On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons (Session 11)

Welcome to the 11th session of on the practical necessity of having demons by Reza Nugavistani. I'm now going to pass the mic. Reza, please take it away. And many, many thanks. So today we are going to talk, you know, a little bit retroactively about the Sebski and Nietzsche demons and Zarathustra but we will because there is only one more session but then we will go to Sabina Shpilin

and Chandra Fuenzi and actually shed a light back on both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky by way of early psychoanalysis. One thing that I saw in the chats, so why we are not talking about demons, right? Well because demons have too many names. I mean, we cannot name all of them, can we? Because that's what demons are. There are multiplicities. They are coming in different types, anti-personal, anti-systematic, social, so on and so forth,

even astral and inorganic. So obviously, there is a reason that modern theology, modern anthropology, always address demons by way of evil spirits, so that evil is a key term. The problem of evil, the historical problem of evil, is actually what you might say, a way of addressing or thinking about different typologies of demons.

And some of these demons should not be brought to creation, should not be made or crafted, should not be followed. As we have seen, the problem of evil and the way that demons are actually formulated within the historical context are coming from at least three directions. The question of defilement, which is the question of exploitation, right?

The question of sin, personal act, namely disobeying certain rules, whether religious or social norms, and the question of pure evil. With pure evil being, what you might call to be in a dungeon dragon sense, chaotic demon, It really does not have any sort of distinction between the social forces of hostility, social

demons, unnatural demons, or mythological demons. They are all bunched together. And interestingly, early psychoanalysis actually, mostly, not all times, mostly, talks about these chaotic demons. And this is why you should understand why psychoanalysis, early psychoanalysis, diverges into three broad programs. the naturalization of the psyche, right, the morality of the psyche, and the

mythological or symbolic aspects of the psyche. So modern psychoanalysis, the more you read about it by way of Freud, Otto Rank, Bluer, Sabina Speer, Levin, and so on and so forth, you notice that it is really about how to have a self, right, have a psyche, a healthy psyche, while fighting demons, not

all of them are malevolent, some are temporarily benevolent, on all these three fronts. and not just to fight them, but also to generate them, to generate them, such as that we can achieve a higher state of psychic consciousness. You see, so we are going to start with Sabina Shpirling. okay uh sabina spierling is what you might call to be a canonical case of hysteria in psychoanalysis she

fundamentally has this kind of she's a very smart woman extremely eloquent but she has this kind of demonic verb. She's actually a demoness, right? That a psychoanalyst should deal with. She sees all sorts of means of production of life and love as expressions of the means of destruction. So she has fits often, right?

She talks in part Russian, part German, part completely nonsensical, asking the doctors to hit her, right, while she's actually talking about her psychological ego, about her psyche and her memories. For example, one episode is that she asks Jung to basically hit her buttocks while she's masturbating and confessing

about what she has gone through. Or other times she gets angry and really in an explosive manner beats nurses, creates a chaos in the ward, and then suddenly goes into a state of reprieve. So when the doctor actually comes, she actually says the truth of what she has done. She's not going to whitewash this. She's not going to lie about it. She tells everything. just because the nurse then can be blamed.

To the extent that this nurse should have understood that offending Sabina would lead to a certain kind of explosive episode of hysteria. And then she has these drawings. some of them are extremely you know strange she always wants to be hurt she always wants to be hurt because she thinks that destruction is the key to regeneration right so for example one of the hospital pictures shows

Sabina is being sat on by a doctor and then underneath it it says electrocution. Then there is Sabina under a shower of cold water and it says that treatment by water sanatorium. And then there is this circle of two doctors who are basically coming to visit her every day devil in Russian actually let me show you this picture it's quite actually an interesting one one second Okay, how do we share stuff here?

The green button on the bottom. Oh, share screen. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. How do we share stuff here? The green button on the bottom. Oh, share screen. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Okay. It doesn't go through. Okay.

My apologies, I'm not good at this thing. I have so many stuff open already. Jesus. One second, one second. OK. Can you see that? Yes, yes. Yes, yes.

So one is electrocution, one is the devil, and one is cleansing, right? Water sanatorium. So, yes, what I wanted to say, how do I turn off this share thingy now? On the top? Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay. so what is interesting is that so Spierlin who later becomes a very genius psychoanalyst

is a canonical person that according to Freud is literally possessed right she has these stories of something almost human always coming and disorders my bed talks to my ears makes me create decisions that are not my own so on so forth and then Jung also diagnoses her as a hysteric person, white, in a clinical sense.

The thing is that she does recover. The moment that she understands to regenerate demons, to kill the unconscious demons is the way forward right she creates different demons that can find her existing demons so regeneration The impulse to give life becomes something fundamentally demonic for a Sperling. And she manages to get out of her existing hysteria.

Nevertheless, when she's released from hospital, both Freud and Jung sign something very interesting. they say that this patient is recovered but not cured. So that recovery is what you might call to be encapsulation of living with demons. Because if you have demons and everyone has, there is no cure for it. How do the demons get dissipated? How do they get dispersed? There is no answer to that. Because that's the problem of life.

The problem of life, as Schopenhauer understood it, is to give rise to life is an impulse for complete and utter destruction. Affirmation of life is complete destruction. How much do you think that situation was influenced by the lack of recognition she got compared to Freud and Jung? Maybe it was a form of gaslighting so they couldn't feel threatened by her? Oh my god, I mean there is this great book on Sabina Spearlin. One second, I can actually find it on my archive.

Especially Freud's work owes a lot to her, but she never received the recognition that she deserved. Yes, precisely because Freud, okay, this is called Sabina Spierlin by Colin Covington and Barbara Wharton, right? It's actually a good example of some of the clinical exchanges between all of these doctors and Sabina with them. You can see that there is a huge amount of gaslighting going on, but I would say that Freud ... So, so there, first there is a Breuler.

Breuler actually is the one who basically suggested to Sabina E. Spirl in, upon her recovery to actually go and become a student of psychoanalysis such that you can better, you can make better demons for yourself. Right? This is actually something that he says to her. Then there is Jung. And Jung, of course, that's the whole problem of the novel Dangerous Method. Jung had a few brief, maybe not sexual, but sexualized encounters with Sabina.

Upon learning this, Freud actually, that was basically one of the main, if not the main, the main reason that Freud and Jung departed. Freud thought of Jung as an unprofessional. And Freud reacted by not actually taking Sabina Schpeerlin seriously, right, because he thought if he actually does that from his psychoanalytic study of H.P.A.R.L.A. He might be a surrogate Jung for her, you know, another lover.

So there was a certain kind of negativity going on. So, my apologies. Let me just read this and then, you know, after some of this stuff, we can open this to discussion. So many goddamn PDFs here. Okay. You see, the practical necessity of living with demons requires complete destruction

of ego's self-images. That destruction is the cause of coming to be. To be generated once more. with equipment, less burdened by the banes of the self. And if you think about it, it's quite a Nietzschean view, ultimately. Eternal recurrence, you know. To actively, rather than passively giving rise to one's demons, is a recipe to be positively destroyed by them.

From the ashes, one rises again as a black phoenix, for whom demons are degenerative components, which must be once propagated, at once propagated, and destroyed, so that one can ascend to that very consciousness, which is a human being, feeling at home with its predicaments. yet is striving to mitigate the suffering that comes from the inside, namely the depths of ego and outside external factors. Love for life always converges upon an impulse for complete and pure destruction,

but it is a contradiction that must be resolved by that practical protocol of creating demons that fight the existing personal demons so as to destroy them further, bringing forth that idea of self-consciousness, concrete idea of self-consciousness, which is perhaps the most fragile of all tasks. Thus, E. Spierlin says about Nietzsche's Zarathustra. So this is a quote by E. Spierlin.

even Nietzsche used a similar destructive symbolism in the birth of his thought, a substitute for a child. Zarathustra bemoaned the creative act with expressions of disgust as if creation were unclean. You see, the reason for this is precisely because the act of generation, according to psychoanalysis, early psychoanalysis, is coming from both pain and pleasure. Sexual acts which ought to be conducted

and constraints upon sexual acts or pleasures, precisely because those constraints show or express that any sort of unbound act of pleasure is a form of moral failure. So essentially the symbolism of this generation, to generate a new generation, to give rise to a child,

to give rise to one's demons is both clean and unclean. It shows both moral failure and something that is done out of the act of self-preservation, the affirmation of life itself. Zarathustra bemoaned the creative acts with expressions of disgust as if creation were unclean. Remember his words, whoever must give birth is sick, but whoever has given birth is unclean. Obviously, the thought, the substitute for the child must be molded to contain the most valued and the most dreaded wish. Thus, our thirst for longing can be satisfied through

loss of the child. Such is the case. And you can here simply replace the word child with having one demon, generate one's demons, giving rise to a new generation, so on and so forth. You know, giving rise to a new generation is exactly, for example, something Dostoevsky talks about. Giving rise to a child is something that Zarathustra talks about. Giving rise to both is something that Nietzsche talks about. So she continues, such is the case, the thought states that the highest, the overman, always recurs, and the lowest, the smallest man, always recurs.

Since Nietzsche is constantly concerned with the highest affirmation of life, his wishful thought tells him that his affirmation cannot be brought forth without simultaneous contradiction. The highest also contains the lowest. This dreaded element actually is capable of overpowering Zarathustra. For seven days he lies motionless, as if he were dead. He struggles with a horrible animal that represents both his depths and his sexual personality. He bites its head off, thereby killing his sexuality, and in doing so kills himself.

Thus his abysmal thought attains its greatest vitality, and with it a resurrected Nietzsche. Then she continues, the saga of Oleg, the Russian prince, is worthy of attention. It is prophesied that Oleg will be kept alive by the horse that he loves best. To avoid the prediction, he gives the horse to servants, who to take especially good care of it. After a time, he learns that his horse is dead. Wailing, he ascends on its grave and insults the cunning soothsayer. While he's mourning,

a serpent emerges from the horse's skull and fatally bites the hero. The horse is Oleg's desires. It dies, and with it, Oleg dies, because the serpent equals sexual desire directed against himself. And by sexual desire, she simply means in a much more expansive term, the will to regenerate, the will to regenerate the self, the will to regenerate new generations, so on and so forth. In this saga, destruction does not lead, as in Nietzsche, to creation in the present.

The story shows that the most loved, life-bringing, sexual animal may turn into a source of death. Okay, now. Chop, chop, now. Waiting to hear some comments and questions. I'm curious about what sense self-preservation is being used here.

You see, self-preservation in the organ of psychoanalysis is a function of ego, right? It's a primary function of ego. A function that extends from the most primordial forms of sentience to the most progressive, sophisticated forms of sapience. namely humans, or for example, think about a future human, an AGI. That self-preservance is the preservance of the ego, in the sense that it should create a certain kind of balance

or activation principles for its pleasures and pains. Because without that, ego doesn't exist. but the ego always self-preserves. Now the thing is that Espirilin actually thinks that ego should be destroyed because it is the host of demons. It is what gives to demons. But how do you destroy ego? Merely by creating different demons. But then she finds herself at this at the brink of one of the most

puzzling questions of psychoanalysis that probably Schopenhauer actually talked about this beforehand so does it mean that change for the better is simply the renewing cycle of destruction and creation. So in this sense, would it be correct to say that self-preservation is this kind of almost

background or meta process in order for it to kind of contain this cycle of I guess like destruction and regeneration. I mean, is this a correct understanding of, you know, is this contained within self-preservation? Because another alternative understanding of this would be that this is a kind of non-self-preservation impulse or it's a I think that early psychoanalysis absolutely would say that the cycle of love for life an impulse to destroy is what makes ego to regenerate right but then

we get a different story in demons by Dostoevsky right that the social implications of this kind of personal abolition of the self, once assimilated by ideologies, by trendy ideologies, lead to complete forms of oppression and exploitation, such as, you know, Russian nihilists, and further on. So it is actually quite interesting and this is something that I think is a

problematic that we need to think about. So for example, you see I have problem with my genders, right? Not even that. Okay, let's say something even more rudimentary in the organ of psychoanalysis so I have problems with my parents with my father right so there is a certain kind of alien will always inside a kind of passive demon that drags me down gives me anxiety gives me unhealth I will kill this by creating a new demon of my own

But that demon of my own can also be a recipe for my undoing or regeneration, a contradiction. That's Nietzsche's idea that to resolve that contradiction is the task of philosophy. We don't have any sort of solution for it at this moment because if we had, we had the overman. Right? The inhuman in the H-A-N sense. But the thing is that Dostoevsky thinks that often such formulas are getting transferred

into the social realm. Once they get assimilated in the social realm, they create misery for other human beings. Ressa and everyone else, there seems to be another idea at work here too. I mean, the passage you read is very interesting. If we move to the very end of the same section I don't know if anyone has the book. I will just read a brief sort of section two. She's talking about the relationship between the sort of the preservative and the destructive. So self-preservation is a static drive because it must protect the existing individual from foreign influences.

Preservation of the species is a dynamic drive that strives for change. the resurrection of the individual in a new form. No change can take place without the destruction of the former condition. So there seems to be a tension between the individual and the collective here, where precisely the regeneration and the maintenance or the recreation of the space is what is associated with the destructive impulse, which is quite markedly different, for instance, from what we find later in Freud's concept of the death instinct. And I wonder a little bit, sort of, can we, and I should just note that also that she follows in the next section,

immediately sort of relating this, that sort of the past of our species, their consciousness is our unconscious. There is sort of a sense of problems, sort of the feelings of the past being carried forward to us. Yes, yes. Don't you think, Carl, that one of the main problems arises here is that that early psychoanalysis did not, in a fine-grained manner, distinguish collective psyche from the individual psyche. I mean, this is Dostoevsky's idea precisely because,

you know, you can be a good-for-nothing kind of man, right, according to Dostoevsky. Why? This is actually he doesn't actually see Estavrogan or Panovich as forms of evil, right? They are merely trying to self-preserve by inventing demons for themselves. In fact, they try to multiply their voices by the voices of other people. And that's what Stepanovich does. Most evil man in the possessed, in the demons. He's not evil unlike a Stavrogin.

He doesn't actually want to pursue a higher belief like Estavogin, Nikolai Estavogin. He simply just wants to have a better life. But for that better life, he has to propagate his demons by voices of other people. So Dostoevsky, I think, is kind of skeptical about this problem, precisely because if you haven't actually worked out the limitation of the personal psyche versus the limitations

of the collective psyche, if you have made a fuzzy boundary between them, that self-preservation that originates from the personal psyche will translate to ideological social impulse for pure A good example is Trump. I mean, he's just dumb, right? But is he evil, really? Is he really evil?

Or rather that he tries to ventriloquize other people's voices just to gain his own own agendas, his own self-preservation, right? But the thing is that when this translates into the social, he becomes evil. Zee, you rascal, what are you laughing at?

Any comments? I don't know. I think this, I mean, these are, the more I have thought about this problem is that, I think Nietzsche was right, absolutely. That contradiction, to resolve that contradiction is a task of humanity. Because literally, you can get excited about demons, yeah, forces of outside coming, visiting us, right? Or, oh, affirmation of life is so great and good.

But what do they mean, actually? How do they hang them together, right? That problem, I think, philosophy has never answered. Theology has been working on that, but by codifying it, hence relegating or delegating it to a lower level of a problem, simply sweeping it under the carpet.

Well, if nobody else does, I have another question, which is kind of basically to what extent we can call this solicitation of one form of demon to kind of vanquish the other irrational act, given that there doesn't seem to be, I mean, if I understand correctly, part of what demons are being characterized as being, you know, something on the outer rims of consciousness is that we can't fully know them or we can't fully kind of calculate their behavior or something like this. And, you know, thinking to the examples where one kind of engages into a contract with the

demon and later gets fucked over because, you know, you didn't know all of the facts in advance, then it seems like this is a kind of unemployment. Are you talking about the movie Absentia? No, I've never seen that movie. Is it good? Oh my god. One of the most best movies. One of the best movies. Making it a bit. Don't trade. Don't trade. Right? Don't trade. That's the slogan of the movie, right? Don't trade with who? Goddamn demons. Because the moment that you do trade, you are essentially being imprisoned. Why? So the movie is actually quite, I think is one of the greatest studies

of theological study of having a demon, right? So the story starts with this, that there is this husband has been missing for many, many years, right? And then he suddenly shows up at the doorstep completely, you know, his hair is gray, his clothes are worn out and so on and so forth. And then he passes out and then they take him to the hospital. The doctor say that, you know, this guy has gone through a lot of pain and he shows signs of genital traumas.

Right? The thing is that this guy traded. So, yes, that's the whole point. But the thing is that perhaps for Nietzsche and Spierlin, he traded, if they had seen that movie, they would have said that he traded with his passive demons, right, rather than making new demons. How do you craft new demons? So that's the question. You craft new demons through the act of consciousness.

Through the act of consciousness. The act of consciousness, for example, me believing, having a certain urge to do something, is to have a demon, I feed it, and that demon can actually fight the more primitive kinds of demons. But of course, at the end of the day, this might you say that is another form of trade.

is another form of trade, which is a problem of life, of being a living person. How can to get rid of that? I don't think that it can be done. It absolutely cannot be done. You see, I think this is why morality is such a shit kind of edifice. Ethics actually tells you that you're a limited being, you have constraints of how to navigate this kind of landscape, and you have to deal with it.

God damn fucking deal with it. But how do you deal with it? I think that this is why I am a Marxist. I'm not a Nietzschean, even though I actually quite love Nietzschean. A historical analysis of the problem of evil. I think that impersonality doesn't come from self. Impersonality comes from the collective. and to do that you not only have to have humans with individual

psyches and experiences so on and so forth but impersonal concepts and techniques that impersonality of techniques and concepts which is the proper milieu of ethics is what is important. But I think that regardless of how much we are trying to be these nice ethicists, in the vein of Espinoza, in the vein of other philosophers and so on and so forth, we should completely understand that we are unfortunately limited beings.

And we do have a responsibility to experiment with our demons. Not merely trying to give them free reign, but simply generating a new generation of demons, we can fight the past demons. So that I think is really something that is an ultimate and ethical injunction rather than a social one. The will to destroy is unfortunately the kernel of human being.

If you want to get rid of it, you have to get rid of all humans. And by that I don't mean the will to destroy of nature, animals, climate, so on and so forth. I am simply meaning a very humble, more humble one. The will to destroy one's self in order to regenerate it. So, this is something that comes up in no Confucianism philosophy. Precisely because of this impulse to destroy, in order to generate, we are gods.

But gods who should be more responsible about their creations. Namely, being more self-conscious about what you are as the creative subject of your own. Should we have a bathroom break, please? If I may ask. Yes, good. See you in five minutes. Heza, just to remember, I will do a presentation on Nechayev, but just when you want.

My apologies, you were cut off a little bit. Sorry, I suppose I'm supposed to do a presentation on this. Yes, yes, yes. My apologies. No, I just wanted to kind of, yes, definitely. No problem, no problem. No, after the break. Yes, no, the reason that I wanted to do this was to kind of, you know, kind of glue back some of the old themes together, right? And then, of course, you will have the podium. It was very good. It was very good. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

you jasper did you check check the russian thing Oh, were you talking to me? Yes, yes. No, I didn't see it yet. I didn't get the chance yet, but I will do, I promise.

Definitely do it. It's magnificent, truly magnificent. Yeah, there was a lot of good stuff made for TV back in the day, not these days it seems. I mean, I think they are going through a fundamental phase. They want a little bit of Hollywood, a little bit of Russian culture, right? So these things don't really hang together. They have to come up with their own medium of cinema.

It should just be slow like it used to, you know, that's the whole... It can be also, you know, accelerated. I mean it doesn't need to be Gagan Tarkovsky, but it can be something else, you know. Sure, but I mean like you would never see anything made for TV like the BBC in the 70s, you know, like Pinders Finn and all of this Nigel Neill stuff or you know Germany in the with both like a movie like Veld am Drat by Reiner Werner Fassbinder, World on a Wire and Berlin Alexanderplatz and

Acht Stunde Mag kein Tag and all of those productions you know, that was the golden age and in Sweden you had Baumann who made scenes from a marriage, Fennel Alexander stuff like that, you know, that's been made so much good TV. Yes, of course, yes I mean but I think really BBC in the 70s and 80s was the golden age the real golden age that was insane my god I mean the stuff that they produce just the fact that everything that Alan Clarke puts his fingers into is just genius and so daring and especially stuff like yeah Pinders Fenn really just blew my mind the first time I saw it I must say But the thing is that even though Russians didn't keep up with TV and cinema, right,

but they didn't actually produce consistently great literature. I think, you know, you can't fault your countrymen and women. they have produced even after the fall of communism a great amount of work really some of the stuff are just like mind boggling I mean what the fuck who does write this like Vladimir Sharov you know passed away just like I don't know a year ago I think during and after something like that

the plot takes place in a in in a mental house right and the main Yes, yes. The protagonists are members of the Cosmists circle, like Fyodorov, so on and so forth. It's magnificent work. Sounds good. Can I ask something before we go into the...

Absolutely. I was just wondering whether we are thinking of demons more like something subjective, like something that appears at the level of consciousness, or something objective, more themselves and uh if so whether they're like um can be spiritual things in themselves because like i was i was i was trying their spirits there are their spirits absolutely they are of the spirit but not in the mystical sense right they are in their spirits in the sense that that which

is objective is already in the unconscious and that which is subjective is projected back to that which is objective or the real okay yeah because i was thinking about that in part because i was I was writing about property and I was reading some like old law theories about you know the property law and there was like... Property law? What do you mean by property law? You mean land ownership? Yeah property law like the relation between people's people and things...

My god! well it's an interesting topic I mean aren't you like interested in the question of privatization and deprivatization that's no I just actually I'm interested in how to sell a land at the highest price this was Robert Heinlein's thing that you see for example what is the greatest land that you can sell right nickle you know huh nicklein no no thank god so he had this idea so you know that there is this uh you know um cause

in property law that if you own a land the sky above it also belongs to you right yeah i don't know so this is actually part of the property clause so the thing is that robert heinlein's protagonist tries to sell the moon but before that he has to buy that section of land over which moon actually satellites yeah and then sell it at the exact moment when the moon is going to yeah well but the reason i

I was talking about property laws because like it was you know in like in the law of things usually you're talking about material things but then there are spiritual things and that's like the of the of authors rights and you know intellectual property so I was thinking like what what what is spiritual thing because i feel like uh in that in the more modern way of thinking usually um the spiritual is the subject so it's already not the thing but then like what what could a spiritual thing be it would have to be like either an angel or a demon or god like it's or like is the new man on like the you know i would say it's quite the kind it's quite the opposite

the spiritual is a collective in modern times after marx right so uh to uh so this is of course this is like the the kind of uh you know the the germ cell of the conflict between libertarians and Marxists, right? And these are the most vehement enemies of each other, unlike no other. So a libertarian sees this ritual to be the subject, to be the individual psyche, right?

trampled forward by motifs, preferences, which are coming deep from its essence of being an individual. whereas the Marxists think that a spirit is only giving to you the spiritual side of things is only given to you by the collective so this creates a massive rift in current politics precisely because yeah go on go on please no precisely i think that's what i was trying to get it because

still um uh i'm wondering if this collective i mean because when you talk about the collective you're usually going to think of it in terms of we or us like uh it's still kind of subjective in a way in the sense that you're assuming the point of view of that collective at some level of intelligence even if you're trying to think that intelligence itself is correct Yes, but what we do, what Marxists do actually think about it historically, you see, the thing about Marxists, they have a trick up their sleeves, right? When they are saying we, they both mean we right now, and we as an incompleted totality,

which is the hypothesis of history. So there are more conning than that. Yeah. So would you say that it's a we, but at the same time it's also a thing? Because I always feel like one really simple way if you would try to to explain it to someone like from zero like what's the the difference between like Nick Land and Reza Negaristani you would say like that the intelligence for Land is something that you're going to call it and for you it seems like something we are going to try to call us because

we are assuming like the point of like a rational point of view that's internal to the production of that thing instead of making it a noumenon. But what you're saying is that it's also like it in a way. I think for Marx and Hegel, which I have stolen this from them, by the way, the question is something far more, what you might call to be of the conning intelligence. Remember Kant's title of that chapter, that it, he or we, the thing that which thinks.

So you see, you can't have one without the other. That's the whole point of Marx and Hegel, that to develop a certain kind of biological logic, biological logic, that can be plugged into the collective logic of history, such that we just don't simply like Keech Marcus says that it's all we. No, individual motivations are important, psyche, individual psychiation is important, so on so forth. So you can't say that the will to emancipate oneself

is coming from either it or we. No, it is an entity we call allocants, that which, it, we, they, the things. Yeah, thanks, that's really good. My pleasure. Okay, presentation now. Okay, I have just a brief historical contextualization of the Russian nihilists and Neshayev. And after Reza's presentation, I got some questions also. I was thinking about Neshayev,

but we'll talk about it later. So I wrote a short text and I think I'm going to share with you because if it depends only on me, I will mispronounce a lot of Russian names and you'll get nothing. So wait, can I? Okay. Okay. So, okay. It's a very disorganized text, but only for you to follow me. Everybody seeing and listening to me?

Yes. Okay, good. So, Sergei Meshayev's The Revolutionary Catechism marks a turning point of the Russian-Nihilist revolutionary movement in the 1860s. Its commandments on the practice of the professional revolutionary of a secret society established a new phase and figure of a revolutionary action in Russia, condensing into practical formulas what nihilist counter cultural literature had built during the 60s. I will present a brief historical philosophical contextualization of Nechayev's pamphlet, reconstructing revolutionary radicalization towards nihilism and Nechayev's amoral organizational guidelines, and pointing the different influences

of Western thought that led to it, mainly German idealism in its aftermath. The first revolutionaries in the 19th century Russia were the Desingrists, whose failed conspiracy of 1825 indicates the difficulties that liberal reformers faced in their opposition of autocracy and the bureaucratic state that was maintained by a repressive police apparatus and strong censorship against opponents. Influenced by ideals of the Enlightenment, they were liberal aristocrats willing to relinquish some privileges to regain part of the power lost to the monarch on behalf of the people, such as what part of the French nobility tried to do

by aligning themselves with the third state. As Camus puts it, there was still virtue and morality in the discourse of these first revolutionaries. In the subsequent years, most critics of the regime were forced to emigrate, and they often lost touch with what was happening in Russia. For them, Russia became more an idea than an actuality, what, together with their aristocratic background, intensified a politics of words. Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen are two important emigres who were very politically and philosophically influential at distance, and from whom, together with Mikhail Bakunin, we can trace the major philosophical origins of

of Russian nihilism in the 60s. German idealism, Romanticism included, and Hegel in particular, were the main philosophical roots of Russian nihilism. Belinsky and Bakunin followed a very similar trajectory, first as right regalians, then as left regalians, and lastly, rejecting Hegel in the name of the free individual and the negation of social order. At the end of the 30s, both of them, after reading Schiller, the Romanticist, Fichte, and Schelling, discovered Hegel as the philosopher of the reconciliation with reality that demonstrated that reason is actualized through the tumultuous negativity of history. Hegel enabled them to make a virtue out of necessity

in the sense that it provided them with a way of converting a sense of isolation from the regime and the people of practical ineffectiveness into a positive acceptance of the self-manifestation of reason in the actual, including Russian actuality. But in the passage to the 40s, they embraced left Hegelianism's refusal of reconciliation and exaltation of the universal at the expense of the particular in favor of the power of negation. Since the beginning, Heghtsen interpreted Hegel's philosophy not as of reconciliation with reality, but as he later put it, as an algebra of revolution. He moved from Schelling to Hegel, from Hegel to Feuerbach,

and then reject Hegelianism, moving nearer to a positivist position, but without abandoning the attempt to realize social goals through concerted action. Until his early death in 48, aged 36, Belinsky defended the individual and human dignity against the universal and the state. Due to public reading Belinsky's letter criticizing Gogol's conservatism, Dostoyevsky was convicted and condemned to death in 49. A Satan's letter commuted to four years of forced labor in Siberia. Though abroad, Herzl nonetheless exercised a great influence in his own country through the journals

which he edited, in particular, The Bell, Colocall, which he started in 52. The failure of 48 revolutions ended any confidence he had in historical progress turning him against the politics of words of the decembrists. Real change, according to Hertzsen, would require giving first place to practical action rather than theory. The materialist then became hegemonic in their discourse in the 50s, making the transition from the liberal and German idealism that prevailed until the 40s to the revolutionary nihilism of the 60s. As Camille puts it, the entire history of Russian terrorism can be summed up in the struggle of a handful

of intellectuals against tyranny in the presence of the silent people. But first, as a zeitgeist of the generation that followed Hedgeson's Russian nihilism was depicted in literature. The term was made popular by Ivan Tugenev's romance, Father and Sons, published in 62, whose hero, Bazarov, was recognized as a model by Pizarrev, one of the great proponents of nihilism, when he wrote a criticism of this book. We've had nothing, said Bazarov, in the book to boast about but sterile conscience of understanding up to a certain point the sterility of what exists.

Is that, he was asked, what is called nihilism? Yes, that is what is called nihilism. Pisarev praises Bazarov's attitude saying, I am a stranger to the order of existing things. I have nothing to do with it. The book's character Arkady Kirzanov, a Byronic romanticist in opposition to Bazarov, defines a nihilist as a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in. As Michael Gillespie in his nihilism before Nietzsche points, in Bazarov, we can begin to see the hidden relationship of the Prometeen nihilist

to the demonic hero of romanticism and the absolute eye of idealism. There would be a concealed romanticism of the nihilists, though they understood themselves as realists in opposition to the idealist romanticists. They don't live in a literary ideal world, but they want to transform reality into the ideal, to realize the rational and the actual. They are romantics of idealism. The nihilist generation is not anymore one of sons of aristocrats like Hudson and Bakunin, but sons of priests, doctors, merchants, and petty officials in government service that formed the new Russian intelligentsia. They opposed any kind of speculative and abstract thinking that inspired the previous generation and were strongly influenced by the positivist, materialist, and utilitarian ideas.

The new slogans, as it has been put, were realism, science, and utility. Pizzarev wrote a bunch of articles in the 60s attacking philosophy, art, and anything that could not be justified in an utilitarian and scientific basis in view of a rational egoism. He preached an intellectual terrorism against non-Bugr materialist views. Pisaev said that every one of us was ready to go to the scaffold and to give his head for Moleshot and Darwin. It was a scientific and materialist fanaticism that would pass to action in the 70s after publicization of Nechayev's pamphlet, already in the 60s. Another very

influential book on the new list was Nikolai Shanishewski's What is to be Done. It's no coincidence that's the same name as Lenin's book. The character Rakhmatov was depicted as a model of the new man or uncommon man, the revolutionary hero, the portrait of a youth who led an ascetic life in order to devote himself exclusively to the cause of social equality and of the demand that all should be able to enjoy life to the full. The young radicals of the 60s, and Nechayev in particular, borrowed most of the elements of the life of the ascetic revolutionary from Hakmetov. Even other practices were part of the picture,

like sleeping on nails and of eating large quantities of meat to keep up his strength for the chosen task. While Turgenev did not seek to build a positive image of the nihilists with his Bazarov, despite their recognition, Chernyshevsky wanted to depict the nihilists as a real hero, even as a response to Bazarov. And until the end of the 60s, the great turn of Russian nihilism towards action began. Different groups and secret societies began to appear as the Young Russia, Land and Liberty, an issuing conspiratorial group organization, inspired by Shemyshevsky,

and its terroristic subgroup, Hell, in which Nechayev participated. It was organized as a quasi-religious order and recruited heavily from seminarians. These revolutionaries abandoned all traditional ties to devote themselves fanatically to revolution, to the point that one of them even planned to poison his father to obtain funds to support their revolutionary activities. Bakunin was for a while an advocate of these groups. His left hegelianism developed in anarchism, the absolute rejection of the church and the state. Satan and his power of destruction and creation was the prototypical revolutionary for him.

Let us trust the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion too. Evil is a tanky rebellion against divine authority, a rebellion in which we see nevertheless the fruitful seed of every form of human emancipation. Hegelian and Christian negativity figures here as the Mephistophelic spirit that always denies. Emphasis on negation is on the demonic and satanic aspects of dialectical movement that seems to conserve nothing in its sublations.

However, creativity and emancipation were always at the horizon for Bakunin. In almost every book on the subject, including Camus and Gillespie, Bakunin appears as a co-author of the revolutionary catechism. They seem to follow Franco Venturi's description of Nechayev's life in the influential book, Roots of Revolution, a History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in the 19th Century Russia. But as Mark Leier points it in his Bakunin the Creative Passion, recent 2006, this account follows attempts of liberals and Marxists to detract Bakunin and anarchism by approaching them to Nechayev's terrorism.

Nechayev was attracted to revolutionary activity by Ischutin's hell group. In 1868, he joined a revolutionary group through which he met Petr Tchakev, with whom he set down their plans for organizing a revolt in a program for revolutionary action. They believed that previous groups had relied too heavily on the people and that a sussful revolutionary organization required professional revolutionaries who were willing to dedicate themselves to radical activity. But as Nechayev lacked support among his revolutionary fellows, he traveled to Switzerland and presented himself to Bakunin as a representative of secret conspiratorial organization.

Reyes, sorry, I have to interrupt you because there's a lot for presentations, 10 minutes. Okay, no, I'm finishing. This is the last paragraph. Sorry. Okay. At this point, the literature says Bakunin helped Nechayev to transform the program for revolutionary action into the revolutionary catechism. But Bakunin, in his texts, insisted that revolutionary violence was to be directed against institutions, not the people, and nowhere did he advocate terrorism or assassination. The elitism of the catechism, where the revolutionary exists outside the people and brings the revolution to them, is radically different from Bakunin's

insistence that intellectuals learn from the people, Mark Leier pointed. Nechayev's originality resides in the complete amoral and utilitarian use, not only of the people that he was supposed to save, but also of revolutionary colleagues. As Bakunin puts it later, when he discovers that Nechayev returned to Russia and killed a fellow revolutionary just because he expressed doubts about the guidelines of the secret society, Bakunin says, he, Nechayev, was terribly affected by the catastrophe of the clandestine organization in Russia. and has gradually convinced himself that, to found a serious and indestructible society, it is essential to build it on Machiavelli policies

and adopt the Jesuit system. For the body, only violence. For the soul, lies. Truth, mutual trust, real solidarity exists only among a dozen people who make up the Santa Santorum of the society. But at this point, Bakunin was to be expelled from the International by Marx, an event with which the encounter with Nechayev contributed a lot. And revolutionary nihilists were trying to find a way to revolution at any cost without external support. Nechayev was arrested to the assassination of his colleague, but did not cease to organize revolution from prison. And in 81, one year before Nechayev's death in prison, members of the group People's Will

succeeded in assassinating the Tsar Alexander Chu, a group which followed strictly the organizational commandments of the revolutionary catechism. Here's an image of nihilists being carried to execution. Truly a magnificent, one of the most magnificent historical analysis. Excellent, excellent. One of the best. Fantastic. I mean, I didn't know about so many of this, to be honest with you.

hard to say where we should start with this does anyone wants to start something and then I will build on that because I think this is really actually it's just like the light thickens right So it's Bakunin, Nechayev, and the entire history of what we call the anarchist-communist

revolution. I'm quite aware of the conversation between Bakunin and Marx, that even though Bakunin makes the right prophecy with regard to Russia being the host of revolution. But I think that Marx has a certain kind of advices. And on the other side, Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky being a young nihilist, going to gulags, coming back and then he begins to see the demons in a concrete reality while not being

afraid to affirm that without these demons he couldn't be at that place to judge them, right? Great friends, if you don't talk I have to name you. like Sophie come on now it's your time um really yes yes it is your time yeah definitely

um I don't really know what to say to it um what do you have a question Reza I don't really have a The question, no, just how do you think, so you see, for example, what our friend was talking about, you can see certain kinds of, what do you call to be traces of that kind of dynamics, right? Russian nihilist anarchists in the Weimar Republic, right? You know, the German communist,

German anarchists and the rise of national socialism. Anything that you can say around that kind of topic? I mean, I don't know really how to, I mean, I mean, most of what I just heard is quite new to see in the context that they... Let me, okay, okay. Let me, let me, let me, uh, to absolve you from, uh, uh, vague questions,

uh, and also vague answers. So do you really think that national socialism, right? Yes. Did arise, and of course if you say either yes or no, you have to actually put a few sentences behind it, did you think that National Socialism arose precisely because a certain kind of ideologies on the side of the left and the side of the right were prevalent, in Krucia, right? Before the rise of national socialism.

If I think if it is connected, if it was already there, or if it has. If it was already there, yes. Yes, I think so. OK. It had been. Tell us how you think about that. I mean, it doesn't matter if it is historically accurate or not. I just want to hear your opinion. My opinion? I think it, my opinion about how it happened, about like, I don't know. I mean, what would, what, so you see, what is happening is that Bakunin is actually quite a great man, right?

Nashayef isn't. Nashayef is what you might call to be the social justice warrior of the left. blinded by rage bringing acts on everyone on every sort of action he's a terrorist for excellence someone okay I promised on the chat Facebook chat to not mention moon galaks but if he was alive. He was the first one who would have been sent to the goddamn Bangladesh. So,

what I actually want to know is that there is a certain kind of dynamic within rise of dictatorships, okay? And it emerges from certain kind of demons. Demons that are not external forces but are amongst us. Right? Demons that perhaps don't have actually belief in anything, such as Dostoevsky's. How do you think... Yes, yes, yes, please, please. I just wanted to ask Sophie that, you know, what would be, in your opinion, that kind of demonic, in a Dostoevsky sense, right?

Not in other kinds of senses that we have talked about. In a Dostoevsky sense that led the rise of national socialism. And I can talk about, for example, the rise or ask Dahman to talk about the rise of Islamic Republic of Iran. You mean fatalism and idealism in it? Maybe to contribute to the discussion, it reminded me of Walter Benjamin's passage which says, behind every fascist is a failed revolutionary.

Maybe that could help to formulate the discussion. What do you think, Sophie, about this? That sounds... Were national socialists failed revolutionaries? They could have seen themselves as such, yeah. I mean, they wanted to change everything, they wanted to distract everything, to build something new. What they believed was the real thing. in that way, yes, maybe.

Yeah, I mean, that's why this kind of, like, why fascism is so dangerous too. I mean, that's the destruction or the idea of building something new from, I don't know, it has a... Yeah, okay. I don't know. Our good friends, either Sepideh or I don't know any person who haven't talked yet.

Maybe I I'll say yes, yes, please go on. Yes, yes. Yeah, I really liked one in Richard's presentation. He said something about the Russian intellectuals, the ones who were who lived in exile. So basically the idea or the projected image of Russia was created kind of outside of Russia and then important and imported. And this is also what happened later with Lenin who came from Switzerland and so on. And also this echoed what later Walter Benjamin when he visited Moscow in 1926. And he recalled in his diaries that when he arrived to Russia, he realized, and in Europe, Russia back then was seen

as kind of an epicenter of this huge political experiment. And when he arrived to Russia, he realized that the reality that he found there was not matching this kind of ideal image of the revolution. So what I wanted to add, also because I grew up with this literature, with Russian nihilists, this was kind of my main upbringing, and it is always very inspiring as an idea. And even when you gave your presentation, which was ending with this nihilists being executed but after they kind of succeeded with killing the Tsar it's always like very very elevating in a way but then there's always this mismatch with the kind of the

how the means of the revolution and how it actually comes to life and in this sense I always echoes through history yeah and I always felt that this kind of the massive the lens of Russia then later became Soviet Union and other countries that joined or were forced to join. So there was always this kind of projected idea that was totally not matching to what was happening or the masses, so to say, were never able to be at the level of that idea. So there was always a lot of kind of violence. And then when we read Nechaev's idea about how we need to kind of abolish or annihilate everything which does not serve the means of the revolution.

So then for me, it's a question. It's still a big question. The means, how the revolutions are being done. And then also, I just wanted to ask you, Reza, if you read Platonov? Because for me, this is... No, no, I haven't. I haven't. Yeah, maybe like if any of you are interested, you can read the piece. Absolutely, please, please. Would you be able to type the title on the sideboard? Yeah, because I think that Platonov is the greatest Russian writer ever. And so his work, one of his key novels, which is called The Pit, is exactly about these people who are digging this pit, which is a foundation for a house,

which is the idea of this kind of the big socialist world that they are now doing but in the process of digging they are completely losing the sense of self and the sense of kind of attachment to the reality so there is nothing else but the digging that remains. I see, I see. I don't know if I make myself clear but for me there is always this kind of conflict between the idea that was shared by a few and then this kind of a huge disjuncture. A question for you, Asya. You see, so we talked about Sabina Espirlin, you know, the idea that destroy is a cause to come into being, right? And it is not by any means a

kind of innocent idea. It is a contradiction that ought to be resolved. Obviously, the reason that I suggested Frenzy and Sabina and Spirlin at the end was precisely because to point out the revolutionary psyche, right? Having the demons. So, sure, let's say that Nashayef was an utter failure. But then, if we do believe in a certain kind

of destruction for regeneration, regeneration for further destruction, so on so forth, ad infinitum. First, my main question for you is that do you believe in such formula? If not, then what will be your alternative? If yes, then what kind of revolutionary act do deem fit? Well, I think the problem is that I do believe in this formula. Also kind of I see that it's really, you know, I think that my strong reaction to Nicaev is also part of how I'm really getting convinced by it, you know, in a way.

So I think this is also kind of... Yes. And isn't it NIC land really? In our time? Nicayev you mean? Nic Land is the new Nicayev. Well, I don't know much of Nic Land's work, I must say. Sorry, I missed this one passage which sounds very accelerationist. I mean, when Nicayev says... Right accelerationist. yeah i don't know but he he says that the that the that evil and and the the misery of the people should be should be intensified and accelerated in order to create general uprising right right yes but also isn't it depends like um on on the geographical location you know because i think

that also the kind of the conversation that can be around these issues for example in mid-19th century Russia, you know. Yes, but you see, Asya, the thing is that I think that Dostoevsky had a point. You see, yes, from a perspective of concrete political change, it is absolutely local problem and context sensitive. You can overextend it to other kinds of contexts. But the thing is, at the moment, you become an ideologue, according to Dostoevsky, you don't see those local exigencies, you don't see the context sensitivity, even if you are

not a universalist. So you see, for example, land is a good example. Lange is someone who does not believe in any sort of universalist, leftist, historical kind of stuff. But his ideology is being put forward as if it was universal. So these are actually quite really interesting problems that And I think the reason that I'm so in love with early psychoanalysis is precisely because there are the problems of psyche, psyche in the general sense, collective and individual,

that precisely because we haven't had certain kind of a scale or a scaled differentiation between local problems of psyche and collective problems of psyche, we can always fall in the trap of a certain kind of either micro-localism or universalism, regardless of whether we actually think that universalism is wrong and is a failed project, or whether we think that localism is just some sort of liberal force. My friends.

Is there perhaps a sort of Manichean undercurrent to a lot of this and the same that links, you know, perhaps like an unstable like ethical practice has the risk of like turning into morality if you're making all these claims to like revolution or to acceleration or to bringing about sort of millenarian moment it's like um in pursuit of this ends you know the the the uncriticality towards the means becomes becomes like a even in pursuit of a noble ends that's that that's that's kind of what um can derail the project and all the way through so

yes yes coding things to to to just good bad and sometimes the way to to sort of um to achieve practical like success can sort of mean that like dynamic instability where you're constantly correcting your own actions and constantly questioning your own actions. James, a different problem arises here, a problem which ethics has already talked about this and we been talking about it all along. So yes, so majority of these are on the side of ends, with a little amount of literacy about the means or the methodological question, right?

But the thing is that, consider this fact, that many people who have already set their mind on a certain kind of ends, they can mold their means and methods according to those kinds of ends. So, meteorological neutrality is something that is outside of the purview of such people. because if they did actually have methodological neutrality, they wouldn't have these kinds of ends in the first place, right?

Because an impersonal method takes you wherever you go, wherever it goes, actually. Reza, I have a question. is your last statement the equivalent somehow to this hypothesis the figure of revolutionary minus ideology? Because historically the figure of revolution is always associated with some sort of ideology. Yes, ends, ends. Exactly. And ends always determine the means. Yes, of course. Perhaps not in that kind of, you know, shallow Hollywood.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that the relation between ends and means is quite complex one. But yes, I think that the revolutionary, this is why I actually say that the revolutionary should have not a standard methodologies. The standard methodology should come through a historical practice and by way of what we

philosophers of mine call conning intelligence. Essentially, one of the greatest things about this concept of conning, right? You see these stories, these mythological stories of a human being fooling a demon, making the demon believe that his bidding, the end given by the demon, but at the end of the day there is a certain kind of conning that leads the method to diverge and creates

different ends to the detriment of the demon. You get this for example in Persian mythology, You get this in Greek mythology. Odysseus is a good example, right? Odysseus is a master of Matisse conning intelligence. He just wants to get out of the netherworld, to ascend back to the surface. But he cannot do this by simply, I don't know, having deals with demons or doing some canonical

ladder job. He's not a ladder man. He has to create a new device where the methods of him descending into the abyss logically pulls him out into the surface This is why Odysseus is one of the greatest, greatest heroes of mankind. I don't know if I understood it correctly, but are you proposing a solution to the Nietzschean

contradiction which we mentioned in the beginning of the session? Yes, I would say that like Alexander the Great, that contradiction is a Gordian knot. cut it in half. Just like Alexander. But does that mean then just accepting coexistence or ambiguity? An ambiguity which can be worked with. You can never get rid of that ambiguity. It would be a wishful thinking. There is no resolution.

That resolution that Nietzsche actually talks about is a very resolution, is a very critique of his against Hegel. Right? I think there is a better way that this ambiguity ought to be charged, ought to be turned into a vehicle and ought to be turned into temporary solutions, because all we have as humans are temporary solutions. We don't have permanent solutions.

we were in hell actually rather than heaven I have a question that I thought earlier about Neshayev and the notion of autonomy because it seems like Nechayev's revolutionary terrorist position is like a radical autonomy.

that and and the thing is he cannot deal with this ambiguity and the the productive and the creativity that it should produce and it seems like a hegelian or a more dialectical position has this acceptance of in inescapable alienation on symbolically, on the demons or whatever, to produce a creative destruction and not only pure destruction like Nechev. So I think this pose a problem to the idea of radical autonomy. There is like a certain element of heteronomy on dialectical positions such as

Hegel and and Neshayev couldn't accept that. My apologies. So yes, you see I think Neshayev in a certain sense is a great reader of anarchist and Marxist tradition. I don't think that you can ever have that kind of autonomy. You essentially begin with the edifice of heteronomy, which are called in the organome of early psychoanalysis, ego complexes.

like some benevolent, some neutral, some working against your pleasure principles, all sorts of stuff going on. Yes, and you can even actually go back to Kant. that that kind of integrated autonomy is just a myth right and to create autonomy is a practical task precisely because what we call an autonomous agent

is first of all a deterministic animal. It's just like a computer. So, Cellars has this great example, this I, we, this I, he, we, or the thing which thinks, where it compares the problem autonomy with the problem of a computer, right? So you turn it on, you turn the computer on, it makes a whirring sound, boots up, and then

it becomes a pure entity, a computer. But the thing is that you can think about the problem of autonomy. in a naturalistic way as precisely the problem of a computer that essentially you cannot get anything from that computer unless you punch on certain keys on the keyboard namely causal inputs those causal inputs determine what computer does but what Seller actually talks about is that does this make computer a heteronomic entity just like human being precisely because

You see, we are just like those computers. I mean literally from the basics of the mechanism involves, there is no distinction between a human and a computer. I mean we are getting punched. some keyboard inputs, and those are the causal connections that allow us to be part of this world. Otherwise, we wouldn't be part of this world to begin with, right? Espinozistic fact 101. So if that is really the case, then how can we reconstruct autonomy?

Sellers, and perhaps Kant and to some extent Hegel, would believe that this is actually what you might call to be autonomy in the most rudimentary sense. The real autonomy is given to you by judgments. which are not prescribed by the key punches on the keyboard like a computer what are a species of logical formations like for example you have put a logical program lisp I don't know for whatever and then you put some input in and you

get an output, right? That logical program, Fortran, language, so on and so forth, that's autonomy. In the sense that they think that autonomy is not a species of natural. It's unnatural. It is not metaphysical, it is not supernatural, right? But it is unnatural precisely because it's logical. The protocols of logic are very different from natural

protocols. That's what makes us these kinds of beasts. We can be serial killers, philosophers, I don't know, children, politicians, evil men, so on so forth. that logical thing is the core protocol. And this is not given to any other species really. As a just, another question, because it seems to me that as you're saying,

there wouldn't be real artificial intelligence until these intelligence had demons also. had also this heteronomical dimension, as you call spirit or whatever, but you have to have demons to have logic and not only master protocols. Do you agree with that? Yes, yes. I mean, if you take demons, not in a literal sense, but in the sense that certain kinds of... So, think about Kant's transcendental scheme. So, on one side there is sensibility, the question of the body. On the other side, the question of understanding and reason, the question of mind.

So demons, in a Kantian sense, are fluctuations within this spectrum, between pure senses, in a psychoanalytic sense you might say that the question of the ego, so on and so forth, and the question of logic, reason, so on and so forth. Because we also have rational demons, right? Not in the sense that there are rational demons,

but there are demons who act within the bounds of reason, rather than the bounds of ego or senses. I mean, good examples are the kind of demons that scientists use to solve problems. Right? Questions? If I understand you correctly, is what you're kind of saying there, that the demon is a

kind of figuration of this problem that, I mean, I'm not sure if I've fully gotten a handle on it myself, but that Selaz brings up when he's talking about this kind of question around the imagination as whether it belongs to the faculty of reason or it's a sensation-based thing. Yes. Yeah. Demon is, I mean, I think it was Findlay, John Nehmer Findlay for the first time, who said that demons are products of productive imagination. So productive imagination in Kant is a very sticky topic.

Productive imagination is essentially a name for understanding, right? But an understanding that is informed by the senses, by the body, by the predicaments of neurophysiological wiring guys if you don't talk i will be cancelled do you know why what would be an example of

you gave the example of or you didn't give an actual example but you mentioned what could be a demon as used in science what would such a demon be? a demon is for example is purely made out of thought nothing else right for example think about maxwell demon think about demons of science archimedian demons right demons which are made from artifacts of thinking mathematical logical so on and so forth

and their task is to show that what we take as reality is actually a fragment of reality it is not the whole picture those are demons too Demons are limit conditions as I have been telling you guys, but the thing is that limit conditions can be generated by different kind of procedures. Ethical, epistemological, logical, mathematical, so on and so forth.

I'm just, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this question, but yeah, essentially, it kind of, it's a matter of these practices that, you know, this procedural generation kind of consists in, you know, how did those, you know, you brought up like basically a bunch of, you know, kind of rational enterprises in a sense, right? Like scientific exploration and so on. If the demon, if the figuration of the demon that we're talking about here relies on a kind of corporeal sensation, how did these kind of get onto that in a sense,

right? No, they don't. They don't. That's the whole point. Essentially, the course of this whole class to show that the evolution of the concept of demon moves first from the formal, right? Like for Assyrians, they have zero interest. They are not infesting your body, right? There are forms that you might adopt or you might get infected with, right? Forms, like Platonic forms. And then to the kind of Christian medieval time where they are part of your body, right? And then modern times like Nietzsche where demons are both this and that.

So, demons are not just part of the body and are not just part of the mind. They are fluctuations. Essentially, what you might call to be demons are those turbulences that we ascribe to what happens in the mind with regard to what happens in the body. And that makes demons far more exciting because if they were fucking body sheds

Why the fuck do we need them? We can change our bodies and if they were part of the mind, I can change my body and have a better life, right? Unfortunately, they can't. We can't do that. precisely because they're both, they're oscillations between mind and body problem, the eternal problem of humankind. So I guess given that they have this kind of like transient kind of character, like at least transient like apprehension, then how can, you know, is there not further difficulty

then in trying to develop a procedural kind of generative project of coming to like a better, like to constructing them better somehow, right? If this makes sense, because I understand this from what you were saying earlier in this kind of distinction between the active demon and the passive demon, you know, neither can be really thought of as this kind of sudden moment, right? You know, it seems like passive demon is somehow familiar in order for us to be able to speak about it. And similarly, the act of demon as a kind of precept of ethics would require a more slow and procedural kind of building. And then I guess the question for me is like, if it's got this elusive or transient kind of like, you know, the moment in which it is apprehended is kind of elusive somehow, does this not like add a further difficulty to the project of constructing a demon

or working with it or something, you know, like maybe like the tension between the, this tension that you're speaking about between it being a kind of rational capacity and natural. Or life and death in the psychoanalytic sense. Yes, absolutely. You see, this is the whole point, as I mentioned, that you can't live without demons, right? Precisely because you are made out of demons, external and internal forces, right? But the thing is that to resolve the contradiction, as Nishev would have said,

requires a certain kind of tactic or strategy to create a better life for yourself, enhance better demons. But then, does this actually satisfy you? I think absolutely not. I think that we are premature creatures who really don't know how to live with our demons,

to resolve the issues, both individually and socially. I mean, look at Twitter now, right? People have so many fucking demons. They look happy, but are they really happy? Are they good people? Maybe, maybe not. This is something that is absolutely one of the most corners. This is what Dostoevsky... You see, Dostoevsky actually talked about Stepanovich as the cornerstone of his story.

So he's a no man. is merely someone who gives rise to these demons. But it's nevertheless called the cornerstone of the novel demons, precisely because it is that kind of natural and ideological factor that gives rise to these demons. And we yet don't have the world retails to get rid of it.

I don't think that we have the world retails to get rid of our demons at this point. In any sense, any sort of demons that we do actually create will result, yes, through regeneration of a different generation, but also a certain kind of doom for them and us. This is something I don't want to be cancelled, right?

But I think that, think about many of these topics that are being brought up with regard to social justice, Marxism, gender, race, so on and so forth. Where do they get us to? We have to experience with them. just like experiencing the demons that we have ourselves created historically. But I don't think that the final answer is in their hands,

in the hands of the demons, or the younger generation, or the newer generation. I, this is something that gives me complete nightmares. What are we supposed to do? I mean, for example, one, I don't know, okay. Okay, so think about this. Demons in a contemporary setup.

J.K. Rowling, right? So obviously she's talking shit. But she's also making a certain kind of proposition, right? That unfortunately we cannot answer at this point, precisely because we are slaves to the goddamned tyranny of nature. Her proposition is that, well, women do menstruate, right?

Yeah, okay. But what if we could change the course of the tyranny of nature such that men could be pregnant, right? These kinds of stuff, unfortunately, are not going to be answered in our time, no matter how much we discuss and debate about them. I think we are premature to even understand the depth of such problems, such as the problems

of our own demons. Can sort of theory like preempt, you know, it's time and like, you know, it took a very long time for the Bolshevik revolution to follow, you know, some of these 19th century sort of discussions in Russian revolutionary literature. But, you know, as we sort of, you know, we don't have a lot of this sort of like transhumanist um practical ways of achieving like um sheer defeat of nature but you know if we can have the conversation then that can pave the way as well right yeah yes i mean um you you

you get this in xenofeminist manifesto and some of these transhumanist or post-humanist discourses that the ultimate goal is to, you know, basically to be a demon of yourself and no longer be an exploited victim of a demon, particularly if it is of a natural kind. I think it's just wrong. It's not going to happen. in our time. I think we should be more humble. We are not the kind of people, kind of a species, who can simply pull off such tricks

from either mind or nature. Any sort of... yes, we have to work toward it, right, procedurally, but any sort of idea that as if we have done it or as if we are just doing it, it's just bullshit. truly bullshit. This is why I think that the organ of exploitation has not been... You see, so this is what Frenzy also talks, that he identifies demons with an alien will.

The alien will is the force of exploitation. It always comes from the outside, right? Pretending as if it was already inside. So, Frenzy says this thing, that the alien will excises certain components of your ego, for example through child abuse or these kinds of forms of exploitation, bring it to himself, remolds it, and then reprints it on you, such that you think that exploitation was merely caused by one thing,

one thing only and if you can get rid of that cause you're all good you are you know rescued I think that these are just entirely caprices of human beings For us to do something, we should participate. For us to participate, we should make better organizations. For us to make better organizations, we should make better techniques of configuration.

for us to make better techniques of configurations we should understand that we are in this hell all of us so you see that kind of methodological axiom is very important because otherwise I really just don't understand how we are going to get rid of this stuff. It's just what you may call to be taking adverb while you have a cancer, right?

Sorry, could I ask you to explain the techniques of configuration? What do you mean exactly by that? For example, you see, obviously, every psyche, every individual, psyche is the fruit of a certain configuration of the collective psyche, right? And every collective configuration of psychic individuation requires a certain kind of

methodologies. To look into those kinds of methodologies is a revolutionary task and an ethical one. We haven't done that. I mean, yes, we have done that. But I mean, look at the prospect of education today in America and Europe and other places. Is this how we want for a child to grow up? question if if i may um the uh this idea of uh of the of oneself being one's own demon

isn't isn't that in a sense a niche an idea it is it is but i would say that it's actually far more ancient than niche and as i mentioned earlier on you know the very problem of the demonic in ancient civilization is essentially it is a self resisting itself at the outer rims of itself. So yes, it is Nietzschean but it is not Nietzschean completely. I think it has a a very, very rooted historical upbringing that self always attacks itself.

The moment that it becomes conscious. Can I ask a question about xenofeminism since you were talking about that? um oh no no z are you trying to cancel me no no don't worry uh i hope i don't get canceled um well you are definitely going to cancel i'm not um i don't know if i've gotten this right because i don't know xenobiumnism that well but i get the impression like that you know like the basic idea seems to be that you get this tendency where like functions and activities related to women are

intentionally transferred to machines and then the accelerationist element would be you accelerate that so um women don't have to do any of those things anymore but i always get the feeling that it's like a kind of paradoxical feminism that kind of buys the idea that the position traditionally associated with men is where you want to get to so it's like a feminism that's saying what uh maybe we should all be men and that would be great like you and you know say that but but i can i can i can understand what you are saying my real problem with xenofeminist manifesto is really that last sentence.

If nature is unjust, then change nature, right? How the fuck are you going to do it? Right. That's a problem that is not coming from gender, that is not coming from race, that is not coming from ethnicity. This comes from all of them. It is the multitude of the human problem. And it is not something that can be resolved, absolutely cannot be in our lifetime. I mean, what does it even mean if nature is unjust trying to, you know, change nature? Right?

So if I have a goddamn, which I have, arthritis in my left hand, I think nature is fucking unjust to give me arthritis. Right? But what does it mean to change that using medical sciences? Is this what you mean? That, I think, is a certain kind of simplistic understanding of what it means to fight against injustice. Because nature is not unjust.

The way I sort of understand their like relationship, the xenofenonist relationship to nature is like taking nature as more of like an intersubjective like, like claim to like reactionary politics to say like, determine what is possible by like, by like rejecting nature in a more like symbolic sense. then you can attack, like head on. This actually converges on the edifice of psychoanalysis, right? So the early psychoanalytics, they think that the problem of the forces,

the tyrant forces of unconscious, are of symbolic natures, right? But they are not. And you cannot simply either deal with them on the ground of natural forces or symbolic forces. Right? So, you get this kind of bad recipe of how to be a happy person. will I actually want to be dead rather than be psychoanalyzed? Reza, before people start leaving,

maybe we go through what we're going to do in the next session? Oh, next session. Next session. Yes, so I have read all of your experience and stuff about this class. So if you really think that there are questions unanswered, it is up to you to bring those questions to me. Right? So essentially, yes, we absolutely did not talk about so many ideas that were promised.

But then, as good as students, it's up to you to bring those questions. And next session, we'll go over them and we'll do a wrap-up by saying that, hey guys, you know, when I was talking about demons, I was just talking about my hysteria that led me to become a philosopher. So this is your responsibility for the next session to come up with questions questions are not answered right and then we will

go over them we will do a wrap-up at the end is that good and also a quick reminder for those who are doing this course for credits as a certificate students we do 10 minutes presentation each for the next session? Those people who can't actually do the presentations, simply send me the notes you have written. Doesn't need to be in essay, in a total essay format. We can Skype and I will give you some feedback. How about that?

You also mentioned this one, sorry, Reza, you mentioned this one text by Thompson that we might consider reading also for the last session. From who? Thompson, I forgot the first name. What was it called? You talked about it last session. You know that my short memory is a complete shampoing. I mean I can remember the face of my mom, but unfortunately I cannot remember what I

actually taught in the last course. We need to get a mnemonic technique, you know, like develop a method of like loci or whatever. It was Michael Thompson. I think it's something from... Oh, it's the action books, right? Is it the action books? I think so, but I'm not sure which... You talked about a specific essay you wanted us to read. No, it was the first chapter of Michael Thompson's book. One sec.

So, I think it's called Action... Life and Action. Life and Action. It's an idea, practical idea of how to be a life form, right? He's actually talking about this problem, where we are with Ganesh time. And we have been trying to talk about this by wake of internal and external forces, demonic ones.

And just to just sort of clarify a little bit for our presentations for us like who are presenting on our sort of ideas of of topic and stuff we just sort of think about and we maybe present some different half, you know, ideas and progress about what we're doing is that is that the general idea. To be honest with you for the last session, you don't need to go with any references. You can simply create a presentation based on what we have talked about, critically, positively, whatever you want. Cool, sounds good. Less pressure.

Of course, if you go on the critical side, well, I'm going to block you on Twitter. Maybe we should finish this, but we can stay and talk to each other. I wanted to ask if you want. Yes, yes, please, please.