenment, two different kinds of ethics, two different kinds of demonology, emerge. Broadly you can bunch them together into pro-enlightenment and anti-enlightenment.

Let's hear the response before we move forward and then we will have a break. Okay. So I'm not that familiar with, with Cluster, but I found the text quite interesting and it kind of, I'll very briefly try to sketch out the kind of problematic that I covers. That's all you need to know. I haven't even seen many of the covers. But yeah, I'll just try to sketch out some problems that have been kind of making me

think and see what you guys can continue about that. First, that impression about his approach that Homolu described, I think is important and I agree that he has a kind of playful non- his approach is not worried about any kind of corrections, kind of like he's doing a thought experiment and trying to just see where that leads. It's kind of a pragmatist approach to philosophy, I guess. And the way he's going about these theological themes

sound in a way quite simplified, I think. He's ignoring the fact that there's a whole theological discussion and different bifurcating traditions around all of those themes and he's kind of narrowing it down to God being a very simple principle and the devil being another one. But in any case, it still points to something that I think is important, which is that political theology or theology in general appears as a politics of time, as a politics over the organization of time.

And in that sense, God and monotheism seem to emerge as this gesture or this apparatus that allows for the straightening up of time, that makes it possible to think of time as a straight line that is moving forwards, or even if it's not moving forwards, it is being pulled back from this forward movement on the straight line, right? You get out of like circular time or any other alternative conception of time that you would have into this,

into variations of this straight chronology. And in that sense, whether you're with God or you're with the devil seems to be not the most fundamental division or not the most essential chrono-political fight that you could think about, because in any case they are already in agreement over one basic thing, which is this linear structuring of time. One question here for you before I forget. I agree with you

but if we think about the problem of devil and God evil and good in the ancient sense or in the post-enlightenment Christian sense then how can we say that enlightenment is essentially I'm not saying historically born, is actually dependent on the time context. Wouldn't that be itself a theological assumption?

For enlightenment to be dependent on a temporal context? Unachronological time, yes. Which is, which for Calagas is the devil itself. Yes. Yeah. That wouldn't be, it wouldn't be saying something like that. Wouldn't be just the very idea of theology itself that tries to diffuse the challenge rather than taking it. I'll try to connect to that as I go on. because otherwise I think I'll get like messed up, but I think I get the question. So, I was thinking about Schmidt's conception of like the Catholic political theology,

which for him is based on the catacomb that is holding back the end of time. So, in this specific version of the monotheistic theological theology, it's not about ending time like in Plusser's case, would be the role of God, the final absolute, but rather the Catholic political theology would be trying to hold, I think that's in Paul's writings, it's kind of holding back the arrival of the Antichrist,

which is going to arrive first and bring about the eschaton, and then you have the end of times. but you're not supposed to try to accelerate that. And then it seems in other Christian traditions, you have different organization of that. And even like, I'm not sure I understood that text because it's a really complicated one. But in your text that came out in Collapse Reza about the Islamic mystical chrono-theal politics, that also seems like yet another different way in which you can organize this politics of time.

So the role that, what I'm trying to say in relation to this text, is that the role of the devil seems to be completely subjugated to this fundamental monotheistic. you have to believe in God. Yes, that's the greatest point. Essentially, the devil becomes parasitic upon God's notion of time. Yeah, and then this enlightened gesture seems to be simply a reversal of that, in which you're taking the side of the devil and of history. But is it really enlightenment simply a reaction to this, what you might call? Yeah, so what you were asking is like, if you're trying to say that it's contingent on this,

is that what you were asking before? Yes, essentially my question would be, isn't it the whole trick, a post-enlightenment Christianity to make all sorts of devils parasitic upon God and hence enlightenment becomes parasitic upon the notion of the end of history or the end of time in the religious context yeah that's what I feel is the case and so what I would like to ask to wrap it up is like whether it is really necessary in order to have a rationalist project or a project of knowledge,

if you need this fundamental structure of time, which allows, for example, for the kind of Hegelian timeline in which you can keep subsuming the material resistances that you can then interpret as devils that are going to trigger new gestures of opening up and incorporation of more and more knowledge in a way that kind of moves towards this consolidation of spirit, or whether there is an alternative to that in a different temporality

where you would accept that idea that the truth of the devil is that he's not real, that he doesn't exist, because if the devil is legion, then there is no one devil and the truth of legion is that there is no god so yes absolutely could you could you have a still could you still have a a hope for for knowledge in any kind of relative sense yes i would say back into a bad version of like new materialist holy atheism vitalism that's that's what i would like to ask yes i i would say that you know when we are dealing with for example the early anthropological cases of demon possessions or spirit possessions

uh the case as you said um um is a legion you know uh that there is no god and there is no devil it's just the legion and what is the legion legion is just simply for early anthropological cases of demonology sorry what cases like okay okay for example think about north africa within sudanese tribes like for example vincent crepanzano with his friend, has written, I think, the most classic book on a spirit possession that

deals with ancient societies from North Africa to Middle East. One good example of that are, I've forgotten the name of the tribes, but I think it's the Sudanese tribes, which is actually kind of very Assyrian and also, no, Babylonian in the spirit. That they don't believe in any source of these kinds of stuff, like God and devil, so on and so forth. They only believe in self. is not being taken as a property of nature, as if it is fixed. It is something that is

as a foot in the mundane realm of the earth and as a foot in the realm of the beyond. And to that extent, the cases of a spirit possession for them are treated as if, in a counterfactual sense, because self for them is also counterfactual, as if these experiences can lead them to some other realms of self. Those outer rims of selves which were distant, yet could be discovered and navigated.

If this is not really a kind of anthropological example of the core idea of enlightenment, then what is it? Because that is precisely what enlightenment tries to do, not within the realm of myth, but in the realm of actual science, in the sense that, for example, Clagas. So the reason that I mentioned first of all Clagas is precisely because Phyllosa comes from this tradition that's number one so cligus uh has this idea that is this a connection you made between cligus and flusser or i because i tried to find this online and maybe i just don't know

the text but if you have a good place to point to this i would oh if you want to write if uh well there is no actual thing being written but his influence on all sorts of European vitalism was utterly unbelievable. It was a Graham Harman and Timothy Morton of his own age. I can actually, one second, let me, there is I mean is this vitalism like Bergson or because I just don't know but I know Bergson Bergson vitalism is actually not vitalism as we

have talked about you know in the kind of way that Ray you're muted Reza we've lost yeah I would just say to Antonio that can you hear me yeah I said that no this is actually not Berksonian vitalism if you could tell the difference between Clagas and Berkson because I personally I think a few of us don't really know Clagas but we probably know Berkson

Yes. Well, I said that Kligas is like, imagine Graham Harmon and Timothy Morton living in the 19th century, right? And they have their own fantastic trends back then, but then suddenly everyone forgets about them. So this is Clagas' legacy. He was an extremely trendy philosopher for a very long time. What is this picture of, I mean, Bergson's vitalism is what, like biology and other animals, they have like, Yes, that kind of, so essentially, Bergson's vitalism is kind of post transcendental philosophy vitalism, right?

That is informed by the transcendental method, memory, time, so on and so forth. And the limits of science of his time. Of course, science of his time. Yes, yes. But the thing with this kind of vitalism, with Clague's vitalism, it is essentially vitalism par excellence. It's the kind of vitalism that, for example, Ray Brésier usually admonishes in every piece that he writes. That's Clague's vitalism. Clague's vitalism is essentially theologically its nature that understanding or the epistemic impulse of enlightenment

cannot deal with the mysteries of life and in fact is against them So would it be fair to say like in Bergson vitalism is something inherent but with Kligas it's given from another that vital source is given from an ulterior source whether it's God whether it's whatever nature yes yeah it's the myth of the given yes yes absolutely absolutely this is why I brought Kligas because I didn't want to bring Bergson, the more you read Bergson, the more you see that he is not that kind of person that

you want to call a vitalist in a bad sense. You know, he's a critical vitalist. Whereas Clogus is actually like that kind of shit person that gets the butcher of Beirut on his hands. I.e. Dr. Ray Brzee. Is it closer to or something like that? Kind of. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's obvious. There's this line between Berkson and Sellars. Berkson really influenced Roy Wood Sellars

and some of that even relationship. No, no, no. To be honest with you, Bergson, you know, sure, Bergson, any French philosopher who is being read by other French philosophers, that's just recipe for disaster from a philosophical point of view. But if you actually ask some really respectable people, not French people, read Berkson, Berkson would be actually come off as a very, very good philosopher, to be honest with you. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the analytic philosophers of the time went to France and researched

with Bergson at the time. I mean, this is the generation right before pragmatism, or right before the rebirth of pragmatism with Sellars. And Sellars' father, having studied with Bergson, definitely has a trickle-down effect that Carl Sachs, and even in Daniel Saquiloto's book, he talks about this a little bit, but Carl Sachs is the real guy. I don't want to hear about that on my class. Fabio has the letters. They've never been published between father and son, between Roy Wood and Wilford Sellers. But yes, to be honest with you, you see, yes, that, so coming back without going off tangents, the idea of demon,

the way that we are talking about it today, and we should take it seriously, because the idea of, as we have talked about it, the idea of demons, having demons, defilement, guilt, sin are absolutely historical. They are not driven by certain kind of teleological idea of time but they are historical. You can't ignore that from an anthropological sense, from a scientific sense, so on so forth. So we are coming to this conjunction to this intersection where the problem of demon becomes simply as Cligas talks about it.

And by the way, Cligas is a really good philosopher. I mean, don't let me discourage you to not read him. You should read him. He's really great. it comes to this understanding to decide here that the demon is the function of pure understanding and God is that which lies beyond beyond pure understanding. Let me read this part for you. Two.

In a storm a horde of daemons rides the clouds for the understanding. It is floating moisture soullessly and mechanically following the calculable mechanism of the air flows. One is tempted to think here of the change in the worldview depicted in another great poem by Schiller, the Gods of Greece. Then after this paragraph, he says that what

So, Calagas uses this word frequently in his work, reification. Reification not in the sense that we usually know in the canon of philosophy, but reification in the sense that something that is abstract, perhaps not even abstract, that is beyond the purview of knowledge can be seized by certain kind of measurements and calculations. So he then continues, whatever is reified

can be brought into the proximity of the clearest possible vision and hence to grasp or to conceive and to seize. So he equates the function of understanding with seizing, like a demon, like a demon that seizes the person's individuality, the free will, the live experience of him. He says, whatever is reified can be brought into the proximity of the clearest possible vision, and hence to grasp. and to seize are used to express the function of the understanding, while the touching of sacred images was used in earlier times

to describe an act of sacrilege towards sacred images. So, this is a good encapsulation of how he sees the core of enlightenment as a demonic problem, demonic possession. It tries to seize nature, the mysteries, that which is distant. It tries to shortcut that distance or basically navigates the distance to the beyond. Questions, answers. Dushnam? Damn it. Sorry, I just spoke Farsi.

I was gonna say to Zer that I don't think that necessarily this the Fusarian position needs a god and actually at the end of the book it's kind of trying to figure out how the type of philosophy would work without a god. and that's where Buddhism gets into the picture, like Buddhism is this non-theistic religion, right? You see, one thing that is actually, this is actually when I read the philosopher piece and thought about your presentation as I was getting some orange juice for myself.

I noticed that this is exactly the reaction of post-enlightenment Christianity to Buddhism, the reappropriation of Buddhism among the late German idealist crowds. So there is no of God, right, in the kind of organized religion sense, right? But then there is also a God. What kind of God is it? It's the God of distance. The God of repose. The God of loneliness. Being one in the universe. Which I

fucking hate, by the way. no don't don't don't let me do this encourage you i mean as a teacher i should actually say my opinions about matters but that doesn't mean that i don't respect them yeah but and i also think that maybe the organized religions and monotheistic religions in special, they were trying to also do a job of like, we have this ref in ourselves, let's flusser, right? We have this ref in ourselves that we have like this reserve of ref that we are trying to manage. And they offered like a way out this time, this time

structure that ends in, it ends in an apocalypse and in, which is the same, which is the same with the singularity. I think it's like a way out of this. Mysterianism, Mysterianism, Mysterianism. Yes, of course. Or messianism. Yes, absolutely. And the thing is that you should pay attention to the fact that majority of the philosophers, European philosophers, who came out of that era, whether analytic or continental, a certain kind of affinity with Buddhism.

And you see, the idea of Buddhism, when people talk about Buddhism, Buddhism is just an umbrella term. You know, Buddhism comes in way different kinds of things. But the majority of people actually see something good in Buddhism because they are goddamn racists. There are good examples of that in analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. people who promoted Buddhism precisely because they saw a certain kind of, I wouldn't say Heideggerian, but post-Heideggerian reprieve

from the historical struggle that modern times demands. To live with demon is not something that you can forget or you can put as a side mission. It is your actual mission as Dostoevsky and hegel saw it any sort of resolution to living with your own demons individually or collectively i would say is just a bankrupt religious recipe and nothing more are you talking about logic and buddhism like grand priests work because i mean no no no no no

no grand priest is coming way too late in this circle no actually i'm talking about for example another good example as i mentioned to you uh is john finley John Finlay's works on Buddhism, one of the greatest analytic philosophers of all time. And yes, John Finlay… Were they influenced by this? Like do you think that Buddhism influenced their philosophies or do you think they were just interested… No, no, no, no. that orientalist you know the same thing that all these artists who like the you've seen it in paintings of course where there's like motifs used from

no no no i don't think it was just appropriation of buddhism no no these people actually knew buddhism quite well but as i said buddhism is just an ungradable term for a very diverse set of beliefs and ideologies. When you read some of the Buddhist texts, they are actually quite on arianistic nationalism. And you can't simply just say that, oh, you know, they are basically

talking about nirvana and peacefulness and dissolution of self. No, no, no, no, no. This This is why this seminar is all about this. The disillusion of self, to say that I don't have a self, is just a stupid idea. Any person who says that should be shot point blank or sent to the mungulax. I think I prefer the second one, of course, mungulax, because I'm not really pro-killing people. Precisely because you should understand the historical context of where Buddhism came from.

Just like Zoroastrianism. These are, there is a reason that Nietzsche sees an evil in Zarathustra. That is probably the greatest detective work Nietzsche and Uncle Frederick ever made. Zarathustra is an evil man. The same thing with Buddha. It's just that you can't simply take ideas, as Nietzsche said, for what they appear to

be. Like the solution of self. Well, sure, it really looks great, you know. I want to be one with the universe. But do you actually know how it goes through the cycle of the history? Well, it goes through goddamn fucking Arianism. Look at the state of India today. Is there any sort of Asian mob mentality that is not Indian at its core?

People usually, Westerners, always belittle Chinese as materialist, as vermin, so on so forth. And they do glorify the Indian society, the Indian ideology. But have you actually been there? Do you know what kind of nationalism is brewing in that country? The same thing about Iran. Modi is pretty bad. I mean, Modi is like...

I'm not talking about Modi. Modi is just like a goddamn stupid example of that. But I think the parallel you're talking about is like militarism. Like the history is part and parcel of the militarism that's in both Iran and India sort of resulted in this upflow, right? Like both in Iran and India, there's this... Then, like Nietzsche, you should ask yourself, why is that? You know, I think that Nietzsche really pinned it down. Like it was a nail to the coffin of organized monotheism. It's in the sense that, okay, you say that we invented Zoroastrianism, you know, it's

the religion of good thought and good practice, right? And then Indians say that we invented Buddhism, so on and so forth. But then how the fuck, really, I want to know, Nietzsche asks, such religions managed to become inseparable part of your nationalistic creed and your sense of morality. You should understand that Nietzsche's transvaluation critique was not in fact a response to morality

as such or ethics in fact it was an ethical response to a morality which was unchecked in a historical sense precisely because people took it as a cultural export import stuff. The same thing is here with Christianity, with Islam, with the idea of what is itself, so on and so forth. Should we take a break?

Sure. should we stop recording? No, it's not advisable that we stop recording because then it's framed into two pieces and it's much more difficult to montage it after the seminar. Which means I can't talk about... After the session. After the session. Reza, I was just reading the letters between Roy Wood Sellers and Wilfred Sellers. And it's really interesting that Wilfred Sellers mentions Bataille in a lot of his letters and he sends like his father manuscripts

that Bataille is working on. You know that basically Sellers absolutely did not know what his father was working on. He just even didn't know. He wasn't even interested. So he went to Oxford and Cambridge. After that, he took a journey into France. He met French philosophers, became acquainted with the French scene of the time, continental reality. then he came back home and he read the manuscripts of his father Roy Sellers

and that's when he thought that oh shit my father is a goddamn fucking philosopher well yeah France was where he was like initially introduced to philosophy Wilfred the son that's the first place where he like and in his diary he like talks about reading Marx for the first time at the Collège des... That's why I hate cellars. Any person, any person who learns philosophy through the French channel is suspicious to begin with. I mean, he's a kid. He's in middle school. You can't get mad at the guy for what he did when he was a little kid.

He studied at like, you know, one of the best, best middle schools in France, where they were learning what, you know, people now learn at undergraduate philosophy classes. Yeah. Yes. No, I know. France has one thing. I don't know about Iran, but like in Turkey, we do not learn philosophy in middle school or high school. No, no, there is no philosophy in Iran school. No, zero, zero, zero. Like I have not read Plato, maybe a bit of Plato. This is what I actually always say. I think the downfall of French philosophy precisely because everyone thinks that he or she is a philosopher.

No, that creates a certain kind of lax behavior, lax attitude toward philosophy. Whereas in Middle East, precisely because there is a lack of philosophical education, you take philosophy seriously. You know that it is the very idea between living and dying. You can be executed, you can be imprisoned, but not just that. It is simply the idea of intellectual survivalism. That kind of intellectual survivalism is the impetus to the blossoming of philosophy.

Whereas with French, if philosophy is everywhere, then you know what it looks like to me? It's just like when you watch some sort of Hollywood movie and everyone say that, hey, we are artists too. I don't know. I kind of would have liked to have been able to read philosophy in middle school and high school, though. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. You're just a disgrace now. I mean, it's obviously like, you know, a dream. It's not realistic. I don't think that in the Middle East we're ever going to even have that.

No, the best way is the barbarian way. Bring yourself up. Treat philosophy as it's a scarce resource and nothing more. And that's how you become a philosopher. Otherwise, if philosopher was just birdseed, thrown around all over the garden, who is interested in fine philosophy? That's why French philosophy is not interested. I have a good counter argument. we would have less war we would have better politics overall and we would have more ethical

society if we all learned how to philosophy philosophically approach problems at a younger age instead of other doctrines in the west the doctrine of capital and in the middle east the doctrine of religion i can't i can't think if everyone had a rationalist platform from a young age no one is going to have a rationalist platform this is why you have generals you have philosophers you have con men in the government so on so forth because these things are not the same well i'm not saying they are the same but i'm saying and also i don't think okay according according to your logic why is that the goddamn fucking french empire every goddamn time lost its

war because they're schizophrenic they are also catholics like they're they're not philosophically reared in a pure sense you are now but i think they're onto something i think they're onto something that could be modeled after and then perfected which is teaching yes they are at a younger age they are onto something they are onto making good french fries okay um i mean i i just think that if we all learned basic philosophy and then learned a bit more philosophy from like a young age to middle school age and by high school we were actually reading political treaties and pragmatism by the time that we were a voting age we wouldn't have less ignorant society we would

have less people you know today out in the streets protesting coronavirus and making these silly decisions. No, I would say that the real education comes with this idea that, okay, let's start with this. Educate people in the great political treatises, Marx, Engels, Rosso, so on and so forth, as they move forward. it. Also educate them with algorithms, programming, so they love mathematics and computation. After that, show them the way of tool making, engineering. I don't think that any of that

kind of French jazz can make a better population. was actually more so in the German gymnasiums as you're probably aware all those guys from Kant onwards they read philosophy in high school then the gymnasium was constructed around mathematics science and philosophy as part of not just really high school yes yeah German no German education was in Germany it's really a big part of French yes anymore no no actually German German education was fundamentally more revolutionary, precisely because you see the French, yes they have a philosophy of education, you know, Rousseau is a good example,

but they did not have a pragmatic philosophy of education. Russians have it, Germans have it, but not French. Really, they did not have a pragmatic philosophy of education, such that, for example, methodologically, if you're dealing with a child, what kind of toys are you going to put forward? What kind of lessons are you going to give this child? They did not have that kind of stuff. They had the grand ideas, but they didn't have the engineering insight into that. Reza, I have a question. Is there a place for literature in your educational

constellation, I would say? Or did they just mess everything up you just taught in other courses? it is the case right I would say that if you actually started with Tintin yes I'm all for it okay Reza we're already taught philosophy at a young age but we're taught sort of a stupid base philosophy of you do good to others because that's the good thing to do you know like think about when we were in elementary school and we threw toys at one another and we were told you're doing something bad i mean this is already philosophy but it's a

crude bastard philosophy yes escape the top so why not from a younger age have more rigor like pedagogy a political philosophy ethical philosophy the categorical imperative thoughts to kids and more rigor will allow for a better society, I think. That's what we really want to do, right? New Center wants to create a place, a forum for better people. You see, this is this thing as Witagowski understood this. And Witagowski was one of the greatest educators of all time, perhaps even more than Tolstoy. Witagowski understood this idea that you cannot give big ideas to children. Turing also had this idea in Intelligent Machinery,

his unpublished essay, where you can't simply give or expect a young computer or a young child to perform such tasks. It takes time. You can't simply at an elementary level tell them this or that or enlighten them. Enlightenment is not something that comes as a whole. It comes in degrees and it's a toilsome endeavor. Either this or there is no education. failed revolution. Also I don't think that the organ you use to think about

ethics is like your brain I think the organ is your life you're you're using your life in your practical experience as a frame for how can you take the brain out of life your brain is active in every moment I mean it's not what do mean you your brain is always in use i don't say i just saying that it's not like a pure intellectual pursuit a pursuit of ethics you have to actually like live it live it and like face the consequences you're always living i mean kids are living kids are in the classroom yes kids are living but they are not you see the idea of lived experience as has become trendy these days It's not that you are just living, it's just that you have the epistemic means, as our

friend said, to deal or recognize the consequences of your life or your life actions. And that's a different thing. Not every person can actually live with the consequences of his actions. What is most important, as Carnot had said it, is a logical status of experience. And what is the logical status of experience, life experience?

To understand and to deal with the consequences of our actions and what they logically mean for ethics and for our experience. Questions, stuff, Asya has been utterly silent, Sophie, silent, Shipley, oh so many. So Reza then everyone should come up with it with their own method how to

deal with these experiences. Sophie I'm not going to reply if you not turn on your video. Yeah I can't because of my, I have such a bad connection. Oh maybe you haven't got the latest haircuts because of the coronavirus. Sure. Okay. Would you be able to repeat the question? I don't know. When you talk about the experience and life, so it's a way to choose a method how to navigate these consequences and the reactions every time anew? Or is it, I mean, from where- So you see, essentially, the problem that we have been talking about, the problem of

demons, which are the limit conditions of the cell, which ought to be navigated, and that's what ethics demands from you. It's not simply comes down to your methodological choices, your individual choices. It is actually something more struggling and toilsome in the sense that if the self is generated by the collective, by the others, then in order to deal with experiences of

life individually and collectively, we can no longer go back to the individual core or the individual methods or the individual choices but we should negotiate or renegotiate the kinds of choices and methods that the individual makes and the kinds of contexts that the collective

to you. So I don't want what I just said to be taken as a libertarian recipe for individualism. Now, many people might love to go back to some sort of Wild West fantasy of libertarianism, outlaws, Red Dead Redemption 2, which I absolutely love by the way.

But that's not how it works. The ultimate recipe is that if we can't revolutionize our society such that there would be a different level of collective consciousness. The kind of individual choices and methods that we get are always inferior. So that's catch 22. How are you going to come up with better individual

choices, if your choices are contingent upon the collective and also the collective is contingent upon a set of individual choices. Well, I think the answer to this, the vague answer to this, is two things, ethics and education. Anything other than that is going to fail. politics, individually or collectively, always will fail as long as there is no education

in this kind of cybernetic positive feedback between the individual and the collective. That's what I was saying, by the way, as far as that education process beginning at a young age. Cute. The way that you are putting your hair away. okay my dear friends i have to get a haircut finally oh my god you're going to the barber

no the barber is coming to me you're you're chris or no no no actual barber so do you think that covid is over or do you think there's going to be a second wave are you kidding me this is not going to go away at all so you think there's going to be a second wave soon or it's going to take like six months and that's going to be real i i can't predict about the time frame but absolutely yeah as long as there is no vaccine it's going to be a recurring nightmare yeah but hey i want my haircut at this point

okay questions ideas can we read nietzsche for next time since we kind of already started talking about start to stuff what what is the syllabus uh thingy um i think it's nature i think it's okay Nietzsche, Nietzsche. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. I want to. Does any of you know about the connection between Jung and Nietzsche? No?

So Jung actually, after his breakup with Uncle Freud, he became extremely Nietzschean. The idea that throttled him forward was what you might call to be the problem of the Self. One Self versus multiple Self.

So essentially what we have been talking about, the problem of the demonic. So the multiple self in canonical religion is usually that of the demonic. But Jung was not what you might call to be a kind of demonologist or anti-religious person. He was actually quite a very religious person in his own way. So Jung, like Nietzsche, kind of twisted the formula that whereas in organized religion

to descend from the one self to the multiple is a sin, is a devilish, demonic sin, for For Jung and Nietzsche it becomes something of a religious ecstasy, ecstasia in the Greek sense. He says something, I can't remember, is it in the red notebook or in the brown notebook, where he says that to descend from a single self to the multiple self is akin to the idea

of Odysseus, katabasis, descent into the netherworld. To descend in the netherworld, you navigate yourself through the multiple and then you come back. But what you are, after coming back, after climbing up, is not that kind of self that you were. are fundamentally different. So there is, as you have already noticed, with these stories

about demonic possession, so on and so forth, there comes also the story of schizophrenia. versus multiple thoughts as just in terms of this if we do jump ahead to Nietzsche we will circle back to Augustine, Plotinus, Spinoza, all of the stuff that sort of was intermediary steps of the syllabus, correct? I thought that actually before we were going to

go to Nietzsche, we were going to go to, you know, all those people. Nietzsche is supposed to be weeks out, but I don't really care what order we do it in, so long as we also cover that material. yeah i was just oh why oh i remember that so it's just nietzsche by way of zarathostra right not nietzsche as nietzsche yeah yeah that's it oh jesus okay yes yes don't worry yeah yeah but i guess we are we all i guess we already jumped way ahead with the other vita last time that was supposed to be next time so we already fucked up the order by the way have you any of you read the book of art of iraq

yes yeah we all read it didn't we and then talked about it last week portions portions at the very least were talked about last week and what do you think about his vision of hell in terms of its architectonics or in terms of the way that he organized architectonics is a good way to put it yes it's extremely similar to what dante would ultimately use architectonically but much smaller. Much smaller, yes, but the thing is that the book of Ayadavirath actually paved the road for any sort of monotheistic religion idea of hell.

Yeah, makes sense. The curious thing is at the bottom of the funnel in Dante, he's got Satan embedded in ice, whereas at the bottom of the funnel in Ardaviraf he's in the hottest darkest part you know which is a little bit more geologically accurate. Yes there is actually some fun text being written on Ardaviraf the book of Adabiraf about the thermodynamics of hell. How can this kind of hell maintain its high temperature?

Yeah, it has to be a closed system. It's a closed system, yes. Which is of course very theological at the end of the day. You know, hell is a very closed system. Or it has to be shrinking. Or it should be shrinking ever, yes. Which actually does correspond to the change in the measurement of the qubit. He says that it's just over a thousand cubits. And the cubit actually did contract over time, so maybe maybe hell went with it. Okay. If stories, questions, oh yes, yes please.

If session five was supposed to be from Avastad to the book of Arvir Raf and we all already went through the Arvir Raf and maybe we could I know there's not a specific text on the syllabus on the Avastad or from the Avastad but maybe we could go into that. Yes sure do you have a suggestion how we should move forward with that. Well, on the same website as the text came from, there's also loads of material from the Vesta, but I have no overview of that book at all, so I'm not going to pick what to read.

I mean, I shouldn't be the one deciding if we're actually going to... Okay, how about this? I actually have a good suggestion. Not sure if it is on the same website or not, but definitely you can find it. The book of Vendita, the book of anti-demon. Sweet. It is absolutely one of the most influential texts in the rise of organized religions fight against so-called

demons by way of idealizations of demons. What was the name, Miguel? Vendid. V-E-N-D-I-D. I think. No, no, no. Sorry. V-E-N-D-A-D. Vendid. Vendid simply means the book of anti-demons. I assume we're going to talk about explicitly about your favorite one,

right? Out of Vendidat, Mother of Abba Mnush. The Rouge, Nasu. Yeah. The almighty one. May the Rouge. Save us all. Yes. This text is actually quite striking. in its power and its influence throughout the history. Truly one of the most mythical and also at the same time religious texts.

Thank you. When Daruj Nasu descends through the northeast wind, she descends upon the foulest kafastra, i.e pests.

So for next week, what are we, what's the program? I just want to make sure that we've got this down. Okay, everyone is wants to go back to a little bit of Zoroastrianism stuff, so why not? So we're doing a plus spike? So it's Vendidot, Nietzsche, and that's it, I think. Did we choose who's responding and who's reading? Yeah, who is going to be? I mean, is it the whole Vendidad, it's like 200 pages or so? Actually, more than 200 pages.

Well, you can just summarize 10 pages. How about that? Be fair, 50 pages. No, no, no. That's too easy. That's just rude. 100 is rude, 50 is fair. 20 pages maximum who's going to be the victim uh yeah i can do a presentation if you want super fantastic and who's going to be replying to that Sophie is that you? No but I can't I go later

These Germans always follow Okay I'll reply Super I just read this weekend about Bruno burned at this it's crazy the poor guy good Neapolitan or at least from Campania the thing are we talking about heresy arcs here kind of yes you should understand the harris uarks from historical context

are exactly what civilization calls the barbarian How many of you have read Carlo Ginzburg, Cheese and War? So you know that what actually sealed his fate was nothing but that simple verse.

World was made out of corruption. Of course he was talking in his cheese making business. Okay guys, I don't want to see you. I have actually a very, very necessary mission to perform right now.

Reza's going to go read Agamben. Yeah, playing Red Dead Redemption 2. Thank you very much. I think you can learn more about the world playing Red Dead than reading Agamben. Yes, that is absolutely true. You see the thing that... You can play and take a haircut at the same time. Sorry? You're gonna get a haircut, what? I think that's just too much. The thing of people meeting on Red Dead Redemption instead of Zoom, that's like the new thing, and it actually seems to be going quite well. Yes, I read about this. I read about this actually, like, I think like two or three weeks ago.

uh is this real thing i mean i'm sure it is i don't know yeah i mean people get people were saying that i mean the majority of the people who actually love red dead redemption are no libertarians you know you know kind of like oh yeah we have it kind of good that you meet them on red dead redemption because when you get really pissed off you can just kill them you can't do that yeah i mean playing online is supposed to be really difficult like what playing online is supposed to be really difficult because you have yeah because there's basically essentially the online playing uh i i don't generally go there it's just essentially there are uh griefers

a lot of them that you know you just want to go to the street and buy a set of clothes and they say why not kill you that's fucking online gaming is you know essentially psychopathy to its ultimate degree can i please play this game well you're supposed to also have an intimate relationship with Arthur and then everybody has their own Arthur just ruins it you know no but I I really don't care about Arthur but to be honest with the game is absolutely majestic I mean people saying that oh you know you should play you know a journey a bunch of

shit obscure video games. It's just like when people tell me that, oh, why don't you watch this obscure Godard movie? No, why do I fuck need to watch this Godard movie when there is this fantastic blockbuster movie in my neighborhood? okay my comrades enjoy bye have a good week reza love you and take care oh bye bye

Thank you.