On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons (Session 1)

Okay, now we are live. Hello and welcome to the first session on the practical necessity of heaven devons by Reza Nigharistani. From myths to philosophy, from ancient scripts to modern literary works, the problem of evil have preceded by demons as limited cases of vices and by the same token virtues. For precisely, the demonic does not signify the essence of evil, but elaborates evil by ways of its contextual unfoldings and consequences, both in thought and practice. A demon, in this sense, highlights the nebulous outer rims of a thinking and practicing self, the moment when this self ceases to be a self, a mechanical shadow of what can possibly be said or done,

regardless of any intervention by the conscious ego. The demon is thus another name for the blind will to live, simultaneously displaying its myriad of possibilities, but also its murderous will to kill. This three-credit seminar is a historical survey of the fascination with demons as spiritual matrixes. Each session will focus on a case study borrowed from myths, anthropology, Western and Eastern religions, ethics, and literary fiction. We shall begin with the birthplace of the legion in the fertile, screened only to land at the doorsteps of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, demons and beyond good and evil. Resanigaristani is a philosopher. He has contributed extensively to journals and anthologies

and lectured at numerous international universities and institutes. His current philosophical project is focused on Russianist universalism beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge and advancing towards contemporary philosophers of rationalism. And this procedures as well as their demands for special forms of human conduct. He is the author of Cyclonopedia. Reza, please take it away. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Very pleased to meet you. I see some familiar faces, which I will throw throughout the course as always. But the rest,

I'm really honored to meet you for the first time. If you don't mind, maybe we should start introducing ourselves one by one, briefly about where you have come from, what your background is, and why you have taken this course. if you don't mind i will be calling people one by one so we can sure absolutely carl would you like to begin by me no yeah sure certainly um yeah so my name is uh carl olson and i'm i'm doing a phd in in geography although i haven't quite decided yet if i'm a geographer

of philosophy or a philosopher of geographer of geography um and it began as some kind of exploration of Artaud and his poetry in relation to the stance against the vicissitudes of the world, but it's now sort of evolved into some kind of exploration against the general sort of anxiety about space in the history of psychology. Yeah, this seminar feels quite relevant in terms of of my interests. So I'm sort of delighted to be here. Nice to meet you all. Thanks. Thank you, Carl. Thank you. Ekin? Hi.

I know Reza. I know some of you. My name is Ekin Narakan. I'm from Turkey. I live in New York. I was originally trained in philosophy of mind, analytic philosophy, then I made, you know, like a five, six year mistake into continental philosophy. And now I have retreated into the lands of analytic philosophy, Tom Sturkenberg, logic, the good stuff. This is a joke. There's, you know, plenty of good continental folks, just many more analytic folks. That's fine for now, I suppose. Yeah, I'm doing a PhD philosophy. Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to reading the ethics again

and Nietzsche and what my mentor, Mr. Negarastani, has to impart on all of us. Daman? Hi, my name is Daman. I'm from Iran, actually from Shiraz, Reza's hometown. I don't have any background in philosophy. I'm an engineer, but I'm very, very hardcore interested in philosophy and literature. And I'm struggling to become a writer, maybe out of, I don't know, out of despair or something like that but uh the topic uh of the seminar and the description uh i found very uh closely

to my pondering and wonderings about my own writing that's why uh like i'm looking forward to damen may i ask you where you are settled down i live in germany oh you are in germany has the german joke okay yeah that's a good figure i have a bunch of more german jokes but i will you should unfold them as we move forward exactly exactly oliver uh yes hi um i haven't participated in any of these courses before but i'm happy to be here i

I'm a musician and now I study literature and I'm interested in both literature and philosophy and history and just the syllabus of this course seem to have quite a wide scope into all of these fields. and yeah and I'm in I'm from Denmark I'm in Copenhagen I study in Sweden but right now from from here in Copenhagen thank you so much that that sounds very exciting yes sorry was that was that me yes um hi my name is and I'm originally from Ireland but I live in

I started out in philosophy and then I moved to art. I really enjoyed philosophy. I have read philosophy the entire time since leaving academic philosophy, I suppose, but I couldn't really hack the work of writing papers in this very esoteric way where I felt no one would ever read what I was writing or be interested in it. So yeah, I moved to art, but I feel like I'm still straddling between both of them. Yeah. I think this course is something that kind of... Thank you. Romola? Hi, can you hear me?

Yes. Yeah, okay. I'm a writer, a poet, unfortunately. Don't worry. we are not going to take it personally. I'm from Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, doing my master's currently in theory. It was like some sort of phenomenology in aesthetics and music and now it has verged into word making in art and like creation as a form of cosmogony and something like that that's so that's that's a very exciting topic yes thank you thank you really good thank you

everyone i live in istanbul turkey and this is the fourth seminar i'm taking in the new center I wrote my master thesis on the concept of there is in Levinas and how I'm making PhD applications to work on Deleuze. I am interested in Deleuze's possible connections with speculative realism in general. Yeah, I think that's all. Efraim, if you had told me that you have worked on Lebanon, I would have cancelled you from the beginning. I'm just joking here. Love you.

Okay, next person. Georgia. Hi, I'm Georgia. I'm from Greece. My background is in architecture and I'm trying to become a digital artist. I have some experience in digital media and I'm mostly concerned about implementing some theoretical aspects in my work. I'm particularly interested in narrative and speculative scenario building and how this can go to creation uh georgia may i know uh are you still in greece i'm sorry are you still in greece yes yes yes okay thank you thank you that that's that's a

good resource we are going to use you as a spy okay down the line at your service Matteo? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, hi everyone. So glad to meet you, at least online. It's the first seminar or webinar I attend, so I'll learn on the way. I just graduated in philosophy in Florence and I did my master thesis on philosophy of law and legal pluralism and this boring stuff, which can be exciting if you put some good money into it, I guess.

No, I mean, we will know each other along the way, I guess. and you see Matteo as a Persian we have a vendetta against the Romans right sorry as Persians we have a vendetta against Romans right but for some unobscure reason majority of my friends happen to be Italians I mean that doesn't look right Well, the majority of Italian people should hold the same grudge against Roman. Yes. Wayne?

Hi there. I'm calling in from the Mojave Desert in the southwest of the United States. My background was in computational neuroscience and comparative literature. and then I switched into astrogeology and I'm now working for a company that produces geographic information systems and I've got a long-standing mythographic interest in this material. Wayne that is rather a kind of what you might call to be eccentric orbit eccentric Yeah, eccentric background. So would you be able to tell us, and this is actually my curiosity,

why a course on ethics and demons might actually interest you? I have a longstanding interest in Acadian and Mesopotamian mythology. I've got an interest in some of the literature that you picked for the syllabus. I've never read Spinoza, so I figured this would be a great opportunity to do that with a group. I see. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Aladin? Yes. Yeah, my name is Aladin. I have a background in fine art and visual anthropology, and I'm working as an artist, a visual anthropologist, mostly on the topic of the relationship between bees and humans. yeah I think that's it and I

picked this class because I really enjoyed the last one that you taught Reza and I thought it was a nice continuation thank you by the way I'm almost done with your paper sending it to MewCenter with feedback okay thanks Asya sorry you're muted. Could you please unmute yourself? Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Asia. I'm based in Eastern Ukraine. I studied philology and history of art, and earlier I was a Digital Earth fellow, and I was a member of a new center where

also Reza was a mentor for Digital Earth Fellowship, so I had some classes with him before. Currently, my main occupation is this long-term documentary project called Geo Cinema and in this particular course well I mean I'm really well familiar with Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and Spinoza and also kind of where I live in eastern Ukraine is a very kind of there's a lot of trauma in history and a and a lot of evil. And I think literature and philosophy is something that also helps me to bring order and certain sense of sanity. So yeah, I'm here to, on one hand, demystify evil,

but then also to mystify it again, maybe, as a coping mechanism. And Asya, if I'm not mistaken, and please do correct me, If I recall correctly, during the Great Famine, Ukrainians basically endured so much. I think as a thought experiment, it would be good to say, would you actually eat a human being on an open market in a time of famine, like the Ukraine crisis back in the early 20th century.

So it's a question to me if I would either hear or not. No, no, no, not a question to you. Question for everyone. Yes. I mean, for us, it's like we grew up with this literature describing all this actual instances where women would have to kill one child to feed others. And it's really dark. And it's a very traumatic history. Thank you so much. Would you do it? No, don't ask. This is not a question that you can simply ask from one single person. It's a collective question. I thought we were all going to answer. You didn't give an answer.

Well, I'm fine with meat as long as it's meat. You know? Sophie? Oh, Sophie. Hello. Hi. Hello again. Hi, Reza. I'm Sophie. My background is in art. and I'm taking the course because I quite like the course before this one and I'm very interested in demons as such and would love to understand them better and yeah and also in the relationship especially to ethics and that's why I'm taking the course

Thank you Sophie Martina Hey everyone um i'm a fellow italian person res i don't know how you want to take that but um yeah sorry a fellow what italian person oh yes well as i said you know uh unfortunately or fortunately majority of my friends are italians i i so i am not really overthinking about this at this point Okay, we'll see how it goes. So I'm based in London. I'm doing an MA in Contemporary Art Theory here at Goldsmiths University. And I guess I'm interested in demonology because I grew up under a pretty stringent Catholic cultism.

So demonology has been present in my life since I can remember. and also I guess it's been really interesting to see over the last few years I would say almost decade how demonology has kind of been purged from contemporary discourse in a way especially in art so obviously that's made me even more attracted to it I guess so I'm very curious and excited to see. As a Catholic, then you should actually advise us on the perversions of the flesh because that's the Catholic kick, you know. Otherwise Catholicism is not really interesting.

That's all we've got. It's better than nothing. James? hi I'm James I'm in London I trained as a geographer from my BA but I then changed to a sort of contemporary art theory and at Goldsmiths as well which I did last year and like yeah I taught by Robin so sort of came onto your work mostly through that way and yeah I I guess I'm quite interested at the moment about Doomsday. I wrote my sort of thesis on it and kind of like the idea

of it as a cultural and philosophical imaginary and the materialist effects of it. Yeah, so that's me. Are you a Clausen CCRU fan then? I don't know. I'm just trying to break the ice here. Out of the closet. Okay, my dear sir, maybe you should introduce yourself too, since you're participating. Yes, you mean me, right? Hello, my name is Alexey. I also wanted to say in case you have any questions about this course, you can contact me on Facebook or write me an email and I will try to sort it out.

I was interested in demons for a long time. I wrote my bachelor's thesis on monstrosity and I was really into the literature. And with Jason Mohagak's seminar, I sort of rediscovered this direction for me. And so I was really eager to take this course. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Federico Federico What kind of tricks do you have in your old bag? Selling snake oil for today. Hello everybody, I'm Federico. I'm currently in Colombia, Bogota. I'm currently doing my master's thesis in philosophy.

I decided to quit my discipline in the arts. And I'm currently working on Deleuze and Guattari, trying to make a critique of them, like trying to find the cracks in their machinic ontology. And it's been useful to go toward the analytic philosophers for doing that. Also trying to put a bit of Hegel in the mix. and I also worked with Jason Mohogak on the past few months so it's been really great the experience here in the new center so thank you everybody thank you thank you and Jasper yeah can you hear me yes yes I'm Jasper I'm in Copenhagen Denmark I finished my

degree in philosophy last year and ever since I've just been doing all sorts of arts and mainly been working on a book that kind of takes shape as a correspondence with an author from another older generation than myself where we discuss the relationship between the ellipses and the eclipse in the works of John Martin and we talk of all kinds of stuff so everything in the realm of shadows is of my interest, I guess. Jasper, your background is probably the most striking background. Maybe. I guess I'm not the last person to present myself, am I? No, but unfortunately, I mean, look at all of us and the backgrounds that we have.

the whole idea of working in the realm of shadows is just emanating from your background oh yeah in that sense i was thinking about background in general since that's what we're no no background that background i haven't been uh vain enough to look at my camera but i can see yes it's quite dark back there yeah thank you andre Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I'm Henry. I'm from New Zealand originally, but I live in Germany now as well. My background is in theatre and literature, but now I work in contemporary art.

I run a project space in my apartment where I invite artists to make exhibitions within the context of a domestic space. And I guess, yeah, I'm interested in narrative and storytelling and, yeah, questions of wickedness and kind of virtue and how individuals kind of craft stories about themselves around those topics. That's really great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Antonio? Hello. I'm Antonio. I'm speaking from the very south of Brazil.

I'm finishing my PhD in Legal Theory right now, discussing a bit of the relation between law and techniques in contemporary platform environment. And my reasons to be here are basically, one is just general interest in Reza's thoughts. I'm, at the same time, I'm a big fan, and I'm also like, kind of trying to, it's like, I take Reza to be like, a very good enemy to have, in a way, I guess. And I'm, I'm, I'm finding myself quite interest,

quite influenced by Reza's thought in my reading of law, and especially on the reading that I was already trying to do of Hans Kelsen's conception of law. I'm also interested in the relation between democracy and demonology was an interest that I was kind of starting to look at, and now I think is a good opportunity to develop that. And also the cosmopolitical implications of monotheism versus animisms is something that I have been finding myself constantly coming to. So I think that's going to be a good environment to think about all that.

And yeah, I'm really excited to be here. So thanks. Thank you, Antonio. A question for you. When you say law, do you mean the polis law, the laws of the state? Yeah, so yes and no. I mean, I'm trying to think about what conception of law we need in order to think about law in a contemporary environment that is kind of moving beyond the Westphalian sovereignty model. Doesn't mean it's non-state. It's kind of metamorphosis and like .. Yes, yes. You see?

So essentially, you haven't settled your mind on the difference between rules as collective human enterprises and laws as the laws of the state, Allah, Hobbes, and so on and so forth. So you are seeing a kind of gray zone between rules and laws. I'm not sure. I mean, there's various ways in which you can like, that kind of has different layers to it, I guess. but you can think of law, like, I feel like in modernity, there's a big sense in which you kind of take laws

in the sense of the kind of pragmatic, like, epistemic procedures that we talk about, like, in rule-based. But those are rule-based. Yeah, but I feel like, at least in the outset, like with Kant and Hegel and all that, is kind of at the level of necessarily like universal, so at the level of the stage. So you can kind of connect it there. And at the same time, I'm quite interested in like the notion of nomos that you get from like Carl Schmitt and like some Greek. Yeah, yeah. That's also another layer of discussion. I see, I see, I see. Thank you. Thank you so much. Help me.

Shilpi, are you here? Okay. Hi. Am I audible? Yes. Would you be able to turn on your video if it is not basically too taxing? Actually, I'm not very sure if the network will... Oh, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. That is the only reason. So I'm Shilpi, I'm from India, New Delhi. And the description of the seminar, the practical necessity of having demons was very interesting to read. So that's why I'm here. I was, while reading the brief, I was filled with many questions like,

isn't what is evil decided by people in power themselves? And what we consider to be evil, it keeps changing according to which part of the world we are in which time period we are in and isn't evil what helps in evolution of human culture itself absolutely it does like for example being in a city what i may consider i may consider domestic abuse to be something evil. But for an 18 year old girl in a small village in Uttar Pradesh in India, she may consider that it is right for her husband and her in-laws to hit her if she's

doing something that is not according to them. So I think it's a very, it's a social construct that keeps evolving. So context sensitive, it is also context sensitive. Yes. Yes, yes. No, absolutely. This is actually the whole point of this course, that the problem of evil, like, is Prometheus evil? Well, yes, according to so many accounts from Mount Olympus News generation, it is. But, screw Zeus. and mount all inputs. Prometheus was not an evil doer. He was a double dealer. He wanted something

from the gods and something from humans. So the problem of evil is always context sensitive. from the beginning of time itself, from the dawn of civilization. But as you see, and we will talk about this, as we move forward with the rise of organized patriarchal religion, so to speak, we see that evil become canonized, becomes insensitive to the context of its own emergence. And that's when actual evil kicks in.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, this is it with presentations. Reza, I will tune in 15 minutes before the end of the session so we can distribute presentation and responses. Yeah, well, we still have a couple of other people who should introduce themselves. And then after that, we will take a short break and then we'll reconvene. I believe that each panelist has spoken already. No, I don't think that's... I think Sefi De has not spoken. Yes, yes. Sephide comes to the light. Where are you?

I think that... Oh, okay. Sephide? Did Sophie introduce her? I mean, you know Sophie or Sophie did. Yes. Okay. Okay. There is one more person, Saipi Di, Matchidi, sorry for the pronunciation. Yes, Saipi Di is, I don't know. Okay. Okay. Sorry.

Maybe we should actually have a break, short break, five-minute break, and then we'll reconvene and we'll start. Thank you. Federico. Hey, how are you doing? My friend.

I'm good. I'm trying to solve so many schedules to work on my dissertation and stuff like but the rest it's okay it's been okay how's bogota how about you i mean you know nothing nothing too new it's covid and staying home and writing reading watching cinema but how's bogota i mean the the biggest news i have is that people are treating this as if it's it's over in uh in america in general somewhat new york city but a few states have started opening up and the death numbers have increased already like 40 50 percent last two days but it's going to take a few weeks

to see like you know the actual effect of it i'm curious how things are over there yeah basically basically uh the same thing like uh i usually walk my dog like 20 minutes a day and yesterday there was like a lot of people outside and the government is also like issuing like a slow reintegration but yeah I also fear like for the worst I mean people will eventually start taking it like like in the less serious way so I mean it's it's inevitable I mean it hasn't been as bad let's say as in the in the U.S. because I'd seen I've seen from the policies that it's it's been terrible but yeah I mean basically I mean a lot of people have have taken care

of themselves but it's well did your government give money to people no no what about your actually actually colombia is the most i think it's one of the most corrupt nations in the whole world they they actually plundered the the money they they stole it like uh we have like this fund uh that was supposed to go to people who were like uh out of jobs and needed to get money and people uh put their id in the system online and they already had been taken by an invented person like uh it said like like invented names like xxy or something like that and people were like what the hell like they stole my money and yeah it's been like that like

it's been horrible like and and banks are still charging and uh there's been no like uh service uh stoppage like everything's like the same you know it's it's been horrible like in the economic aspect it's been horrible yeah i mean i don't think we're i don't know in the u.s i don't think we're going to feel the economic effect of it until a uh a few months or maybe even like up to a year in the US. But I mean, it's a problem with no good solution. Even countries like South Korea that use contact tracing and certain technological measures, it means giving up quite a bit of privacy

and giving over to Palantir and these companies that are big data overlords, the 5G Bill Gates overlords. Shall we start, my friends? So, essentially, this session, we are just talking very casually about the main themes that are yet to come and be unfolded as we move throughout these 12 sessions.

From one of the reasons that this course was conceived in the first place was because the problem of evil and the problem of demons are not problems of pure outside. They're actually the problems of the self and the will. In the Christian, what you might call to be canon, evil is being seen as the flaw of the self.

where self collapses on itself, where it implodes. But this was not always the case. It was actually a very later addition to the problem of ethics, the problem of self-preservation. And by self-preservation, I don't mean survival. I mean the care of the self. when we look at the problem of evil which came with the problem of demons religion so to speak it wasn't

about what you might call to be sin or the flaws of the self demons represented the outer rims, the outer capabilities of the self itself. So subjectivity is already impregnated with demons from an ethical perspective in the ancient times. Let us go back to almost 4,000 years ago, if not more. look at the fertile crescent mesopotamia

assurians and the babylonians and the no sumerians and this goddamn upper start nation which is called persia for some reason i don't know why They don't have that kind of attitude toward demons and sins the way that religion has. Their attitude toward demons is quite what you might call to be ethical rather than entrenched in moralistic laws.

It is famous that the Assyrian Empire had so many demons on the payroll to export to other civilizations that even their own priests couldn't remember their names. So when you get this idea like in Exorcist or, you know, kind of Christian demonology that they say that there is something called Elysian, that is coming from the Assyrian

Empire. The Assyrian Empire had so many demons where basically they were just nameless, faceless. So what is a faceless demon? What it can do? Is it capable of doing anything? If it can do something to the human psyche, to the human self, then what would be that kind of action so we are going to assert from that ground zero faceless demons in the ancient times such that you can even remember their names it's not devil it's not

Mephisto. It's not Belphegor. No. They have no face. They have no name. And they are not just there to get us. They are just doing their own stuff. Minding their own stuff. But sometimes our paths do cross. So any commentary on the ancient demonology from the fertile crescent and why is it important to understand the genesis of demonology

as a problem of ethics I have a thought reza um can we attribute the the the some kind of impersonality feature to the demon as such yes like without name without space without name because these two uh create the category of personality right the face facial features and and names but the ancient demons are deprived of that so it is maybe it is it makes it more difficult for us to talk about them because

we cannot use our tools our linguistic tools or our perceptional tools as well if you may Yes, absolutely. And that's why I think that the ground zero of ethics, ethics in the Espinosaic Nietzschean sense, begins with demons. things that don't have face things that don't have names things which are legion things which have zero personality impersonal agendas par excellence

so how can we begin the question of subjectivity and selfhood from such constraints, such factors, such as impersonal, faceless demons. This is where we should basically launch this whole seminar upward. Answers. Contributions. Carl, would you So would you say that these impersonal demons are prior to the emergence of subjectivity, or do they haunt subjectivity?

No, they are not. No, absolutely not. They are not. They are not. You see, I would say that the idea of the emergence of subjectivity is always collective. So if subjective consciousness, so to speak, is a collective agenda, such that there is no such a thing as an individual. Literally, there is no such a thing as an individual. Every individual is embedded within a collective. Within that, then demons emerge. That's the whole problem. So the problem of subjectivity and the problem of demonology, having demons, come hand in hand like weird sisters.

So would you say that demons are produced in intersubjective and collective relations? they are what you might call to be embedded in the very idea of the genesis of the subject otherwise why we are going to talk about the problem of evil or demons demon is not something purely subjective, nor the individual. They are actually bred by the very mechanisms

from which the subject emerges, the self emerges and becomes conscious. Inter-subjectivity. Collectivity in a form of sense. So, if that is the case, what would be the possibility of demons? not as what you might call to be harbingers of doom for self but as weird sisters without which

subjectivity doesn't have any sense whatsoever Do you remember the very end of Faust? You know, he has this moment where he can ask for salvation. Also, Dr. Faustus. Dr. Faustus. Thomas Mann? Yeah, yeah. Where he has this opportunity to ask for salvation in his final hour. When he chooses, Dr. Faustus chooses not to. chooses to go to hell in this last hour instead of repenting even though he had made this deal

with mephisto in the beginning that he would not have such an opportunity there is this and he has this chance and he says no why do you think that you know he he doesn't choose to ask for salvation? Because you see, both Gauthier and Thomas Mann were closet Christians. Essentially, they were not ethicists. They were moralists of the New Age. They were hypersers. Hypersers and moralists, so to speak. But okay.

I know that I'm going to get canceled with this, but let us ask this potential question from none other than the great dark lord Nick Land. What would be the answer? That's the question? Yes, that's the question. What would be Nick Lenn's answer to this? Yeah, but to what question you said? The question that... So, Ekin, repeat the story of Dr. Faustus.

I mean, I think we all know the beginning. And his dilemma. he has this choice to beg God for salvation. And if he begs God for salvation, this deal that he's made with Mephisto that he's been operating under for the entire story, that he has limited time on earth,

limited time that's shortened his normal average lifespan, he will be freed from this bargain, which he thought was interminable. And he chooses instead, instead of asking God for salvation and ridding himself, to go to hell for eternity. And, you know, it's a question of why does he make this choice? This is actually, you brought a very, very good term here, which should be, I would say, the initial word from which we should start this class. the idea of the bargain the idea of the bargain is only

known to god damn organized religion and god or god's vision of the demon because actual demons don't want to bargain with you you know they're just like you there are you at the outer rims of your own self such that if this is the case then the idea of ethics should not be conceived in terms of bargain negotiation

but rather in terms of conning the gods. You see, there are two certain kinds of gamblers. Those who simply negotiate and those who actually manage to lock in their chips and get a huge amount of cash humanity should be on the second level not on the

first level that's the problem of ethics I was interested in your thoughts on the bet that God does with the devil in the book of Job because they are betting to see who can conquer Job, right? And God wins the bet. But God is actually betting with the devil. He's like, let's make the life of this man a game for us. Absolutely. A great example of this,

And this is just to start or lay out the material for this course. A great example of this is zeons. So zeons, arch enemy, actually is nothing more than modern Matisse. What is Matisse in Greek culture? pure cunning intelligence someone who can deviate any sort of plot conceived by some goddamn gods right so in uh greek mythology

you get the scenario that Zeus' final solution to Matisse is just the swallower. You know, first of all, Zeus is a rapist. Not only he rapes, you know, but also he swallows all for females. It's also a reverse is all five. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Sorry, yes. But the thing is that there is, so this is a kind of a Greek canonical anthropology,

mythology of the idea of how organized myth or religion deals with unorthodox forces, forces of the outside, right? But it never actually happens in Greek culture. Yeah, of course, you can pretend that you swallowed Matisse and you can get away with it, right? That's good. But the thing is that during this very turbulent time, the time of cultural exchange between Greece and Persia,

there comes a different avatar of demon, something that cannot be swallowed. It's a cyanide pill. If you swallow it, it will just die as a god. This is what you might call to be the revolution of anthropological civilization, the revolution of humanity against Mount Olympus. So what is it? It is nothing but this very simple idea in Avestan mythology or demonology.

her name is druge simply it's a name that translates to modern farsi doroo lie it simply means a dark stratagem a cunning fit such that if zeus you know a demon buster guy who is actually a part of the organized goddamn religion

eats you he will die this is the very problem that comes in circles in the ancient times so you have these kinds of gods who swallows demons whole and then you get these kinds of refined demons who cannot be just swallowed by these goddamn fucking religious shits. Because if you swallow them you become something else.

You lose your standards. as a god on the Mount Olympus. This is the whole point of ethics. So moral laws in the ancient civilizations comes from the high, and ethics comes from the low, from the bottom. At some point, that which comes from the bottom becomes more cunning. it can deceive it can intoxicate that which comes from the top ziyas god allah so on so forth

Riz I have a question is there a relationship between the constraints of the low as opposed to the powers of the upper class ruling gods. In the sense that when the law actually realizes, we can argue about the verb realize, but realizes its constraints, the demon is born. Absolutely. Completely. The idea of ethics, which is the idea of demonology, rather than the idea of moral laws or moral codes, has always been forged in the furnace of understanding the concrete constraints,

such that a terminate gives him some good amount of time within certain kinds of constraints that hey you shouldn't actually try to eat iron or metal beams just go for the foundations which are built upon wooden beams and then that very turmoil can bring down the house of God. Yes, absolutely. That's the problem of demon. Concrete consciousness of the constraints in place

because gods don't have those kinds of constraints. gods merely are illusions of totality of the history and nothing more. They are essentially edge lords, so to speak. comments takes swearing about I think coming back to what Ekin brought about the decision to go to hell I was wondering if you

I think, um, it can be thought of in terms of, um, well, like, God is telling you, what is good is to, um, to come together in the Universal. Like, uh, the, the Heaven, uh, the Heaven, the Way of, of Heaven, seems to be, uh, the way of integration into the, the Universal. I feel like when you say no to that, like the paths that say no to that, like the demonic, black magic path, it's kind of a path of the singular. Like if you go into your own world and you negate the universal, then

you're going to be the god of a different universe. You're going to be affirming difference in opposition to affirming integration. But God is not a universalist. You see, that's the whole point. Yes. OK, let's even make this kind of silly metaphor, that even if God, in a canonical organized religion, was in fact a universalist, then obviously it's more like Stalin.

It's not that I basically say Stalin is a bad man. I think he was a good man, like Zizek. But the whole point is that the idea of universalism doesn't come from the idea of totality. That God or morality gives it. It comes from the idea of singularity. which is a matter of construction. Integration is a matter of construction. It is not as if

all tribes of mankind can be put together by the whim of some whimsical god. No, that is just morality. that's a moral law that's not ethics can I ask how you distinguish exactly in this case would you elaborate a little bit I mean in well regarding the realm of demons and ethics how that

I just want you to elaborate how that differentiates from morality in general. You see, Plato had this very, very good idea about what is what you might call to be illusory moral law and disillusioned ethical code. So the idea is very, very simple. I have said this many, many times. Plato's example is actually very good.

Think of a guild, such as mason guilds, you know, those who make buildings, right? So the Mason guilds are tasked to create buildings such as shelters, so that they can shelter us from the calamities of the outside world, right? But then think about this, that to make a building, you need to have certain kinds of logistics.

what if someone hijacks the codes of necessary logistics that should go into making a building such that, for example, from now on, some crop guild, masons, will tell you that, oh, you cannot use wood, you cannot use iron, you cannot use this or that. Why? Precisely because they have monopoly over other kinds of materials that go into making

a building. So at that point, what you might call to be the definition between morality and ethics begins to collapse. At that point, you no longer think about morality versus ethics, so on and so forth, but rather question that why is that? such methods are necessary and such methods are contingent. Why is that? I should make iron instead of, for example, cement.

Why should I make cement instead of making wood? Essentially, the very question that comes at this point, at the, what you might call to be intersection, is in morality and ethics, is the question of method. The question of method is what decides which one is good. Because morality, neither morality nor ethics, have a telus. if you attribute a telus to them a final end then you're not

better than zeons to think like a human, to act like a human, to behave like a human in the arena of ethics is to cherish the richness and the context sensitivity of every step that we do take within mythological context. So Reza, let's say, like Kant, the categorical imperative is a means to a just society,

polis where everything operates smoothly that's a telos no it is a telos yes what's wrong with having a telos which you know we could put this in today's terms and say were we all operating under universalizable uh reason then we could have something like socialism we could have a fully operated no any sort of socialism that actually embark or piggyback on a t-less is not a socialist no no no but doesn't socialism have a t-los which is a equal it's open-ended it's not something that you just simply ride on

yeah i mean socialism this is why you're still going to have disparities but your t-los is this ideal of egalitarian equality and so on, and this prods forth an ethical agenda where we all offer- But these are methodological questions. You see, that is one of the greatest questions of Marxism, or ethics in general, that any sort of tilis should be composed to the methods from which it can regenerate or it can generate.

So the question of method is actually important here. And that question of method is the very question of ethics. The moment that you simply say that, oh, well, you know, I'm a communist, I'm going to institute moon gulags, which is a very, very good idea. You most probably mistaking the very idea of communism with the idea of what is the

might call to be utopians but communism is not utopianism communism is method in a historical sense the understanding of how methods different methods work in a historical context that's it everything else is just an illusion of totality and that's the very idea of ethics maybe some of our good friends can talk like

Marina. No one? Okay. Georgia? I actually I always thought of socialism and communism like as a form of secular Christianity in the sense that it has this scatological conclusion and there is this

macro history of the of the world like historicity is taken as some sort of absolute and also is in the way they gather people and the way they form like masses and regulate imaginations. So like what is the difference between like communism and Christianity in the way they use like they see techniques for for changing history both of them do do that the same way well if you mean a kind of you know around the middle communism yes it's just christianity

but what i mean by communism is marx and engels thesis about what communism is it is a process that dissolves all sorts of illusions of totality in history because without it communism is not really a process it's a thing when you become a thing it's just a religion so that's That's how I mean by communism. Communism as a process that dissolves the illusions of totality within history.

And you can actually extend this to the problem of self, the totality of the self. What dissolves the totality of self is not morality or moral codes or moral laws. It is ethics. And ethics is a communist thesis. But then what should it be? I have a remark to the distinction between ethics and moral from the previous discussion.

I'd like to check it with you. I think one of the distinguishing factors of ethics is that ethics is arbitrary whereas Morale is law. It's totalized its object. Yes, yes, absolutely. Ethics is more on the side of contingency, not in the ontological sense or ontologized sense of contingency. more in the sense that it's an exploratory enterprise, right?

Whereas moral law is more on the side of going to the full extent of the goal which we have been instructed for. So, ethics, and it's not really Espinosa, to be honest with you. I think Plato was one of the first greatest philosophers who came up with this idea that ethics is something that is not on this planet.

It is something that should be brought from beyond to this planet. And that's where the problem of demons outside and beyond becomes ethical. problems, political problems. I was thinking about this actually in relation to maybe making the distinction between a horizon as a concept that's posited in questions of navigation. right so um like thinking about it versus like a kind of totality versus a more navigational sense

of ethics um what what horizon for me is quite interesting it's because it kind of it contains within it the idea of the limitation and also the idea that there is something that lies beyond the horizon which uh is in some sense kind of what one is navigating towards or you know there's some kind abstraction that's being constructed as like a beacon or something? I mean, I think... Yes, buoyancy principle. I think it is a better way, like a sonar. you know but there comes another problem here so we say that okay

we don't know so much about the universe actually we know shit about the universe literally we don't know shit But then we also, in our most psychic, what you might call to be psychic, realm, psychic enclave, we might actually say that, you know, there is something going on of which we have no information.

Now, this is both dangerous and actually can be prospected within the realm of ethics. Well, you see, you can't simply speculate about the unknown or the unknown unknown. precisely because that which is unknown doesn't have a case if you are going to talk about it most probably you are using your human biases to talk about it so how can you hack the unknown such that you can

talk about it in peaceful eyes. Isn't it the very problem of ethics to talk about demons of which we have no information of the outside, of the beyond, without getting too overexcited to say that, well, I can talk about the outside. I'm going to make a pneumogram about it. Well, my friends, if something is outside of your consciousness, most probably

you're driveling when you're talking about it. It kind of reminds me of that like matrix and design thinking of like between known unknowns and unknown unknowns and known knowns and things yeah yes yes yes and of course the difference between these are it's not really ontological it's methodological and what we are trying to actually solve at this point is the problem methodology of how a self can converge on something that is beyond itself

rather than simply assuming that there is an outside out there because that's just stupid you know do you really sorry sorry no no call please please please Yeah, can I just ask, when you're saying that, are we not already committing ourselves? I would possibly say ontologically to quite a lot about what a self is and how to delimit what a self is. That's an epistemological question. Why are that an ontological question? Yes, we are in the dark with regard to what a self is.

And that's where demons come from. Yes. So with sort of respect to that, would you mind sort of when you feel that it is appropriate to sort of elaborate a little bit about what would take a self to be, even if this um or in on the level of what we can sort of what we need to postulate about self to have this you know the opportunity of doing of sort of going on this ontological journey of of looking beyond the self well i would say that this is just one-on-one the problem of ethics that the problem with the ethics doesn't start from

aiming toward the beyond or outside. It actually begins from the very modest problem of understanding what a self is, namely its pragmatic valley. And from there only unfolds the problem of beyond. any other project is going to be organized religion how many of you are into organized religion you weasels I'm a Catholic

I'm a Catholic well it's funny to not be but i think today you know can you really blame when people look and i'm not into organized religion but think of all the people losing their loved ones or they're faced with a literal demon in you know covid and maybe they turn to prayer maybe they turn to organized religion in some kind of form can you really blame them i mean you know i just don't blame them I would put them on a wall and shoot them. Well, that's because you come from, you know, a place, and Turkey is a little more sober in comparison to Iran,

but, you know, we see, we know where it goes. Yes, no, I understand. But that is really why we have this course. why such smart humans take such desperate ways out. I mean, surely, yes, as I said, jokingly, and I actually, maybe I'm not jokingly. I was actually serious. I want to shoot these people. But regardless of that, I would say that obviously this comes from

a certain kind of misunderstanding of who you are and what your relation is to the world. You see, if you don't understand this, which is the problem of demons and the self, everything that you do will backfire. Can I... Please. I'm just wondering, I have the impression, and I might be historically wrong about this, but that the very idea of a demon, in the sense that we are mostly talking about here,

which is in a negative sense, like the demon... No, no, no. The demons are not negative. The actual demons are positive. There are positive constraints upon our vagaries of human being. Yeah, but it's still like, exactly, like the demon is appearing as a constraint. So it's kind of resisting something. And it seems to me like demons start, like you were talking about, like a multitude of demons which were not like those Mesopotamian demons, I think they were not necessarily considered to be evil. They were considered to be just like spirits of nature and like those demons with like D-A-E-mon

before you take the A off. Yes. Those are just like pagan spirits. And then they actually start to become demons and to be seen as this opposition, when organized religions and more especially monotheistic start to posit this notion of God and of good and evil, and then you can counterpose all of those demons as this relational opposition to this central project.

And so I was wondering whether that is like the framework we are using, because I feel like what ends up in Kant and Hegel is kind of a lay-sizing framework. Yes, of course. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Essentially, this is, of course, the first introductory session. next session we will go into the more systematic study of the ancient Middle East culture or the ancient cultures and its relations to sin, evil, and demons but yes absolutely this is how essentially the course of events emerged in our society in our human society and absolutely yes

This is basically what you might call to be demons, 101 a la religion. And it didn't come from organized religion, to be honest with you. it actually came from much earlier transition from the idea of the human as a free-roaming subject to a subject forged in the furnace of the state. Can I ask a question in relation to totality and establishing its linkage to the subject?

Can we say that the idea of totality you are articulating is about as misleading as unitary vision of subjects? Yes, it can be. But when I actually talk about totality, I simply mean the totality of history in the sense that, for example, the very idea of human, homo sapiens, right, not as a species, but as a historical artifact, is a totalized idea in the sense that it can never be changed?

Well, any person who actually buys into this idea that humans are simply up the ladder of the metaphysical species or they have achieved the higher amount of clout in the history. They are obviously wrong. They are totalizing their history, either metaphysical or simply sociohistorical. Yeah, but exactly like you have.

Okay. Maybe we should have five minutes break. okay bathroom break this time so so

so so so i i actually don't understand like um what is um sort of Ressa delimiting in the sort of notion of a self, if someone knows this, sort of what is what is he actually referring to? I mean, right now or like in his? Well, I would, I guess right now, I don't think it would be pretty to ask about more than that. Yeah, I mean, I don't think he's specified

enough that there is like a thesis of self that we can delimit. I mean, like, you know, you could make the argument that self, my cell phone is part of myself. It extends my memory, it extends my cognitive, you know, operations and so on. And I don't think Reza's presented a counter thesis to and you know deprivatized intelligence as extension of self i you could point to intelligence and spirit and get one you know version of self there probably that would mold onto what he's operating under now but i think right now just like self has been a pretty vague category um so i i don't really have a good answer okay yeah I think Reza's positioning the problematic of demon in alignment with the problematic of self.

In the early introduction that he gave, that he told us about the facelessness and namelessness of the Legion, for example. and I think there is a parallel trajectory between demon and self in our context now that's my shot I think he just flushed we couldn't ask him now you have good ears yeah i didn't share that oh i heard that too

As someone actually insulted me on the chat room, Preza is a closeted mystic. Who that? Bring it on. I thought you had already came out on Twitter. So, to continue, you see, the problem of demons at the dawn of civilization is essentially

the problem of theoretical and practical self-consciousness. to know who we are and to have the were we told to do what we ought to do if this is the case if we are such and such kinds of people a species so on so forth. And of course demons put positive and negative constraints on such ideas. They are basically the forces. I wouldn't call them reality but forces that can attune or tune up

the very idea of theoretical and practical consciousness. To not listen to the voice of demons is always a bad idea. It will lead to a picture of humanity in caprice. human as a whimsical monkey. Do you want that? Reza, in Gilgamesh, when Gilgamesh and his buddy encounter Humbaba in the forest,

Yes. And after this sort of gift exchange of gifts for terrors, there's this conflict. And at the point of killing Humbaba, Humbaba begs for mercy. This is the guardian demon of the forest. That's a tragic point of the whole point of the story, though. Exactly. It encourages him to go ahead and kill him anyway, which is sort of what creates human ethics in that moment, right? Yeah, but he atoned at the end of the story, though, because he understand that killing him was not right. Gilgamesh did. Yes. Not Enkidu. No, not Enkidu. No.

Yeah, Gilgamesh was at that liminal state between the god and the human. Enkidu is the one that, like, suggested sort of violating this thing that would ultimately become sort of like the first moral precept. Yes, yes. really great that you brought the Gilgamesh I'm going to actually talk about it next session excellent would you be able to give us a certain kind of you know ideas about why Gilgamesh is so important can you summarize it can you summarize it first I mean I the epic is somewhere well I will give it to my master. Wayne.

Do you want me to summarize it now, or do you want me to summarize it? Yes, yes, yes, please, please do. Yes, yes. The entire epic of Gilgamesh or that scene? Whatever you want. Gilgamesh is a demigod, a king. he meets a wild man in the in the plains who's not necessarily as equal but who challenges him enough in physical combat that they become the best of friends possibly lovers throughout their lives they adventure together and at some point Gilgamesh decides that he doesn't have enough renown and because he's not going to be able to cross that threshold to where the gods live into the great beyond, which would be the truly great quest. And spoilers, he does get to go there

eventually because he atones and he's able to sort of go into this deathless land. He hatches a plan for how he's going to actually build up his renown, which was to go into the cedar forest where the gods live and to challenge this creature called Humbaba, which is this terrible spirit of the forest that the gods have set to scare men. To scare men away from the forest so that they don't intrude upon the gods. So they go in and they end up in a gift exchange with Humbaba. Humbaba actually takes them in and gives them one of his sisters, gives them food, gives them different things to drink and in exchange Gilgamesh brings these sort of like human gifts and at the end of

it there is a conflict that emerges and they get into this terrible battle which is like a you know Michael Bay action scene and um and you know the the the two of the it's like a kung fu movie the two of them gang up on the monster who is more powerful than either individually and they bring it down and Humbaba's begging for mercy and Enkidu whispers in Gilgamesh's ear, go ahead and cut its head off. And Gilgamesh allows himself to be persuaded by his friend, whacks up the head, puts it in a bag, takes it home. The gods are absolutely horrified, but they don't enact a direct vengeance against Gilgamesh, but a more insidious one, which is they eventually

take his friend away from him. And that causes Gilgamesh to plunge into a depression that lasts for most of the rest of the epic that's only relieved by him actually penetrating through the veil to the deathless lands and eventually finding this old man and trying to ask him for a way of becoming immortal, which I won't spoil the absolute end of the story, but let's say it doesn't work out exactly the way that he hopes. Instead, he turns into words. That was the greatest summary of the US. Was that adequate? All right. Absolutely. Absolutely. That was very good. So my friends.

Actually, Reza, can I one last footnote? Absolutely. If you go to the British Museum, there's a sculpture of Humbaba's face that was brought back the Middle East, which is a labyrinth of intestinal. I have actually seen that. So it's it's an intestinal labyrinth and on the back of it in cuneiform was inscribed the instructions for how to recreate the face of Humbaba for purposes. Do you know why his beard is, yes, that's the whole intestinal intestinal sacrifice you trace in the labyrinth of the intestinal face of humbaba you tell the future so the guardian of the liminal beyond remains the guardian

he eventually tells you know that's the whole point yes yes yes so my dear friends uh those of you have been silent and in the dark Asia you look like a vampire now in a dark background no I'm not well maybe you should say something I wish you were no I'm still kind of trying to figure out where this conversation goes so far And my question for you, because this is the first session, from next session we will

go get more disciplined a little bit. With regard to all these stories that we have been exchanging so far, what would be the difference between morality and ethics, between law and and role between a code and a play? Well, to my understanding, ethics is something that comes from within, right? this kind of inner capability of certain judgment and ability to act accordingly,

whereas morality is always imposed and totalizing. No, I think that you're just bullshitting me at this point. You're basically becoming politically correct. I want you to be the Ukrainian girl you are. put yourself in the time of the great famine in Ukraine. You are a player, an avatar. How are you going to survive? Are you going to eat human meat on the open market? Are you going to do something against it?

Are you going to fight the invaders? What are you going to do? Well, I hope that I would rather spawn the moment of eating. And I would, I mean, I would say that I would rather fight. but I am not really sure if when I need to survive detail it this is what we are for I will definitely detail my own psychological problems of the

time of Iran-Iraq war where basically we didn't have anything so don't don't feel be honest what is your choice as if you are in a game well i mean even from the recent example because it's not it was not a game like the recent revolution where a lot of people i knew shot that and i wasn't also because i knew that i wouldn't go further or like I would go further to a certain point but not further where I knew I could be I could get shot so I don't know maybe the answer is that I my survivalist

logic is still stronger if that's what you're asking. I don't need to bother you. I think that's already a great answer. Yeah, survivalism. To a certain extent. Yeah, sure. A fight to a certain extent, and then, yes, kind of needing to save my life is also important. Do you have impulses? Do you have traumas of these experiences? Oh yes, for sure. I mean, it's still ongoing. The war in the East is still happening.

Yes, yes. No, no, no. I don't want to bother you. That's a great answer. No, I got my answer. Thank you so much. Truly. Anyone who wants to join? Our Indian friends? Pakistani friends? Guys, come on. If you're content with Anshalyan, I would like to ask a question. I'm a little bit confused because I already came across this

process of thought, let's say, but instead of ethics, I was thinking of politics. So I would like to know if you make a distinction between the two and what's that? that because you mean a distinction between politics and ethics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you see. In communism, in my version of communism, Marx and communism, ethics should become. Politics.

If ethics cannot converge on politics, then it's not ethics. If politics cannot converge on ethics, it's not politics. So that is the answer. What would be the detail? What would be the game arena? Give us some details. Well, for example, I mean the current situation or no, maybe better the question you asked before about what would you do in the Ukraine famine or in the current situation anyway.

and my answer would be to recognize the strongest group which formed and separate from it. And when you are concerned with groups, I think you're moving in the game of politics. but then isn't it isn't it the very idea of libertarianism libertarian ethics that simply individuals can bypass those messy problems that usually come with tribal affairs absolutely no look at the states that want to open they use the libertarian arguments

i am free to go to work if i want to i am free to shop if i want to it's all about the individual it's libertarianism par excellence i would say that make a tribe to the best of your knowledge all things considered is a common tribe right and conquer the world from there on everything that is not communist should be annihilated I mean, I quite agree with that.

I'm, of course, joking. No, no, no, no. I know, you know. Kind of. I get it. I get it. I get it. But still, I mean, of course, I'm not talking about setting me as an individual against something strong. I'm rather thinking of setting myself into some other source of group. So I was thinking before that when you speak of ethics, would you allow for more than one

ethical, I don't know, rule? at a time or is there just one well no that is the whole point you see rule is intersubjective it's essentially shifting right it's a transient kind of thing right you can't have a rule if it's not transient if it's not shifting law is a very misconceived idea actually in in philosophy uh what we are actually using the word law here we are actually talking about the socio-political ideas of the law

But going, for example, back to physics, we see that laws are also rules shifting, transient, to the core. but yes if what you mean by a law is this very idea of you know some tribal people some code instituted an idea of what is right what is wrong then yes

we should abolish that kind of law. Rule is always bad. Rule is a matter of play whereas law is a coded game. Cheats involved. My good friends? Any intervention? So, yeah, let me ask. I was writing about this in the sidebar before, about the question when it was in the context of the cannibalism question, but I think it is equally applicable here.

Namely, can one actually know how one would act in this situation without having been put in it? And perhaps here we have the difference between politics and ethics, that ethics concerns precisely the predictive or speculative, if you will, scenarios for how one would act, whereas politics would but is it really so called you see the first time that I actually met a South Asian person she told me

that her ancestors were cannibals oh I said that now we are becoming friends. You know, give me your Twitter account. So the idea is that it's not like that. So cannibalism is merely a metaphor for Leviathan. you know revolution eating its own children but in real time cannibalism

if we are actually talking about that that is not really the case cannibalism simply a kind of idea that okay you have been hunted and we have hunted you we are going to cherish your meat is that good? don't you want your meat to be cherished? I don't know but I think the point I'm making is not ethical

It is in the end, I think, epistemological and sort of can one know how one would act in a situation in which one has not yet been, despite one's construction of norms that would pertain to such hypothetical situation. And would not those sort of norms without having been in this situation in some regard be empty and the situation without the norms one would act blindly. they do they do but but but do you really think the tribal societies act without norms no they don't no absolutely not but if if the project of ethics is to construct construct norms actively then maybe we should eat more humans perhaps

I'm kidding. The whole point of ethics, yes, as you said, is to actively navigate the scenario. So, yes, there are cannibals out there. There are demons out there. Are they evil? well we can't actually know whether they're evil or not unless and until we navigate what they are actually doing in their own context

what is evil is fucking heidegger poor heidegger he always get heidegger fuck poor heidegger just because the man was a nazi you treat him like this it's really heartbreaking sometimes i just to be honest with you if there is some sort of a game, video game, philosophy game that comes after our life. I want to be that avatar that harvests the skull of Heidegger and deliver it to Plato himself.

This is it. That's funny because I was thinking through this class that some of the concepts you proposed for evil are very similar to Heidegger's concept of fear. Oh my God. Okay, okay. Maybe we should cancel this class for good. If you think like that, I'm not going to teach this class. Literally, that's the worst. Oh, my God. I'm doing... It's Nietzschean.

I think it's like a Nietzschean class more than anything else. Let us hear from our good German girl. about Heidegger. Sophie? Hi. I'm trying now. I would like you to talk more about that. No, no, no, you do. Oh, please. Please. Could you say something more about that? About what? About Heidegger? Yeah, the hate you have against him. You see, Heidegger was a great philosopher by all means.

But, you see, that is why we are actually in this class. The problem of demons, the problem of ethics versus morality. did Heidegger ever apologize from Sela a poet no he didn't why to be honest with you I would have shot Marty with a shotgun the moment that I have

seen him. This man was the face of evil. Why? Precisely because he had a very preconceived idea of how we should go on and live our life. But that is not life. That's not ethics. That's just moral law. When it comes to the prophets of moral law, you should abide by Goebbels' law. Reach for your revolver.

Get understandable. I wanted to ask something about the beginning. I just wanted to be more clear about the way we are going through. First thing you said was about the faceless and nameless demons, like when demons were legions. Demons are not agents, though. Demons are not agents. No, I meant legions, when demons were just... Oh, legions, legions. Yes. like a name a nameless like multiplicity that has no face no name blah blah and then yes yes um from it seemed to me at that point that you were saying that in order for the demon to appear

as this sort of constraint that is methodologically necessary for like a rational procedure uh it it it would have to acquire this name and face and that that would happen like after that first period is that like how how it how it goes no i will say that i would say that it's best to leave demons as faceless, as uncharacteristic that they are. Because it is only when facelessness

puts constraints upon what has a face, namely a subject, an agent, where you can learn what ethics might mean. And, at the same time, another related thing is like, connected to what I was asking before, it seems that ... in order for this to work as a rational project, at least in the modern genealogy of it, I feel like you have to have this character of,

I feel like there's an implication in this idea of demon as a constraint that the demons that, yeah, I think I was relating to this, like those demons who were just living their lives and only occasionally got in contact with us, they wouldn't necessarily they wouldn't consolidate as a real constraint I wanted to ask if you think there's a movement that's essential in a certain phase of religious development in human culture where that's kind of in the roots of modern rationality where you're able to establish

this clear opposition between a project that has a certain direction even though it it might it either is or it's going to eventually become something that's reformed and and like non-theleological non-pinalistic but like you have to have this yeah yes yes i mean for example in the uh you know in the sasaanid era in ancient persia uh manichaean manichaean uh you know um idea of the world became extremely popular so mani's idea is very much

in tandem with what you just said. But I would say that if there is a way to reclaim ethics without black and white Manichean ideas, ideas. And by the way, Mani was not really that kind of black and white person. I would say that the best way is to understand that you are a mortal,

but in your mortality, you can also become a god. Isn't it the very idea of a demon? Mortality given certain kinds of mythologies, certain kind of means can become a god. That is the greatest I would say lesson that we can garner from ethics, not merely Espinoza's ethics, but also Confucius, Middle Eastern,

so on and so forth. I am merely immortal, but in right context, given the right constraints, given the right kinds of dynamics i will become a god prometheus 101 i i have a question um like when sort of monotheism took over and like um the middle east and europe

and things. Was there like perhaps this imperative to turn this multitude of gods that might have existed before into demons? And to like syncretically map what, you know, to say that if there's only one true god that all these entities then became malevolent forces in this new regime? Well, you see, from an archaeological and anthropological perspective, there was never one single god in the Middle East. That was an extremely late invention, right? So, yes, if you are talking about that kind of god, yes, absolutely.

So, Reta, I was just remembering about Putnam and how he says that applied ethics might work as a deflationary element to ontology. Would the demons be this deflationary element of the applied ethics to ontology? could it be seen that way well as i mentioned earlier on i would say that the demons are essentially constraints constraints that allow us to say something versus not saying something else

essentially for example in case of Hilary Putnam so what is a demon when it comes to formal learning right so majority of philosophers during this time think that formal learning is unconstrained, such that an automaton can become a god, a universal learning machine, simply by way of

expertise in formal learning. But the thing is that you can think of demons as constraints here in this example such that you would say that no the universal learning machine cannot become a god why precisely because there are such and such computational constraints on any sort

of computational machine in terms of time, in terms of memory, in terms of resources, in terms of computational costs, so on and so forth. These are your demons. So you're calling the diagonalization argument a demon. Yes. Actually, yes. This is why actually Nick, I think, is very good at this. Nick most often uses diagonalization arguments

toward his what you might call to be demonological um um inclines yes yeah absolutely okay sorry i have to cut now because uh we have only a few minutes left and we should discuss presentations also for the class and schedule responses so who is going to present could you please tell us what we're going to have this next session because in the syllables it says like can to be continued or something what is the reading for the next class what is actually the next class

i mean the next seminar What is it? It will be continued, like same theme, but continued. So is there a different text? We didn't really talk much about the first text, right? Yeah, I thought we were supposed to read the... Okay, okay. That's a good... Yeah, sure. Okay, how about this? Next session, we actually work through the hermeneutics of evil. It's actually a really great text. You know, it's a critique of Paul Ricoeur, but also it actually gives you something more.

So how about this? so next session we read this text in full who would like to discuss it are we assigning anyone a presentation for the next seminar who is going to be the presenter who would like to present and what is the format of the presentation it's said 10 minutes if you wish you can make slides you can just 10 minutes oral presentation so it's basically going through main arguments of the texts of the text not summarizing but yes main argument is you so the first i mean i really enjoyed the text no you are you are the first victim okay so

rci is the first one okay and who would like to be responding i can respond who me oh okay okay that's good uh do you want to assign more presentations for the next upcoming seminars or do we do it at the end of each year i think we should do it at the end of each session okay yeah great yeah so i'll see on down oh ukraine versus iran the battle is real now now i think ukraine is versus turkey yes oh two versus

turkey oh my god that's even worse that's historical yeah you know what was heidegger's real sin teaching heidegger's sin loving too much no his real heidegger's sin was drinking water from the very well well that he abducted himself i mean do you know what

actually happens to you. If you actually drink water from the well, you get parasites. Well, I think that's a very poetic way to describe taking Agamben under your wing, which is what I was going to say was Heidegger's real sin. Agamben is not even a philosopher to me. Heidegger, at the very least, had some sort of decency. You know, he managed to do some woodworking in his house. He made fuel stars when he basically making the well.

Agamben who the fuck is he he just in a Pasolini movie that was the best thing he ever did literally no one the gospel according to Saint Matthew is a beautiful film but that is the best thing he ever did that's not because of Agamben no Okay, my dear friends, the class is over. I hope that you don't get panked out by the next week. But if you get panked out, don't worry.

We have good, mythical, demonic, antibodies for you thank you so much and god bless you bye bye bye bye bye bye Thank you. Bye, Reza. Bye, Reza. Reza, you should read this paper that I wrote. You are featured heavily in it. You get good. You don't get spanked too hard.

Carnap gets spanked a little bit, but Tom Sturkenberg he gets my love that man is a genius the very fact that you are a setting on my love Carnap Carnap let me tell you this