Humanism & Its Discontents (Session 2)

Hello and welcome to your second session of this seminar, Humanism and its Discontent, and its Discontent, with Professor Reza Negaristani. So please Reza. Thank you everyone. My apologies for delay today. So we are continuing with the same topic, namely Kant's problematization of the question of what is the human. And then moving forward a little bit to this whole idea of philosophical anthropology very briefly toward the end. In the next session, we start in earnest reading Foucault and Althusser once.

then we move it from there. Now I always say that the last session is conclusive remark, but that's just like another cheating way to say that that's basically going to be continued to the last session because we are beyond already. So presentation. um okay sorry that's us i'm sorry i was just making coffee real quick um no no no worries

No worries. Take your time. And I said, see, some people have wore some snazzy t-shirts. CCRU t-shirts. Do we have Sean? Sean, are you here? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm here. All right. All right. Let's go. Let's go. So do I share my screen for the slides? Yes. Perfect. You can already share it. okay let's go okay so me and sean we didn't have we didn't really get anyone else on board so it's just us two presenting uh michelle foucault's introduction to kant's anthropology from a pragmatic point of view

i read the spanish translation and it has a very good introductory uh really brief introductory I say so I'm just going to go ahead give us some context give us some quick ideas and then Sean is going to take over for the second part. So to really to connect this with the last session we had in the seminar we have first three of cons cons three modes like axial questions that guide us critical project so Number one is how can I know, which is the epistemic question. Number two is how should I act, which is the moral or the ethic question. And then number three is what can I expect, which is a question regarding the ability to judge or to discern.

And then fourth, we have what is man, which is what we saw last time. And man here is put with the word man rather than human for a very specific reason. and is that, I'm going to jump to the next slide, and is that we have, we've arranged here a list of relevant publications to the text we saw, to Foucault's introduction to Kant's anthropology. So, number one, we have here a very pre-critical work by Kant, Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. And that's where Kant starts, hints, not very explicitly, but implicitly at the idea of man and to the question regarding what is man.

and man rather than human because he makes a very very explicit distinction between men and women so he's i don't think it's a very good book in the sense that it wouldn't hold up to khan's critical exam regarding how do we know because it's it's just a pre-critical work uh and he like essentializes the genders so given his previous assessments of man that's why the question for Kant would be what is man rather than what is human for us it would obviously be what is human but we're just setting it in historical context here so that's from this pre-critical works and then we get to the critical period with the critical reason with Sean is going to give us

more about first and second edition and then the second and third critique then when we get to 1798 this is when we have uh the publication of khan's anthropology and then in that same year interestingly enough there's a second book i'm not sure if it's prior or after but it's the same year called conflict of faculties which we're going to see in a little bit and then that's So let's say that's before the 19th century and then prior 20th century. I just put here two of Heidegger's texts, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, and then an essay included in this collection called The Age of the World Picture. these are extremely relevant because these texts are the texts through which Foucault is reading

Kant so he's not approaching Kant directly in the sense that he's reading it through the through the idea or the background put forth by Heidegger in these two texts particularly in the age of world picture in this essay Heidegger puts forth how modernity is the age which man thinks in terms of finitude so Foucault retakes that idea I'm not sure of knowingly because he studied with a teacher who was simultaneously student of Heidegger so I'm not sure of that if that influence is if he knows about if it's like intentional or if it's like it just goes unnoticed so that's those are the two texts by heidegger

which are which are important i obviously didn't read them but i just thought it'd be interesting to put them down in this presentation on these timeline of publications then we have cons uh sorry foucault's introduction to cons anthropology and then two years later oh which is by the way i think i'm you've met you all already probably know this but is uh his doctoral dissertation or part of this doctoral dissertation. And then two years later, we have the publication of the Order of Things and Archaeology of the Human Sciences, which is very much influenced by his writing of the introduction of Kant's anthropology and which in extremely broad strokes puts forth a very similar argument, mainly on the historicization of knowledge and how one era cannot stay the same as another era.

in this case the argument would be the question regarding what is man so that's that's the timeline and then and then part one uh i'm just going to give a brief account of of something that was very interesting for me reading the book um which is goes from pages 44 to 51 on the english edition and it's uh a very uh couple of pages where Foucault explains how Kant and this person called Hoofland, which was trained in medicine, had some correspondence. And that correspondence led over to Kant's anthropology and then his second book, Conflict of the Faculties. And I think this is very

interesting because from, let's say, this is like a Kant that I've never knew before in the sense that it's a con that's concerned with health and with the body and with vitality and with things that are not necessarily epistemic but the short circuit the epistemic and get to the practical via the body via health uh medicine old age one thing that's very interesting is that Kant when we started when he started writing the anthropology well it was a collection of notes but when he started pulling them up together to get ready to publish, he was getting very old. And so he was increasingly less and less capable of keeping it extremely abstract and being able to,

to write on the transcendental schema and to like, just to be critical in the sense that his critiques were starting to get out of his grasp because they were just too abstract and they required way too much intellectual prowess. And so that's one of the reasons why he kind of slipped back, retorted to his older previous work, pre-critical work. And then that's one of the reasons why he gets back to the question regarding what is math. So in 1789, Kant had been embroiled in what he called the Contest of the Faculties, in which he argued for the priority of philosophy over theology, law and medicine as a protector of the critical power of reason in the university. So, Hugh Flint published a book called Microbiotics are the Art of Extending Human Life.

And that really resonated with Kant. As Foucault writes, it is like the pragmaric mirror image of the same ideas, Kant's ideas. For Hoofland, it's a question of offering moral treatment to physical symptoms and of demonstrating that a culture of morality is indispensable to the physical health of human beings. Health is the visible, and this is Foucault, health is the visible plane of an existence where the organic totality is dominated without remainder and without opposition by form of rationality that beyond any division is at once ethical and organic. so a healthy life a healthy body is should be inseparable from an ethical life and this is one

of the main this is one of the main answers not the only one but an important answer to the question regarding what is human human is at once simultaneously both a moral subject and a natural subject. And then just from this conclusions, which of this, well, one of the things that's very interesting is that Khan was writing to Hoofland because he was writing a regimen. Like he was, and I think by regimen, from what I gathered from the Spanish translation, I think it means like a diet. Like he put together a dietary regimen. And that was one of the things that he like that was one of the vehicles through which one would reach a healthy life and

thus a moral life uh to reach the the research undertaken for hoofland helped khan to resolve one of the problems that had been hanging over the anthropology the question of how to articulate an analysis of what is the homo natura of what the homo natura is on the basis of man defined as a free subject. And that's it for me. So now I'm going to pass it over to Sean. Sorry, can you disable like your screen sharing so I can share it online? It gets to be easier there. Sure. Yeah, thanks man. You're right. One second before going to the second part. Matthews, would you be able to let the attendees

The ones that were auditing to join, I mean, because four person over 40 doesn't make any difference. Yes. My apologies for interrupting the presentation. Okay. So can everybody see the slides? Yes. All right. Okay. So I'm going to be talking about the second half of the book, pages 73 to 124. and this is where you sort of see Foucault doing a pretty in-depth analysis on Kant, specifically with the critique of pure reason. So I'm going to try and rehearse some of Foucault's arguments here at the risk of oversimplification, but let's see how that goes. So I think on the face of it, it might seem that there's a massive disjunction

between the critique of pure reason and the rest of the critiques for that reason, and the anthropology. right? The former is an attempt at pure or transcendental philosophy, and the latter is an attempt at empirical philosophy of thought, right? However, there is a sort of coincidence, right? The critique of pure reason and the critiques share a kind of tripartite structure, right? So for the critique of pure reason, it's God, subject, and world. And then for the three critiques its reason, morality, and judgment. And it shares this tripartite structure with the anthropology, which of course asks the famous three questions which we've heard over and over again in this seminar. And there's a reflection and a repetition. So what do we make of this

repetition? So beyond simply being repeated, this tripartite structure is in fact shown to presuppose the question which is posed in the anthropology, which is what is man, right? And it's also important to note that he's not trying to just prove, you know, Kant is not just trying to prove what he's already said in the Critique of Pure Reason. He's trying to work out the question of transcendental philosophy through anthropology. So why? Why does Kant have to do this, right? Well, there are certain tensions or difficulties that Kant encounters in his quest to form or to perform transcendental philosophy. And I'm going to list out the five, you know, there are a few more, but the five major ones here, right? So one of them is the world is simultaneously our source

of knowledge and our object of knowledge. The world is infinite, yet the limit of our knowledge and reason. The subject experiences time in an internal way. Remember, Kant opposes time to space. Space is external, time is internal. And yet reasons and experiences the world through time, yet is outside of time. Another interesting thing, and this is very astute of Foucault, Kant struggles with language, and often finds himself going back to Latin to find full expression. Of course, the anthropological element here is very clear. And then the transcendental subject and transcendental philosophy, for that matter, is supposed to be primordial to time and language. The transcendental structures of the mind are supposed to proceed, and they're supposed to be the conditions for the possibility of any knowledge whatsoever.

So they have to be outside of time and language, And yet they find themselves always already caught up in it. Basically, the big problem that Kant and Foucault are trying to get at here is how does one even begin to do a transcendental philosophy of man when man is always already caught up in the empirical? Now, the important thing to notice here is that this is not a problem that's unique to Kant. Foucault takes specific aim at Edmund Husserl. He does a very good analysis of Edmund Hussle, and a very quick and swift deconstruction of Hussle here. I'm not going to go too much into Edmund Hussle, but remember when Sartre was really kind of toying with the idea of Hussle's ego versus the transcendental constituting ego,

and demonstrating how there were very serious problems and tensions here? Foucault even wants to go sort of the further step, makes a witty statement and calls it a transcendental illusion, right? taking a term from Kant and attacking Husserl with Kant himself. The common problem, right, which we've seen here, how to do a transcendental philosophy when man is always caught up in the empirical, is shared by many of the big currents of research that were popular during Foucault's time. And these include Marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, structuralism, anthropology, structural linguistics, and hermeneutics, all of which rely on some kind of understanding or some kind of assumptions of what man is, what man is capable of, and what is good, what is best for man. So, does that mean that we return to the empirical? No, absolutely not.

If we simply study the empirical datum presented to us by the findings of anthropology, then we do not answer the question, what is the thing or being that mediates or synthesizes the world. To put it another way, the empirical cannot ground itself. How can this empirical being know what it knows? How can it prove that it actually knows and can verify the legitimacy of the sense data or the empirical data that is coming to it? Another problem which Foucault will make his career out of in the coming years is the reductivity and normativity of purely empirical attempts at knowledge. So purely empirical attempts at knowledge tend to reduce away that richness,

that complexity, that wholeness that defines what man is, what the subject is. And then there's also normativity, this will become normalizing power later on in Foucault's career. When we adopt certain empirical methods or methodologies, we often forget that there are certain normalizing ideas or some normalizing powers that we inadvertently end up putting into our into our research and our production of knowledge as well. So you can take the old ancient anthropological idea of studying, let's say, somewhere like India and sati, like certain practices that might seem very alien to certain people. It's difficult for for a purely empirical approach to come in without those kinds of biases.

So we arrive here at a paradox. Neither pure philosophy, neither pure transcendental philosophy seems to cut it, but neither does empirical philosophy seem to cut it. So transcendental philosophy aims at something pre-empirical, but it's always bound up with anthropology. However, anthropology in an empirical sense cannot ground itself or its presuppositions or axioms. So what do we do about this? Well, I think what Foucault does is he draws out two conclusions from this interesting paradox here. So first off, I think Foucault is already prefiguring his notion of the empirical transcendental doublet, the episteme which the human sciences will have to and will eventually come to take up. So this is established later on in Archaeology of Knowledge and Order of Things.

Foucault comes to basically, Foucault thinks that in the modern world, science, the human sciences and the production of knowledge will have to do two things simultaneously. They will have to construct a transcendental idea of what man is, as well as construct an empirical image of man. And this tension and this movement and this epistemic will come to be the base and the ground for the production of knowledge in the human sciences for the coming generation, for the coming mode of knowledge production. The second one is a little bit more interesting. If anthropology is the limit of science, we've found that it's the limit of science through Foucault's analysis. It is thus the science of limit.

It shows us exactly how far this study of man can go before it runs into severe errors. Whether you're studying man from a transcendental perspective or an empirical perspective, you run into limits, right? So it's interesting because if it's the farthest that science can go, it then can be seen as a study of the blurry horizon of our reason's finitude, right? Where exactly does our knowledge end? Where exactly? How far can we push, right? And also interesting to note here, that's how Kant begins the critique of pure reason. He wants to set boundaries on metaphysics. He wants to define metaphysics as a knowledge of finitude, right? Because he thinks metaphysicians have gone too far, fallen into transcendental illusions. Now, Foucault sets up the idea of the Ubermensch, the death of God,

releasing us from our false illusions of the absolute knowledge of the divine universal objective knowledge. He uses the Ubermensch as a kind of conceptual persona or as a kind of model for us moving forward in trying to understand what man really is, if we comprehend it, freed from all of these illusions that we've had before. Does Foucault succeed at this? Well, in my personal opinion, I think that this is a question that Foucault returns to a few times throughout his life. I think Foucault comes back to the question in what is an author, when he tries to define the author function. He comes back to it in the subject and power. And then most interestingly, towards the end of his life, Foucault, I think, attempts one last step at it.

In society must be defended, and in his lectures on neoliberalism. I think ultimately, Foucault finds it very, very difficult to construct a positive image of man, even though his analysis of the author function and how the subject attains its subject position and is constituted within relations of power is extremely interesting. I think Foucault's playing with the idea of the Ubermensch to provide us a positive image of men ultimately is something that he's never really fully able to successfully deliver. So yes, that's all I have. If you have any questions, please just text me or something or ask me. Thank you so much, both of you. Excellent, excellent presentation. Magnificent. Excellent.

And also, I think that at this point I need to kind of like get some tips on how to make PowerPoints because every time that I see some of you creating PowerPoints, I think Jesus, my PowerPoints give an extremely bad boomer vibe these days. Okay, let's hear if people have questions. I mean, instead of gossiping among yourselves in the chat bar, start to, okay, we have questions. Yeah, I think go on, Michael.

You're the first to raise your hand. Awesome, thanks. Thank you both so much, Pablo and Sean. Something that Pablo mentioned that I did not have kind of any previous historical context on was the specifics of Heidegger's reading of Kant. I'm just not familiar with Heidegger. And if I didn't hear incorrectly, I think, Pablo, you said that Foucault, the idea of finitude and this problem in Kant becomes central for Foucault because of that Heideggerian reading. and I'm wondering how that Heideggerian perspective connects with what we just read in like some more detail because the finitude stuff is what I really struggled with

and Sean's explanation really helped with that. So I'm wondering if either of you could like draw that out a bit more. Pablo, do you want to take a stab at it? I have some thoughts in my head. Sure, yeah, no, apologies. I really wasn't, I'm not sure if I was 100% clear on that as much as I could have been. Foucault, when he was doing his doctoral dissertation, moved out of, I think he was, I think he was in Paris, and he moved out of Paris. And then he studied with a person whose name is Jean Bouffret, B-E-A-U-F-R-E-T, who was, he was Foucault's teacher when he was doing his dissertation, and he was a student of Heidegger's.

So through him was the overlap, the academic overlap between Heidegger and Foucault. And so I do know that, I'm not sure if exclusively because of that, but that's one of the reasons why Foucault's reading of Kant and then of Nietzsche is very influenced by Heidegger's books on them. um and so that's that's that part and then the the thing regarding finitude is that uh Foucault after read um Heidegger's essay the age of the world picture which is not a major book it's it's I think it's just the conference he gave somewhere in 1938 which was published until 1950 And then in that essay, it has very much to do with Foucault's dealings because Heidegger takes a historical approach and then he analyzes modernity.

And then he says that modernity, one of the one of its principal tenants is the fact that man begins to think of in terms of finitude and in terms of time, linear time and how as opposed to pre modern times. it's not like there's a different new conception of history, space of time, of transcendental, the transcendental schema changed everything in the canon. And so that's, Foucault takes that, like, I put that book down there just to illustrate how Foucault's order of things, which is a historical epistemological analysis of the sciences, is very much influenced by that, by that other heidegger book called uh the the the image of the world the the age of the picture

of the world sorry um i i really cannot speak more on on heidegger because i'm i haven't read uh either of those essays but that's just what i that's just what i was what was included in the in the introductory analysis of uh the the book the this translation of the foucault book but um I think Sean may have a little bit more to say on that. Yeah, so I think the first thing that comes to mind for me, right, when you bring up the concept of finitude, so my intuition is that the two philosophers are using the term in wildly different senses, right? So Heidegger specifically uses the term finitude in being and time in the

section where he's talking about death. So he thinks that death is the thing that gives Dasein its finitude. If it was spaced out through the care structure, then it wouldn't be whole, it wouldn't be complete. So that's the sense in which Heidegger is using it. The way that I think Foucault is using the term finitude is I think closer to the way that it's used in what is an author, in that it tries to get us away from this understanding of man that returns us into some kind of idols or an essence or a soul or some kind of substance. I think he wants to think about finitude in terms of how much can we know, how much of what we know is conditioned and

contingent. So I think that's the interesting difference between the two. But you also kind of see similarities between Heidegger and Foucault as well. So the idea that man or Dasein, to use a Heideggerian turn of phrase, encounters or has been revealed to them through time, is entirely congruent with Foucault's tension here, with the tension that Foucault spots in Kant. Because again, for Kant, that transcendental subject is supposed to be outside of time, but it can't be outside of time because it experiences time, it lives through time, it understands the world through that time, right? And knows itself and is always already wrapped up in time.

So those two things, I think, you see the similarity with Heidegger and you see the difference as well. So those are my thoughts on that, yeah. Yeah, if I may, I think it helps a lot more to think of finitude, not in existentialist terms, but rather in epistemological terms, and not think of finitude as like the limit of Dasein, as Heidegger would put it, but rather in the modern era, the modern era is characterized of how man thinks of finitude through finitude itself. So the limits of what you can know are determined not only by your experience in time, so your lifetime, but also the transcendental schema of what makes experience possible. Awesome.

Thank you both so much. Before we take other questions, a question for both of you, Pablo and Sean. So it seems that to me there is a little bit of a slippage here in Foucault's way of dealing with Kant via Heidegger. So I would say that perhaps there would be four ways of looking at finitude. The fourth one is just the one that Pablo said, you know, thinking from finitude about finitude. But Kant actually never talks about finitude in the Heideggerian sense.

He's very quite specific in his sense of finitude. He only has two sorts of finitude, finitude of experience, which is applies to phenomenal knowledge, right? And finitude of reason. Now, to what extent do you think that if there is any, if there is an allergic slippage, to what extent do you think that Foucault's Heideggerian influence create a so-called slippage between the finitude of experience? when we are talking about what is human, and finitude of reason. You see, you brought the question of the limit here. That sort of limit

in Kant's lexicon is called antinomy, right? The discourse on antinomies. And antinomies arise precisely when we align the distinction between the finitude of experience and finitude of reason. So to what extent, I mean this is of course something that you can think you don't need even to answer right now, I just wanted to bring this to your attention. To what extent then you think that Foucault's Heideggerian-influenced account of finitude carries with it a certain sort of elysian or a slippage between these two first finitudes.

Finitude of experience, finitude of reason. okay so maybe if i can maybe i'll go first i'll share some thoughts that i have on that right um so i think that that that that's absolutely right right um and i my my guess my intuition here is that foucault is deliberately making this slippage because his target here is not exactly Kant. Yes, it's not Kant. Absolutely. You are wise. So I think what Foucault is kind of doing is maybe misrepresenting Kant is a zombie target for Foucault. Yes. So he's doing the slippage kind of intentionally.

There is a little bit of a jump. I think if you notice on page 90 to about 100, there's a little bit of a jump here where he says there's a tension and then therefore goes into a kind of soft hinting at the idea that, oh, Kant has missed out the historicity of the subject and is forced to return to it in the anthropology. So the move here is, I think it's sound, right? But it's really, I think, because what Foucault wants to do is not so much attack Kant, but to use can't as a proxy to speak on his behalf and say any attempt at securing a stable ground for man

and knowledge of man is doomed to fail. So that's why I think the slippage happens. Okay, and to that extent then the question becomes, I noticed that in this presentation you two decided to use the word anthropology rather than philosophical anthropology. Okay. Even though the title of Foucault is Kant's philosophical anthropology, but it is actually not really philosophical anthropology in the sense that has been enunciated since the time of Kant by way of Noah Kantian, by way of Martin Buber, Scheller, Viktor Frankl,

so on and so forth. So there is a certain kind of, I would that there is a vagueness, intentional perhaps, a strategy, because we know that Foucault is a great tactician and a strategist when it comes to philosophy, that he once in a while, even though his subject matter is philosophical anthropology, once in a while he pretend as if it was just anthropology as a special sciences. this of course gives him a number of advantages but also disadvantages with regard to Kant's project

understanding Kant's project but yes absolutely you are correct that Kant for him is just a proxy warfare by proxy. I think the point that you brought up is interesting. It makes me kind of think a little bit about, let's say, somebody like Baudrillard, where the lines between the anthropological work that he does on Disneyland and America make the binary that Foucault sets up a little bit uneasy, because Foucault seems to set up this binary between transcendental philosophy and empirical anthropology. And somebody like Baudrillard or maybe Lefarb would come in and do something a little bit more interesting or Rencier in certain

moments as well. So I think the binary is a little bit untenable there. So you're just jumping off of that point, right? Yes, you're right. The idea of philosophical anthropology rather than just anthropology is an interesting maneuver that Foucault makes that I didn't notice as well. I mean, look, this probably is already using the same tactics that can't actually pull off in critical pure reason. Let's pretend that we could not talk about the norm. You know, a regulative judgment shall not be confused with a constitutive judgment about things in themselves. But if it's necessary, I'm going to actually say screw it.

to my own injunction and pretend that it is actually something that I can talk about without the as if, without the as if. And Foucault actually pulls these sorts of maneuvers quite often. It would be fantastic. Is there any book that we can, has been written scholarly, you know, in depth way? of course we know who his enemies are, political enemies, Sartre being one of them, right? But who are actually the sort of nebulous philosophical figures that he wants to put on a chopping block using these sorts of sometimes shading maneuverings and sometimes not?

Is there such a book that basically Foucault and his enemies, right? You know, because essentially Foucault really his philosophy ultimately needs to be read as a specific response to a specific sort of views during his own time. Just like any good philosopher, really. I'd go out on a limb and say that he may be trying to get at the pragmaticists and the linguistic turn who like I mean William James or Rorty I'm thinking J.L. Austin

and Cyril because their whole linguistic I see this is okay it's predicated on on on on a theory of well i know that the french french intellectuals absolutely you're right french intellectuals have always had this sort of anathemic anathematic relationship with um american pragmatists uh is it's kind of vilified uh to talk about pragmatism in French philosophy schools. But who else would be? I mean, he doesn't need to go to certain- I interject. Yes, yes.

And produce an answer. I think because I was reading something similar to the question, the second question, basically. If you look at the turn of the philosophy in the Soviet Union, at the moment that he's writing this and Althusser is writing his anti-humanistic text, the turn of philosophy in Soviet Union is toward a humanistic Marxism. And Kirill, I'm sure he has a lot more to say about that. Maybe that could all be kind of, because Sartre and those people also are reflecting and echoing that position, if I understand correctly.

So that could be kind of an answer for the second question. But also, I have a question, an answer for the first question, but I agree, because people have raised their hands sooner than me, sorry. Thank you, Harman, for the interjection. Thank you so much. Sean is saying that Sardin Derrida Sardin Derrida maybe Boudoir definitely not really Boudoir doesn't register at his radar until very late I'm thinking of Forget Foucault right where it's a very late war though Foucault always apparently this was Foucault's catchphrase that every person that says that, by the way,

there is this guy called Jean Boudrillard. Have you read him? He said, oh, that guy. Oh, that guy. So it probably didn't even read Boudrillard, really. It just was cringed by the presence of Boudrillard, but that's very late. Deleuze, maybe, but Deleuze and Foucault share a lot on so many key concepts of philosophy that essentially Foucault tries to undermine Deleuze from a philosophical point of view because Deleuze did not have a political one. He would basically undermine his own view at some point.

Yeah, structuralist anthropologist. Yeah, Levi-Strauss perhaps. I don't know. Okay, I think we can pass on to some other questions. Yes. So next one would be Kasia. I mean, I'm not sure. Perhaps we can try to make the questions and answers a bit quicker so that everybody could talk a bit. That would be magnificent. Yeah. Mine is really quick, I guess. Something I was thinking with regards to what Kant says right in the beginning of anthropology from a pragmatic point of view regarding egoism and pluralism as its opposite and the formulation of the four questions.

questions. What can I know? So Foucault talks about this at some point in the introduction, when there is the danger of a paradoxical return of a beloved self. And in what extent the formulation of the questions of what can I know already biased the answer because Because Bobber talks about something like Kant doesn't really get to answer the fourth question right, because he poses it and then starts talking about some other stuff.

And Foucault talks about the us as being a fiction of some sort. And I don't know, it's just some loose thoughts that I have. To what extent Kant already falls prey to the problem that he already poses of egoism? I wouldn't say egoism, but definitely he falls prey into basically what you might call to to be metaphysical with regard to the question of man or the human. But of course, it's not just any sort of philosopher. He understands that and he tries to rectify it

by simply relegating the status of the question to the sort of question we do have, or the sort of consequences we do have, we can explore with regard to the question of regulative judgments, right? So as I will talk about it, I think that ultimately the question of the human is the question of God. It is the same class of question. probably doesn't mean that human is God. In Kant, absolutely not. But nevertheless, the sort of judgments that are being applied to the question of man

can't think that are the sort of judgments that can be applied to the question of God. So that makes, of course, even more mess in the philosophical, basically, an already fogged up philosophical situation. But of course, we are going to talk about it later on. The thing is that, also another thing is that the question of ego for, we should talk, I mean, we should think about this carefully. When we are talking about ego, what sort of ego are we talking about?

Ego, in a modern sense, you know, post-Freud and stuff, or ego as essentially a transcendental kernel, a principle for personhood rather than persons, individuals. Kant is absolutely not interested in either the question of knowledge, the question of ego, the question of personhood as applied to individual persons. That's besides point for him. He's actually interested in such questions as principles. Remember, he's not saying that other things might not have knowledge.

I mean, this is like early Kant 101 when he talks about aliens on other planets. Anything might have knowledge that's not really bothers Kant, right? What actually Kant is interested is that the sort of a species being, to use Marx's term, is a sort of a species being that reflects upon the principle of its knowledge. knowledge being the principle of individual instances of knowledge production. So it's a principle for an ego the same way. Ego for Kant is essentially a principle.

A principle. Sorry, I'll just make a quick thing, right? So, Cassia, just on your point about egoism and pluralism, right, there's a section in Kant's What is Enlightenment, where he gives a sort of answer that might be interesting for you. So, he talks about the role of the individual in the political space. He thinks that subversive and radical thoughts need to be held in a private, sort of egoistical way. And they should be held. You have sort of a duty to have these crazy, radical, forward-thinking approaches. But then in a public space, you need to respect sort of the decorum and the standards and the academic rigors that come with that.

So that's sort of an interesting sort of political question, which interestingly enough, Foucault also has an essay on interpreting and reading that section as well. So he might be interested in that correspondence. Yes. I mean, this also comes back to the idea of Kant's imagination and schemata, which I wouldn't talk about today a little bit more, where basically imagination, productive imagination, particularly, and the schemata, the talk about of the schemata, have irrational components in them. And Kant is fine with that, right? But what Kant is not fine with it is when you try to over inflate the irrational in the private sphere of the egotism, of the ego, of the

individual ego, to that of the principle of ego, of rational ego, right? So obviously the greatest example of his concrete defense of the principle versus individual imaginative irrational components bloated to stratospheric heights is his essay on orientation. What does it mean to orient oneself, right? And you should understand that this essay has been written as a defense of Mendelssohn against Jacobi. So Mendelssohn is someone who believes

in principles, and principles are public matters. And Kant, of course, has been defended Jacobi for a long time in terms of his, what you might call to be imaginative vague ways or experimentations. But there comes a very bitter discussion, debate between Jacoby and Mendelssohn, and of course, Kant is taking side with Mendelssohn in that regard. So, questions, Emily?

If it's okay, because actually my point relating directly to this thing about Jacobi and Mendelssohn and this kind of, actually I just wanted to maybe clarify whether Foucault's interpretation here of Kant's anthropology is correct in the sense that, so on page 83 for example, Foucault says that, you know, returning to the four questions we had last week, that the fourth question, what is man, is nothing, there's nothing kind of enigmatic about this that goes beyond the other three questions, whereas when we had this discussion last week, it almost felt like that was the point of this, this introduction of the fourth question, was that there was an enigma that needed to be resolved by bringing in a kind of, I guess, philosophical

anthropology, or whatever Kant is trying to do, Kant is trying to do in this, like, yeah in his anthropology and I don't know like I understood like the context of this the historical context of this asking the question of what is man as being maybe a response to the like critique of the transcendental system by Jacoby which I guess like I can't remember it it's like specifics but ultimately I guess Jacobi goes into this kind of whole like he kind of I guess demonstrates the latent atheism of transcendental idealism and that's where he gets this idea of Glaube of like having this kind of like leap of faith or something that proves God's existence and I guess

you just talked about it as well a minute ago how this relates to the question of God so I was just wondering like you know is it correct what Foucault is saying here in his kind of interpretation of he says on page 83, relating to these three theses, the last does not mean that they will be dissolved by it, nor will they refer to a new question which goes beyond them. And it just, I guess, to paraphrase what he says, it's like just an aspect shift. Is this kind of, I'm just maybe curious, like, you know, is this like, you know, is there a way that I'm just misunderstanding this? Or is there a distinctly different question being asked in this fourth question of what is man? Well, as I said, not last week, the week before, there are two ways of interpreting the Heideggerian

and another one comes from no cantienists. Hermann Cohen, Paul Nator, Heinrich Rekert, so on and so forth. So there is a one, the first one, which would be the Heidegger-Foucault thing, is that literally the fourth question is not more enigmatic than any other three. And as such, if you answer the first three questions equals the fourth question, right? To the answer to the fourth question. Now, I don't think that Kant has that in mind at all. And I think that Neokantians were right. You can think about the three first questions

as members of a subset of the fourth question, in the sense that even if the problems of the first three questions are being solved individually in answering each of those questions, does not really help us with the question of what is man. That what is man or what is human has a, is a locus of a specific sort of problematization that is beyond the scope, whose scope of problematization is beyond the scope of the individual problems posed individually in those first three questions and in that sense the question of what is man

becomes yet again enigmatic enigmatic in the sense that it's beyond the scope of the problematization of the first three questions because it is the origin of any sort of problem that we might answer any origin of any answer that we might uh basically apply or provide with regard to the first three questions. And in that sense, the question of what is man yet again becomes the source of trepidation and anxiety, even if you have had answers for the first three months. So Emily, do you want to go next or you said in the chat you wanted to go last perhaps?

I'm not sure. I'll go last. Can I actually, is Derry break in order? I'm kind of... Jesus, I have only two cigarettes. I have to save it. So I think we got to Aaron. Okay, yes, I've been jotting down thoughts to questions as they go. as they go so I'll just kind of try to try to work through them. The first with Foucault's enemies I guess the standard answer is just Hegelians right. But I guess what would be more more helpful maybe in looking at what he's opposed to here is kind of any kind of systematic philosophy right and systematicity in philosophy is the thing that as someone who's trying to sort

of point out always the finitude and the limits of systems how there's always an excluded or uh how any kind of new configuration has to sort of push out the old it seems like that's his um that's his enemy but i think this becomes clearer when you yeah i i liked what reza was saying about the way the four questions don't really work with uh it's the reading that they give with finitude Right? Finitude is really the, how both Heidegger and Foucault would answer that fourth question, what is man? Man is finitude. The human is the finite being. And this sort of put something into clarification for me that I think I hadn't understood before,

and I'm curious if anyone else, the use of the term virtual in this sort of French philosophy and the way it parallels but sort of departs from the use of ideal and idealism, right? I wonder if anyone... It's idealism with a little bit of a materialist salt and pepper on top of it and nothing more. Yeah, right, but what it rejects is the kind of the proposiveness element of idealism and the wholeism, right? Like to say that sort of transcendental idealism, the philosophy of a subject or a human is the sort of striving to make whole knowledge or striving to keep whole the subject.

And what someone like Foucault is always doing is trying to point out the ways in which the subject can't ever be whole or the knowledge can never be whole. and that that seems to me sort of the the key the key shift here and why I mean yeah I think this interpretation is wrong but this sort of Heidegger through Foucault the idea of finitude as death or the limit to knowledge it's the same reading really because the things that Dasein is our languages are sciences right Foucault goes from talking about individual instances of kind of temporal finitude of human lives to a language or a science and the sort of shift

in scientific paradigm. Aaron, have you noticed that, I mean, so Heidegger uses the sign as the cipher of the finitude, but essentially, I mean, that's Ray's idea, right, in Nihalunbound, to show essentially in forever dying, there is an element of infinitude in Heidegger's that essentially Heidegger is really the one who actually talks about infinitude, which is an illusory function. Right? This is, by the way, I'm talking about Ray-Brasil-Neil and Bonn chapter of Heidegger, which is really good.

Yeah. yeah well simply that there's no there's nowhere to go from there right but um that's why i think that ray really captures this that's probably heidegger wouldn't actually be such a person if it what if it were not for the fear of absolute extinction you see because extinction puts an end the sort of the sign he holds so dear that's sort of what leotard does in the inhuman when i'm reading it's like the first chapter is

just, you know, the sun's going to distract. The chapter right after the Heidegger, I think, if I remember correctly, is the one on the O-Tar. Yeah. Yes. I haven't read it. I've only, I've, my first introduction to Brassier was the thing Philippe sent me, which was great reading. Really helpful. We'll have to go back to that. Yeah. It's been a while. I'll, I'll try to finish up quickly. there are a few other points, but I guess one interesting way in which that plays out is this idea of anthropology as the kind of vernacular philosophy, right, as empirical, but that's kind of paralleled between anthropology, popular, those sort of popular teaching, and the philosophical vernacular. It works in German, and it kind of works with popular

sayings and regular meanings with some kind of historical detail that Kant is sort of the first generation after the shift from philosophy in Latin to German. That kind of happens with Wolf and Leibniz mostly writes in Latin and French. Christian Wolf was sort of the most prominent philosopher between Leibniz and Kant in Germany, really sort of shifts philosophical writing and teaching into German. And there's an interesting way in which who likes to talk about how Kant is always appealing to the Latin in transcendental philosophy, and a kind of funny parallel here between a dead language Latin, for the transcendental and the vernacular German, that

anthropology is taking place in, and this idea of sort of finitude and languages as things that can die sciences as things that can die in transition. And then I'll just all end with two questions. One was the shift from lowercase to capital P power that happens, I think around like page 70. I don't know if Sean or Pablo, if you guys caught this, or he just starts throwing in the capital P power, and it was unclear to me why or what he's doing. And the other is if we could go over the kind of three-part, like this seemed to me the key bit that we were all missing, where he talks about the kind of conceptual confusion and the conceptual destiny of modern contemporary philosophy in this confusion of this three-part structure,

the a priori, the originary, and the fundamental. The a priori and the fundamental make sense. They're common philosophical terms, but I don't even remember ever seeing the originary before, and it's hard to see how he defines it. The best I can do is that it's a sort of translation of ursprunglich, but it's kind of this middle term that he's playing with and saying that sort of confuses the a priori of the transcendental and the sort of within time originariness of empirical phenomena and somehow sort of as subjects in time we come to see the a priori as a like right I wonder if anyone else sort of got these concepts how this confusion kind of takes place because this seems

to be the central claim yeah that's that's a really good question essentially so there is something already happening here as you said with regard to the originary and basically transcendental so transcendental time is not subject in an empirical time but time of the inner sense right that's not really time but nevertheless he actually again tries to kind of uh pretend as if these two were the same. Absolutely they are not the same. If they were the same, it wouldn't be transcendent of philosophy to begin with. Time of inner sense is fundamentally different from subject in time. But the originary is the subject in time?

Originary, I probably would say that either the word that you said or he's actually talking about some sort of Ur-thingy. Yeah, right. It seems to me like a kind of Heideggerian, I guess what in the English translations of Heidegger get put into primordial all the time. Primordial, yes. Right. But it's the ursprungliche, but it does seem to be an empirical concept that gets confused, and this is what he's saying is causes the kind of... Yeah, yeah. I don't think that he means it as a primordial in the Heideggerian sense, but more rather like the empirical first circle of the Viennese psychologists, right? I don't know. I don't know. I haven't paid attention to this. Did anyone else get that or have something on that?

I think this is... No, that's precisely getting into where I'm getting at. Because, I mean, I think he uses anthropology as kind of anachronistic to its time, like kind of a catch-all term as the logos of man. So it's like in one sense, you've got the physiological aspect of it, and then you've got the cultural aspect of it. I don't know. To me, because I guess when he's framing the question as what is man, it's kind of connected to the other two as man is the conduit for truth or the possibility of knowledge. that's how it kind of seemed to me and it's like he makes this distinction it seems like between faculties for the ability to know from the ability of sense like how senses can be affected

by these faculties I don't know if that makes sense but like there's I don't know it kind of comes across there's a lot of themes like when he starts off talking about the inner sense versus apperception there's apperception being the sort of like logical frame of what we tell ourselves versus in a sense being I guess almost like the pure intuition of sense hate I don't know I'm too tired to really articulate it that well but um I don't know I think it's like it all kind of comes down to kunst where he oh sorry no I'm too badly no worries don't worry yeah no don't worry at all thank you so much

So we have one more question. I think Emily wanted to ask something and then after that we are going to have a break and then I have to start. Right. Emily, was that your comment? That was my attempt but I'm too naked to articulate it well. um so um okay uh how about five minutes right and then we come back okay and my apologies uh what is so we started 15 minutes late so that would be what 12 45 right or no yeah yeah i don't know it

It would be 1245. No. 1.15. 1.15. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 1.15. 1.15. Yes. I'm making the conversion in my mind for my time zone. So yeah. OK. That's it. OK. See you in five minutes. All right. We're back. Take it on. Raza, please. So, I want to actually get back to that whole idea of Kant's problem, really the root of Kantian problem with regard to the question of what is man or what is human. But before that, I wanted to actually say something toward the end about philosophical

anthropology. Particularly, philosophical anthropology became a new discipline, supposed to be very systematic in its nature at the end of 19th century, early 20th century. Maybe I should actually assault with that and then get back to the regular Candace stuff that we were talking about. So I don't know how many of you have read the work of Max Scheller, right? So Scheller was one of the main proponents of philosophical anthropology as a fundamentally

independent program of a vast nature, where basically he defined the sort of new discipline, Kantian discipline, philosophy, anthropology, in his own terms, fundamental science of the essence and essential organization of a man, as well as of his metaphysical essential origin and its physical, mental, and spiritual element in the world. And according to him, at the end of the day, only philosophical anthropology can help all the other sciences,

which have ultimately have the human as their ultimate subject either by virtue of being human knowledge or having human as their subject matter right into double sense of subject This, of course, Scheller's project was cut short by Martin Buber. And Martin Buber was an extremely fascinating person. you know, in a way, it was attached to the Zionist project, secular Zionist project,

not what we associate with Zionism today. Zionism should be reinvented as a cultural form of life, right, way of living in a very philosophical sense. And he completely withdrew from the Zionist project at certain points, given the fact that it was politically, for him at least, politically and religiously contaminated. He was also, were coming from a certain sort of Naukantian philosophy influenced by Hermann Cohen and Maimonides, right? So he has a little bit of a

no Kantianism plus Juatic mysticism in his blood. And of course, he started to become extremely secular in nature of talking about what is human, right? And the thing is that But the kernel of his main criticism against Scheller was something like this, that Scheller, whereas Scheller understood the core of the philosophical anthropological project on a spirit. This spirit could be, could basically in Scheller's lexicon, parlance, this spirit

was the totality of life, right? There could not be anything be thought outside of spirit as the totality of life. And Buber, obviously, criticism was that, you know, and there is a strange thing that Buber actually talks about forms of life, kind of like Wittgenstein here, that insofar as you have totalized already a spirit, you have totalized life. This does not allow for you to think about forms of life. And precisely because you do not have an account

of the emergence of forms of life, historically speaking, by virtue of totalizing as a whole the idea of a spiritual life, this project of human anthropology of yours, I mean, a philosophical anthropology of yours will ultimately fail. So there is a whole debate that emerges at the beginning of 20th century between Scheller, Huber, and one philosopher-scientist, Viktor Frankl,

who wasn't I think he was a psychologist, neurologist, of course a philosopher, took side with Buber on this debate about the programmatization or systematization of what you might call to be philosophical anthropology. Frankl came up with an idea called dimensional ontology. So he knew a lot about mathematics and he used a lot of metaphors. I mean, his work

is still relevant, but quite metaphoric in its nature. So you need to take it with a grain of salt. But I think the metaphors are well put. And this is the way that he tried to formulate the project of philosophical anthropology. So Per Buber, once the human becomes the subject matter, The human is both the subject and the subject matter of empirical sciences, right? And that creates a certain sort of tension, fundamental tension within the enigma of the human.

In the sense that the human historically begins to witness that whatever what's called a common human essence, human characteristics, traits, substance, whatever, are being transmogrified into a whole slew of irreconcilable variations at the hand of special sciences. And I don't mean simply natural science. I also mean anthropology. as a special science. So that sort of sudden outburst of variations

for these philosophers at the turn of the century was a sign of a fundamental crisis. the universality of the human can no longer be established on a on an essential foundations or foundational traits by foundational traits i mean you can think about it from genetic from metaphysical to genetic to ethnic to religious so on and so forth. Like it was

was quite a sort of a day of reckoning for the early provenance of anthropological anthropology. So, Frankl proposed that essentially using metaphors of projected geometry, say that if we are going to rediscover philosophical anthropology, we should not actually look into variations, but rather what creates these projections through the fields of special sciences, right?

Like a prism that outputs a lot of different, you know, spectrums of light, right? But is there a possibility that we can actually using these special sciences, either, sorry, either using special sciences in order to discover a source for these variations, that be basically what you might call to be getting back again to in one way or another, perhaps in an upgraded fashion back to the question of the universality of the meaning of the human,

or rather we just actually get rid of this whole variation as yielded by special sciences and search, hypothetically speaking, for something that could create these, could basically yield such irreconcilable differences or variations. of human. So this is what he calls dimensional ontology. This is exactly what he says.

distinctive features of human existence is this unity and its manifestation in various life situations. It is not covered either by numerous human sciences or numerous image of a person created in philosophy or special sciences. He says, the first of the two laws of dimensional ontology is as follows. One and the same objects projected from its dimension into the lower dimensions is reflected in these projections. So as various projections can contradict each other. Thus, if I project a glass in the geometrical form of a cylinder

from three-dimensional space into two-dimensional planes corresponding to its cross and long longitudinal section, I will have a circle and a rectum. Apart from discrepancy, the projections are contradictory. And projections here is just short term for basically projections of the human by way of these new special sciences. And by that, as I said, it's not exclusive to natural sciences. It's also anthropology as a special science here too. Apart from discrepancy, the projections are contradictory because in both cases, we have closed figures while glass is an open vessel.

The second law of dimensional ontology is as follows. Not one, but various subjects projected from their dimensions, not into different, but into one and the same lower dimension are reflected in their projections as not contradictory. What? Polysemic. That's if I project a cylinder, a cove, and a globe from a three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane, we have a circle in all the three cases. So what Frankel thinks, and that's basically in defense of Buber, is that the variations

yielded, the irreconcilable variations yielded by the human being both subject matter of the subject of its own questioning of what it is, are not in essence contradictory, and hence the specializations of science fundamentally understood and philosophically does not oppose the idea of lower common dimensions of an ontology of the human, right?

Precisely because the way that we have interpreted these projections of variations have been so far according and based on their so-called opposing or irreconcilable differences within which the idea of man or human will be ever lost. But if we actually try to understand such projections in accordance with the configurations that might be at a lower dimension from which projections emerge.

We don't see those variations and specializations of the image of the human at the end of a special sciences as contradictory in nature, but rather the polysemic essence of the human. So this goes the same thing, you know, if we project a human into planes of biology, a human into planes of biology, astrophysics, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, ethnography, so on and so forth, these projections obviously will contradict to one another.

But that is not a reason to believe that there is no unified idea of the human being as a problem of philosophy, as a genuine problem of philosophy. precisely because there might be lower dimensional ontology from which all sorts of projections can be made and created ad infinitum. So this is Frankl's essentially retorts to both Max Scheller and the enemies of what you might call to be philosophical

Anthropology Project that is always futile to look for a certain unity of the human way of being and living that overcomes the myriad of such varieties in their various forms of life in an accordance to the dimensions. All we can ever, and that's the task of philosophical anthropology, is that we can only reveal the higher dimension. the dimension of a specific human manifestations as he says but to have

human manifestations he then continues he says that there should be a measure of a specific human manifestations and the question of this measure namely lower ontological domain from which projections are being yelled is fundamentally a philosophical project in its essence. Such a philosophical project does not actually try to work against the honest lot of special sciences against what Salars might would have called the manifest image

of man in the universe. It in fact encourages such projections to be ever more varied precisely because then it can actually hypothetically speak about a certain sort of essential polysomy. And from that, polysomy starts to build up grade by grade, measure by measure, a sort of lower dimensional ontology for such projections, for such variations. And essentially, he thinks that this is the ultimate goal of philosophical anthropology.

Buber, to a certain extent, accept this thesis. This is why it's important to not give up on this idea. Then, after seeing the fearful sight, the frightening sight of how, as Foucault says, the image of man will be washed away just like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.

Buber compliments Frankl's story by saying that we should also ask, why is that? From a historical perspective, we usually come at certain moments in philosophy where we say, what is human? right what is human this is obviously a sign of a crisis boomer actually associates this with a deeper understanding of homelessness you know deracination

of the world rather than us in which we are a part So for Buber, all such questions about what is man, what is human, originate from one, a concrete historical experience of homelessness in the universe. And two, trying to reason about this homelessness.

Affinity one, affinity two, affinity of experience, affinity of reason. but then he again goes on and defends the philosophical anthropological project precisely within the framework of philosophical anthropological project we can negotiate first and foremost the limits of reason renegotiate the limits of reason and by virtue of this the limits of possible experience of ourselves in the world

so questions before I get back to canned business and stuff. Go on, Emily. Perhaps you can read some of the comments as well, but go on for now. I suppose because of the ambiguity of how we know man or the conditions in which we know man is kind of relating it more to the theme of this course about the discontents of humanism as either secular humanism, I'm guessing? Is it? If in things like what is enlightenment... May I actually ask, this is something that I am myself, no my god there's only one.

When we say secular humanism, what do you exactly mean? That's sort of what I'm getting to because I'm going like, well, if we're so ambiguous about what man is, then how can we attach fundamental notions of rights like he does in Enlightenment and a projection of right versus morality and all this sort of value system to humanism, which empirically doesn't seem to live up to. Even though he just about as empiricism. Yes, but the question of values or question of ethics has never been really an empirical question. essentially, many philosophers have tried to put, in fact, I wouldn't say foundation here,

I will use the term foundation, but they have tried to put theoretical and practical knowledge on a springboard called ethics. Because obviously, from the sort of Kantian tradition, we know that practical reason in its broadest sense has a primacy over theoretical reason. And essentially, Actually what is in that gesture to put all of our theoretical and practical knowledge

on a springboard called ethics? Why Kant does need to do this? Obviously this comes back to the question of freedom. But in what sort of way? than we are going to see. So I think just to read some comments, I think there was some interesting questions also on clarifications. So Alexander asked, if I'm understanding the projection metaphors correctly, wouldn't it be coherence at higher dimensions, or is that two different understandings of dimensions instead of the lower dimension?

No, of course, higher dimension here is like a projective dimension, projections. Projections, as in that metaphor, was quite obvious that you can actually create projections by way of reconfiguring the lower dimension objects that are being projected. You can produce the same variations of projections by just retweaking certain sorts of lower dimension ontological projected. What is Kant's name for these lower conditions, a lower dimensional ontological projected objects,

conditions of possibility? And that comes back to this idea that within this, then within the idea of philosophical anthropology, we find sooner ourselves encounter with a gaping hole. How to criticize, in a Kantian sense of critical philosophy, conditions of possibility of man or human being. How can we renegotiate them?

You know, instead of a circle and a cylinder, using a cone, a cylinder, and something else. Right? different conditions of possibility. And of course, I'm not going to go to intelligence and spirit sort of crap, but isn't it the whole idea of AI, if understood philosophically, rather than simply in Silicon Valley terms, If AI, artificial general intelligence, would have been understood philosophically, that would have counted as a project of philosophical anthropology.

going through the revolutions of philosophy revolutions in understanding the mediatory role of language uh you know uh somatic uh physiosomatic uh configurations and so on so forth and of course after Marx and Freud. One other question here in the comments, and then I think I'll pass on to Kenneth, was also in relation to the terminology of lower

and higher dimensions, but in regards to sellers, Michael is asking, the lower dimension reflection projection would be the manifest image, but then what's the scientific image? The higher dimension object or our understanding of the process of how the reflection is produced? Yes, I would say that Salar's in what's that that's the famous essay where he talks about manifest and the scientific image of man and he ends the essay with that will the manifest image of man will survive as the scientific

image unfolds i would say that this is early sellers i think that there is even for sellers there is a core to the manifest image that cannot be expunged by the unfolding of the scientific image. And this is not really Salarsian, to be honest. It's very Kantian. Of course, Kant, I mean, Salars would say that, yeah, sure, on his deathbed, to use the French metaphor of dying Frenchmen and telling the truth. He would have said that, yes, there is an element in the manifest image which cannot be expunged. And that's why we learn through the unfolding of these projections.

That those elements that we use as fundamental to the idea of the projected ontology or dimensional ontology, some of them actually will be revealed to be projections. some of them might actually remain as a projected, that which is being projected. And hence the idea that to keep manifest image as lean as possible. And Frankl also has no qualm against this. is not it's quite a very specific sort of figure in defense of Buber to not

create a certain kind of knee-jerk reactionism against the honest lot of the science special sciences progress but let it go let it go as best as it can right because that sort of knowledge of projections or variations might lead us to a better understanding of what is in fact the lean manifest image, the sort of kernel of the manifest image that cannot be expunged, from which every other scientific image of man can be produced or projected. it

i'm going to i think kenneth was the next one in line um look if you guys want to talk uh just talk don't yeah on the uh chat but i really one of the things that i have a bad side i cannot actually read this. It's so too small for me. Yeah, please go on. Karel, everyone, Maria. Don't worry about that we are running out of time. Look, we are always running out of time.

My thing wasn't very relevant and there's people with their hands up I think in front of me. Yeah right then maybe we can get some some questions then we get back to Kirou. Sorry here I'll just jump in real quick. Sure absolutely. I'll totally announce my own naivete so forgive the attempt but jumping out Because this actually connects to something that I think Maria just posted in the comments, and which I, again, don't know if this is correct to situate in a kind of Wittgenstein kind of problem. But again, if we have these kind of two planes, this deals with the first law. This question of if the planes, basically, how did the planes communicate to each other?

That they're deriving from the same thing, if neither of them can actually access that. Does that make sense? So this kind of basically just like language problem of, you know, kind of meaning and use and. Yes. I don't know if I am understanding this question correctly. Let me say if I what I understand from this or where it's probably headed already. And if it is not, please interrupt me, say that. No, this is not what we meant. So you are essentially talking about something like indeterminacy of translation, Allah Quine. In a sense that there is no fundamental meaning. There is no fundamental meaning at the lower

dimension, right? In a sense that, as Quine would say, it's all fine to talk about meaning. meaning of man, meaning of human, meaning of this, meaning of that. But there is actually a sort of technical sense of meaning that is not justified here. And of course comes to this famous example that there is an alien civilization and we observe their negotiations the customs and rules, applying linguistic items every more often.

And from that, we create dictionaries, perfectly fine. Each of these dictionaries can actually translate the language of the alien civilization. but then think about this that we use these two dictionaries in an alternative way we use we translate one sentence of this alien civilization monologue from one dictionary and then alternate with another dictionary and so on so forth it doesn't look coherent anymore that sort of translation So Quine is ultimately Wittgensteinian in the sense that he thinks that we have to relegate

the idea of meaning not to this idea of foundational ontology, but simply with Gnestinian behavioral account of language. I don't mean behaviorism in a technical sense of Skinner and so on and so forth, but with Gnestinian behavioralism, that language and meaning are essentially behavioral in their nature, meaning as used and so on and so forth. And to that extent, And you might say that, yes, with the same metaphor of Frankl, we can say the same thing. That we probably never actually be able to translate or have a definitive version of the meaning in a technical sense at the lower dimension.

but nevertheless we can observe it either through projections or either through hypothesis making what these configurations might be conditions of possibility might be we can't do anything more than that to be honest with you and that's why the meaning of the human is a constructible project just like Wittgenstein's life forms and the idea of meaning as use I don't think that either Frankel or Buber would adamantly oppose this idea

I'm sorry if I completely misunderstood the question though No, I, maybe I'll just share my screen really quickly and then I'll, I'll just move on. It's just, um, this, um, essentially what I'm kind of imagining is if, again, we use this kind of first law graphic, I'm almost imagining that there's also, what if, what are the, what do the lines look like if you go directly from projection to projection? like how do the two projections speak to each other without having to go through understanding this and that's where again i'm kind of just wondering this like this categorization of fields and how do these fields kind of communicate to each other in order to perhaps have an

understanding of this if it can't be accessed but again i understand i also understand that this is a total... But I mean, isn't it, again, using a mathematical metaphor, I mean, as Frankel said, for sciences, for special sciences, if we only think about the idea of the human being in terms of special sciences, this sounds to be extremely difficult. Yet from a perspective of philosophical anthropology, this is actually a certain sort of problem that enriches philosophy, precisely because decomposing the cylinder to a rectangle and a circle might yield other sorts of lower dimensional projected objects, right?

So essentially this is the course of the critique of the transcendental structure, where transcendental structure becomes so mature that it begins yet again to question the conditions of possibility from which it has been derived. And the question of what is human at this point becomes a very monstrous question, a project so to speak. Yes, please wait.

with my question uh it is would you be able to turn your videos don't worry everybody's i did it when i joined but uh it flashed and so it's all good it's all good don't worry about it it's just that um you know all of us are in some sort of sordid manner i'm smoking other people are sleeping it doesn't matter really at this point yes hello you have such a great background so why don't you turn your video on i hope it won't shut okay uh i uh when you're talking about that i remembered my courses on engineering drawing

in an institute and we did that strange exercise we were asked to make a drawing of some detail of a part of a dam for example with the matter property moving growing in three different dimensions in different sites But the trick of it was that we were given the rules how to make different projections correspond to each other But mostly of us didn't know what exactly details are we drawing

So we can do three projections in a correct way of a detail which we didn't know about. And I thought it's a very, it looks like that's fine or medical, that we don't have, we may not have the cylinder in the first place to make proper connections. And the question, my question is, I didn't understand your idea about bio dimensions and lower anthological dimensions. Do they correspond to that projection method, or not?

Or is there more close to that doctrine or force? oh sorry what doctrine of the forms fire up five dimension lower dimension yes i mean obviously frankl's metaphor can only be a stretch so far right because it's just projective geometry in a very uh what you might call to be elementary level right but how about this if you're an engineer think about how we actually create certain sorts of equations for a tendency of a dynamic

system right there are maps that we can formulate how for example disturbing the system at certain levels and time stamps and so on so forth with yield sorts of outputs and we don't actually take these outputs as the totality of these outputs as what the actual dynamic system is right we try to understand them as a tendency of the system and then we create a sort of holomorphic topological map in order to decompose the tendency which might actually include even

other outputs in order to create a vague uh basically a vague and quite primitive image of the dynamic system and what is uh this primitive image entails initial and boundary conditions of the system right initial and boundary of conditions to so many people it is a trivial matter but to an engineer it is not because it actually gives us a lot of information about the inner working of the system perhaps not its informational content but how these informational content hang together such that the system produces such a tendency has such abstract property called

tendency, dynamic tendency. I would see it in that sort of sense. But yes, I agree that the metaphor itself, Frankl's metaphor, can only go so long before it actually crashes. But that's what metaphors are, that they do crash once we actually play them against the reality and the complexity of the situation. But nevertheless, it's a good metaphor for what it is, in a primitive sense. So, Kirill, you wanted to say something. Oh, mine was

a digression. I'm sure there are lots of people who have relevant and helpful things to say. I'll hold it for another time. Thanks. No, Kirill, I want to get into the sellers on this too. No, I mean, Kirill, you cannot just be a tease in a philosophical class. Well, I was wondering where it would kind of fit in to say that actually the fact that we do now have lots of anthropology that has made findings that roughly align with what Marx and Kant were saying. There are lots of very active research programs that are sort of doing the things that Foucault

is forbidding that are quite helpful in pointing to some of the contingencies here. So Laland and Odling Shmi in terms of these constructions. Would you be able to type those names for us? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'll just put that in the chat and let someone else make a point, and I can come back to explain more. Yeah, no, no, please explain more. Wait, Carol, then I had a question for you as well. Why do you think the philosophy and the scientific image of man is a bad mission statement on this? I feel like it's quite a good one. because I disagree with you about him saying that the end of inquiry is a regulative ideal I think he that sellers thinks we really will get to a point where all of our manifest concepts will

become scientific I think he's not in the purse sense he doesn't think he's just like there's this community of inquiry I think he literally thinks that we'll get that this inquiry can have point where everything that's manifest so the exact opposite of the fucco point i guess um and yeah so i'm interested if freza thinks that it's not in keeping with stuff he said later i've not seen anything to suggest that he goes against um that i wouldn't say that he goes against that he's been more cautious about the import of the manifest image i guess i would just point out on the very last page of that essay, I mean, his point is not that it's not a point about

content, about sort of phenomena that we won't be able to integrate or give a scientific account of so much as the use element of what sort of why we're doing this in terms of know-how, right, in terms of social practices of knowing how to do things. And he says the element that's irreducible is the element of personhood, is the sort of framework of persons, because persons do things for reasons. Scientists do things for reasons. And there's a question of why would anyone go through all of this effort to sort of retranslate the world into the scientific image, except to do things for reasons that come out of the manifest image.

It seems to be the sort of irreducible and holistic element of it. There is also another point that has been made by this guy, I will always forget his name, my apologies, I have a really bad memory these days. by an Israeli philosopher whose name is Gershom Wehler. And he actually uses Buber and Hossel's point that Luke, I think Aaron is right, you know, the formal structure of scientific theories and the formal structure of how we make knowledge

does not actually tell us anything about the content of our knowledge. Why actually we choose to have this sort of practical proclivity versus other? That I think is actually quite an interesting point. that's this is something that probably is misunderstood from me with regard to sellers but I don't think that sellers precisely because sellers does not actually head on deal with the question of freedom

when it comes to knowledge He has the word we taught to answer such questions, particularly with regard to the content of our knowledge and the freedom that lies in it. Salars to me, the more I have learned about him, the more I think of him as an extremely smart PhD graduate in philosophy, a technician so to speak, who has of course conversation

with Karna, with all the other people of his time, and that's what makes him extremely a stronger giant of philosophy. But my apologies to say this, the dismay of so many of our great Salars in France, which I cherish them, that I don't think that he has the right sort of communication with the history of philosophy at large. you are our victim i told you if you people are being silent i will drag you i i'm actually

thinking about some stuff but i'm not that i don't know i cannot put my question very philosophically the way I want. Don't worry, philosophy is not somewhere that you have to practice technicality, just ask some question. Okay, I was thinking about like the idea of translation that we were talking about and like between different, I don't know, different planes, different dimensions, different languages, so to speak, different, I don't know, scientific areas and I was thinking maybe I was thinking of it as a question of chicken and egg and that we are dealing with like even between empirical and transcendental planes and image and because when

we talk about translation we are actually thinking about who translated who and where was it translated but uh what if we think of it as not that a plane or level or language translates to another but as translation as a sort of communication like how we do with machines like between machine and human language it's always the translation is for communication and like actually the production of knowledge on the next level it's not about i don't know meaning making in certain language and like observing other languages. I don't know if it fits into the conversation we were having. No, no, no, no, that's good. That's very good. No, when I'm saying observing language, I've meant that as Quine observes that meanings are actually

not fundamental entities. There is no such thing as a technical understanding and technical terms meaning. There are no such things. But rather, meaning is essentially the byproduct of observing linguistic behaviors. All right. It's quite a Wittgensteinian thesis. I'm coined to the end of his life, was faithful to this idea. He had no qualm about understanding meaning in that sort of term, but meaning as a fundamental analytical entity for him is out of the window. And yes, this comes back to the idea of translation. What is it exactly

translation? So translation already is a certain sort of confoundment, like a negotiation. Who started the negotiation, right? When you observe linguistic behaviors, you know, what is actually the source of it? You know, is it me who observes or you who are observed? Obviously none of it, precisely because the nature of this this observational linguistic behavioralism is dynamic. It's not supposed to be decomposed to separate entities of you and me as language speakers,

no matter our languages might be different, right? It's actually what Klein tries to say that this alien scenario is always everywhere, even within our regular conversations here and now. Philippe? I guess Arman wanted to ask something. Yeah, Arman, yeah, sure. Okay, thank you. Actually, I want to ask something about Foucault's text, but I think somehow speaks to what you were talking about.

There's some place that he talks about the labor of the ideals at the level of the field experience, which I think is like, we hear MacDowell, or I heard MacDowell, and he says that this animates Gemüt or something like that, which I don't know what it is, but it's like a nature, he talks about nature as well, or disposition, and then talks about Geist as a principle in gamut that lets the free possibility in because Christ is the principle dialectics be dialecticized or as you put it in your projection metaphor the embeddedness of

God's or dialectics in gamut which is let's say animal human the overflow it what cannot be observed or translated becomes something that makes empirical psychology quite impossible. If you don't have an explanation for this principle. principle. Principle. So, and then he kind of hybrids and stuff. He says that yes, here Kant cheats. And he says that this cannot be this kind of infinite agent because Geist is

working in so many levels, right? At intuition, understanding, everybody is Geist. Geist is doing his work. as Foucault read him. So then he says that because of this, attempts brought human beings to a very original passivity, which I understand as transcendental conditions of experience. So this idea, I think maybe if you read Foucault like this, Then the question about the finitude of reason and experience becomes a little bit more clear. It's just not a mistake on its part, but maybe a political attack to attack the enemies that we talked about.

And something else just to, this is more of a question. We talk about these projections of the cylinder as if we're not sure that the cylinder is there. But I think the whole question is, is there any cylinder there? Or what is this two projections, two inconclusive? Yes, yes. No, no, no. That's essentially, well, it's already 103. Let's come back to the idea of Kant that he completely understands. that you remember the first three questions. Think about projections as what is happening

in these first three domains of questions, right? And Kant essentially tries to say that by virtue that these first three questions are a subset of the fourth enigmatic question we can't even actually as long as we don't have some sort of what you might call to be not answer in the sense of uh theory of knowledge right but some sort of philosophical answer perhaps even metaphysical one to the fourth question even the understanding of the variations of answers to the first three questions,

namely projections, would be in the air for the time being. So there is a certain kind of, I've noticed that perhaps this wasn't Kant's intention at all, but there is he's seeding a certain sort of sowing a seed of certain kind of skepticism with regard to the projections that you know the fact that you see this cylinder as a cylinder is precisely because there is something else going on yeah obviously

Obviously, for Kant, it comes back to his reinvention of the principle of affinity, which I'm going to talk about. I didn't talk about it in this session, but I promised you the last session I'm going to talk about it. And second, other than reinvention of the principle of affinity or the doctrine of affinity, is the question of eschemata. The role of eschemata as a source of all objective knowledge. is quite fundamental here. And to the point that Kant has a certain sort of feel of uneasiness with imagination and Heidegger understands that. But Heidegger misinterprets Kant that

he has a certain kind of uneasiness with the question of imagination under which eschematas active, that whole idea of recognizing a cylinder as a cylinder, namely the projections as projections, become quite, I wouldn't say that's nebulous or vague, but initiate a new dynasty of problems for parents. I think Michael also wanted to ask something.

Go on, Mike. Oh, yeah, thanks. I'm sorry if this is a bit wide-reaching. I could also maybe just post it in the Google Classroom instead. But I'll at least get it out there. I keep coming back to this idea of revisability that seems to be crucial for kind of every thinker that we've mentioned in some way, and maybe I'm wrong about that I kind of want to verify it as well as understand why and what role it's serving, but I'm having a hard time getting a precise hold on it for each thinker. So for Frankel, it seems to be about seeing and studying the different projections or the way that the multitude of these special sciences see their contradictions, which changes the understanding of the human and maybe can renegotiate its limits. I'm not sure. Maybe somebody can give me another gloss or I'll re-listen.

And then you go to Sellers, and I'm not really sure because Kirill made it sound like he doesn't see Sellers as having the idea of a kind of durable core of the manifest image throughout the repeated unfolding of the scientific image. No, I think Kirill was right. Probably I actually overstated that thesis. But as I said to Kirill, that he does, in fact, exercise a level of caution with regards to the core of the manifest image. and I can actually find the way that he talks about manifest image when he's more philosophically mature as opposed to those early essays yeah but that doesn't mean as Curiel said

it doesn't mean that sellers believe that something of the manifest image will remain I actually think that it will remain precisely because of I am more Kantian than Solaresian, I am more Hegelian to be a Kantian. Yeah, well, so that's, yeah, the next kind of part of the question, and there's kind of an ultimate question about why this all matters, because then, yeah, you've already mentioned the wave erasing the self-portrait in the sand, and I know this is kind of getting ahead, but Wolfendale's Rationalist and Humanism dictionary entry quotes that And then says that the invariances that cannot be revised in the process of self-determination are precisely the conditions of possibility of revision and self-determination themselves.

And he also tries to back this up with Foucault. I promise I'm bringing it back to this week. It essentially comes back to what I mentioned to you all earlier on, that these invariances are real, right? what you might call to be dimensional ontology entities from a Frankl point of view, to tentatively adopt even his primitive metaphor, right? But then comes back to this idea that once we step into this vast new field called philosophical anthropology, then then what are the conditions, critical conditions, so to speak, critical conditions in a Kantian

sense? Because critical for Kant in a layman way simply means conditions of possibility of something, right? So what are the critical conditions for renegotiating the conditions of possibility by way of which we were talking about the first three questions and respectively trying to grow the fourth one yeah that's awesome so then the connection to this week's reading is then going to um the order of things in wolfendale's reference um he makes it seem like for Foucault rejecting not only psychologism and historicism, etc. We go

reconnect with the general critique of reason and so for him it's kind of about rejecting what maybe Frankl would call these special sciences and this critique is then going to do this renegotiation. So my ultimate question is, I guess am I right that all these different positions are conceding that there's a fundamental revisability and then is this and I want to figure out what role that's playing maybe for each of these thinkers or maybe just what we should think is it like a moral or ethical stance you know all they probably I would say that the common point of view is that there is no I don't know Aaron knows German

and he might actually distinguish between wars there is no primordial essence of human being right But having that, even having that sort of minimal sort of commitment does not commit you to the fact that you think that human is a revisable concept or idea, as we have seen with anti-humanists, which we are going to read, right? Raza, perhaps a question I was thinking about in relation to the end of Foucault's essay,

and also to our whole trajectory. So he goes, Foucault in reading Kant goes from the the what is the human question, and he goes on to the at the end, as Sean and Pablo were talking about in the beginning as well. And he says that this transhuman, the Hubermensch, is somewhat the end of this challenge, of the question of what is the human and a disarmament of this question. So I was thinking, what is this Hubermensch that Foucault puts in inside the philosophical anthropology anthropology questioning looks more like.

Is it the trans-human, let's say, in our- No, no, I don't think so. No, I actually don't think so. It's not trans-human, not in the sense of enhancement. So trans-humanism, if we are technically, with respect, going to deal with the technical sense of trans-humanism, I don't think there's a trans-human. Yeah. Right? Would it look more like the post-human, A critical pose even more likely. A critical pose even more likely. But then there is... So you see, obviously, we should understand how he arrives at the Ubermensch, right? Of course, the method, the sort of critic

that he provides in order to move from Mensch to Ubermensch is by transvaluation critique, right? So what the transvaluation critique is a very peculiar topic. It's not really the subject of this class. I wish, actually, I could have time to read Nietzsche again and just come up with some sort of philosophical understanding of what he's actually trying to do. I would say that given Then the explicit, there are maybe implicit components into his critique, given the explicit

motivations for transvaluation of values and how he uses this as a vehicle to move from It is critical post-humanism. It would be great if I actually could read Nietzsche to see if there is an element of rational inhumanism in it. I don't think so, but I don't know really. I really don't know. But on paper, it looks like to me that critical post-humanism is essentially a Nietzschean, a very Nietzschean conclusion.

But it would be a twist in the game if you really took the idea of transvaluation of values seriously in the historical context of what he's dealing with, that you probably might have with something also like rationalist in the human self. But I wouldn't squeeze this too much. I think that there is a specific, what you might call it, to be focused in Nietzsche's philosophy. But definitely not transhuman, no. I mean, in a technical sense of transhumanism, no, I don't think that Nietzsche is actually interested in that.

There is, you probably already know, Mo Zongsan, Chinese philosopher. So Mo was, I think he was a student of Heidegger, if I'm not mistaken. I might be mistaken. But nevertheless, fundamentally influenced by Hegel, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. and the way that he talks about Ubermensch translated from Chinese to English as gentleman, which is kind of odd choice of word. it does not have actually either post-human

or for that matter transhumanist connotations but that's the Chinese reading right so whatever goes from Western philosophy to Chinese philosophy obviously goes through a certain certain amounts of Confucianism, no Confucianism, and neo-Confucianism. I don't know. A scholar of philosophy should be able to see what is actually at what juncture certain things happened. This can only mean this. Overmensch means posthuman. Overmensch

doesn't actually mean either post-human or trans-human. Yeah, thanks. Curious this translation as a gentleman. It is the concept of Confucianism as of the .. Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, it's essentially no Confucianist concept. No Confucianist concept is basically medieval time Confucianism, before new Confucianism, which is of the 20th century. And yes, the concept of gentleman is essentially specifically a moral concept. A moral concept within which morality

is itself that of the nominal realm. within which we are all entrenched. I mean, Minocchio's, you know, example or famous example are that no matter how ill exemplified it is, but nevertheless that's something that that Confucianist philosophers I've always been using as a grand example, that there is this child at the edge of a well, and you can put so many people around this well.

What happens when this small child slides up? into the world? What do these people around the world do? And of course, Menachius' answer is that they always run to basically help the child, to rescue the child. I know that this metaphor, this example is rather overinflated, but understanding in the history of Confucianism, and moral philosophy, ethical philosophy. It is an exemplification that morality or moral compass

is a nominant of the human beings. We cannot do away with it, even though we don't know the source of it. Thanks. Yeah, I think Luke had the question, but then we probably should wrap up as we are. Let Luke go and then let Kirill say what he's going to say. I'm interested in what Kirill's going to say. Don't worry about time over here. I can just re-watch the video. I just wanted to ask Reza if there were any other texts that he would recommend in looking into Foucault's idea of the critical post-human and how Nietzsche might feed into that.

I was thinking about the genealogy of morals, maybe as offering some offering a more as one of Nietzsche's more rational and critical texts as maybe offering some insight into that. I don't know. Yes, but if you want to actually search for a little bit of a more rational sort of Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, it's actually quite a fantastic text. This is where Nietzsche actually becomes a certain sort of twisted figure of enlightenment. you know that um before even religion came into power philosophy was anti-idolatory

yeah you know from from plato you know the the you know the the clash between idis and idolatry appearances francis bacon idola the work idola uh which basically the enlightened essentially enlightenment as secular anti-idolatric in a specific technical philosophical sense. And then Nietzsche actually completes that. Yes, I think that this is a very understated work of Nietzsche, which I actually quite like precisely because of his reason. It puts him in a very specific historical context in philosophy. Okay, yeah, that's the only, I think

one of the only major works from each year that I haven't read besides- That's why I'm suggesting it because people haven't read it. Thank you. Are we about to wrap up? Gaming or playing, Kirill? I mean, I think that here we need to be very careful with the idea of gaming and play. Yeah, and I appreciate what you've said about playing games, but there is something interesting about rules, I think, within that. So the thing about it being a game is that you do have some sort of sense of the sense in which your activity is producing and coordinating a normative space.

So yeah, definitely not in a game-theoretic way, but I wonder if... Yes, but it's still something that I've been thinking about with Goudski and other people, Goodman particularly. You see this coming back to the idea of transcendental critique of of conditions of possibility. So obviously play also has rules, but in a way that rules can be for the time being in a specific context can be suspended such that new rules can be applied or produced. What I am thinking about Wittgenstein

or early idea of game, not game theoretic essentially, is that games are defined by rules. But then coming back to the paradox of transcendental constitution. So how can you actually go and criticize the lower level dimensional ontology of rules? Well, because I think as Sela said, there are generalizations written in flesh and blood. I think the difference between Wittgenstein's and Vygotsky's model is that the play, and well, specifically formative play that creates a sense of norms, it has drama. Those games matter in the sense of the way

that we are effectively directed towards the world. So it's not just that kind of level of, with the Wittgenstein bit, as he criticised intelligence and spirit, this idea of a trainer and the one being trained into the practice, etc. So, Wittgenstein is challenging that. And the reason that he's challenging that is through the way in which we, what we're progressing in is our kind of drama through our alienation in the world and through our conflict with the world, we experience this drama in progressively more complex ways. And we either through play experience self-actualization

through these rules or more alienation. So in terms of what the bottom level is, I think it's like the way in which our embodiment in the world, like I would look at affect, I would look at how our relations to others are embodied. So again, in this large degree. Sure, sure. No, I'm completely in agreement with you. I mean, I actually believe that, you know, there is a coupling within game and play that should be like for any sort of play. But play, I don't simply mean like free play, free style play, right? As if you are pretending there were no rules. No, you actually, there is a kernel of game and rules in a play, but nevertheless,

under certain special circumstances, like a special circumstances in a Banks novel, special circumstances, that you have to strategically suspend them in a Hegelian way, in a Hegelian way, to introduce either a new one or criticize what is already at the state. And in that sense, I think that Goodman does a great job with regard to his whole fact-fiction forecast business, right? That things like guru or bling predicates, the composite complex predicates are instances of playing but they are plays precisely because they are piggybacking on

top of the rules which are already entrenched and that allows us to actually question what you might call to be the consistency or the coherency or rightness of such rules yeah that bracketing out is very interesting and it's interesting that that children as young as three are actually already able to do that. It seems like that's really a major driver in terms of development. The ability to say, I'm now in a role play comes surprisingly early in our development. Yes, yes. So I have to go get a pack of cigarettes. I have to talk to a couple of you.

I know that after this class. so let's find the new victims uh for present the next presentation who wants to recognize no on the spreadsheet yeah yeah it's already there um i think it's yeah and then you just said um diego ivan and camille if you can actually look i know that it's really difficult for four people to work on one single presentation. But if you can pull it off, that would be magnificent. I think that, you know, it's very difficult. I personally do not want to collaborate with anyone. But nevertheless, this is precisely because I know how much work it takes.

It would be, I absolutely cherish it if all four of you worked on one single presentation. Yeah. Yeah, it would be wonderful. And I guess we should try and keep in the 20 minutes maximum. 20, let's say 25, for four people 25 is maximum. All right. A question for you. First of all, we are a little bit behind. I have not managed to get to the schematism. I actually want to suggest a paper in addition to what I have already told you to read, just because I'm going to get back to that Kant's idea of why the question of what is man is

the source of all problems here. I have to get a little bit to the technical nitty-gritty stuff with regard to the question of eschematism in Kant. I suggest this very good essay. It's online. You can easily find it. It's called Kant's Schematism of the Categories and Interpretation and Defense by Nicholas Stang, University of Toronto. If you can read that, those of you want to get a little bit into the technical details, that would be great. That would save me some time to just go over,

skip over gnomic technical details. SPEAKER 1 SPEAKER 2 SPEAKER 2 SPEAKER 2 SPEAKER 2 Nicholas Stang. So I think that's about it. Oh, and you should tell me also that, we have had two sessions sorry that last session didn't work so we lost a little bit of continuity there um do you want me to take more questions or less for next few sessions and more i do actually real teaching i mean i love the questions the questions and the

conversations are great. But of course, there should be a level of, you know, me talking and just going through some sort of stuff. But let me know, which one actually do you prefer for at least next session? Let's just do the lecture first. Okay. Right when we just, yeah, and that way questions, if they run over, they run over, but... but. Sure. So, Matthias, we are going to block any person who asks a question. All right. We are going to, in fact, charge them real money. Well, I'll get one in now then.

Is there anything in the anthropology you'd recommend us to read? Let me think about it. No, it's not worth it. No, it's actually good for as an introduction, so people see the historical thing. But now, let me actually come up with some sort of, some chapter from Foucault that might actually be interesting. I mean, by interesting, meaning damning to Foucault's project. But definitely this is a stank one on eschematism is quite actually very interesting. Precisely the way that we are going to work around this whole project is through that

source of problem of eschematism that for Heidegger becomes a problem of imagination. And the Frankel is the will to meaning is where this projection is from? Yes, yes, that's the one. Is that in its entirety worse? No. No. No. Because, yeah. No, I'm sorry. No, the whole thing is, I mean, why go to psychology when at the beginning we're talking about how psychology isn't relevant? Yes. Well, I mean, of course, for these people, you see, for Frankl, psychology is not really psychology in a big sense, but it's more still psychology in a no Kantian sense.

Yeah. No, no. I mean, you can read it. It's actually interesting work, but not for us. We have better things to do with our lives. and then one one last um sort of martin buber works our i actually do suggest um but do we have like a class discussion that everyone's using is there a discord or are we using the google i i haven't checked the google classroom page i don't think that we have google page anymore i've never actually seen a link no we still have the google classroom page um in the Does anyone use it? Yeah. No, no. Kiri has used it. Kiri has used it.

But I think this was just .. And we also have the .. Oh, yeah. Can we just decide on one? Discord is a good place. But you should be able to give me the Discord address. Yeah, is there? I can pull that up. I haven't opened it now. Is there a specific Discord channel? Yeah, it's, well, for those of you who are already in the NewsCenters Discord group, it is in the current seminars, there is Humanism and It's This Content Discord. But I can't actually invite people into the NewsCenters Discord group. We have to go through the organizers. But if anyone is in need, they can pass it on to them.

Excellent. Matthew Zolleriann, Maybe Matthews can you just send the address of discord Google classroom to everyone. Matthew Zolleriann, yeah yeah i'll do it by email, then just after the class and. Super, excellent. Thank you, everyone. Sorry that we lost the flow of the class, but that's about it. Thank you for all your contributions, great questions, and basically insightful thoughts. Thank you very much. See you next week.

Ciao. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you.