So welcome everyone. This is the first session of our Center Center of Humanism and Interiscontent. Welcome as well to our instructor, Professor Veser Negarstani, I think most of us already know, who is a philosopher and has contributed extensively to journals and anthologies and lectured at numerous international universities and institutes. His current philosophical project is focused on rationalist universalism beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge, the advancing toward contemporary philosophies of rationalism, their procedures, as well as their demands for special forms of humankind. He's the author of Cyclonopedia,
an Intelligence and Spirit, and I'll just read for you the description of our seminar before giving the word to Professor Reza. So from intellectuals who proudly identify themselves as each Marxist to critical theories who are willing to endorse an uncritical materialist thesis in order to distance themselves from all strains of humanism, conservative or not, to scientists who find reprieve for their questionable political alliances and their cozy accounts of nature, and finally to philosophers who feel the need to sacrifice a little bit of their uncompromising thoughts in favor of being accepted by their academic and political allies the intellectual landscape we're living in is by all accounts bleak the so-called post-pandemic era has not even begun but considering
the sheer lack of theoretical and practical will and imagination that has gone into combat in it it is safe to say but have not seen anything yet the indiscriminate assault on the concept of the the human has led us to an impasse where the emancipatory left increasingly displays the characteristics of an impoverished street activism that cannot even combat the anti-vaxxer crowd. While some assume that we should enrich our thoughts with a little bit of contingency or some ineffable outside component here and there, the ambition of the assemblers to revive the unexplored movement within the concept of the human towards its rational inhuman, that is to say, its historically critical ends. A selection of texts, oh yes, and the selection of texts
that we will be reading, I think everybody got it in the syllabus, so I think that's okay for now. With all that said, I finally give the word to Professor Reza, please take it away. Thank you so much, thank you everyone. I'm glad to see you all here. So as usual, the first thing that we do introduction. I understand that if we are going to introduce, everyone is going to introduce themselves today, there would be no class whatsoever. So I would say that how about our great moderator pass to people who were part of the actual class, people who were
supposed to present in the actual class and then if they can introduce themselves or any other person who wants we start from the introduction then i will start with some introductory remarks i chart out a couple of set of problems that are going to be the cornerstone of what we are going to talk about for the next few sessions. Obviously this class, the more I have thought about it, I thought that, you know, this is not something that I should have ever touched, precisely because within this, and I would say, and I will say why, within this sort of problematic, there are so many
auxiliary rabbit holes. And there is always a different point of view that you can use in order to approach this problem. But nonetheless, I think that if this is going to be an introductory course on a series of problems that have been somehow, I wouldn't say plaguing, but suffusing and disturbing in a positive way philosophy critical philosophy since the time of Kant and probably even earlier Hume, Locke and Descartes then we will do whatever we can and
And everyone, you know, essentially, we are providing a set of pointers that everyone can use to create other sorts of pointers in order to approach this problem sufficiently. But nevertheless, in so far as the nature of the problem is quite serious and consequential, I think that we cannot remain silent about it. So shall we start with introductions? I mean, my dear sir, you take the basically help and move through people introductions. introductions.
I think I can start introducing myself, who I am also a certificate student enrolled for the class. So I'm your moderator as well for everybody. I'm Matheus Ferreira. I'm a philosopher student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. and I'm also, my advisor is Professor JP Caron, for those of you who know him. And yes, I'm happy to be here. I promise not to take too much time talking. Yeah, keep going guys. Who wants to go next? Reza, you already know me and everybody else who doesn't know me, you'll know me in a while.
My name is Amnabal. Yes, I know you quite well, but no, you should introduce yourself. Just for the scare factor. I don't want to say anything about myself. Yeah, that's it. Please, please don't worry. I mean, just essentially the introduction, who you are, why did you take this class and what your background is? So I can actually have a clue, you know, what sorts of level I should oscillate between this sort of talk and that sort of talk. Okay, can I, oh, sorry. Oh, okay. Can anyone hear me? Yes, absolutely.
All right, good. Okay. Hello everyone. My name is Mateus Lazzarotto. I'm a philosophy undergraduate enrolled in the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil. Not much to say. I'm very interested in this class. I coordinate a study group in Brazil with Znob de Almeida. Some of you may know him. And we have some contributors who also make part of the new center to some extent. Jean-Pierre Caron and Kasia come to mind right now, but there are many others. And I am interested in this class.
Well, in general, I'm interested in neurationalism. And some of our study groups inside my study group are actually studying neurationalist thoughts. Also have sub-study groups regarding organizational theory and political economy, as well as mathematics and computation. So I'd say those are my overall interests in contemporary philosophy, you know. So yeah, I guess that's it. Happy to be here. Absolutely, my pleasure. Thanks so much. Yeah, so I'll follow up Aaron's suggestion and go on my list.
So Aaron is the first in the list. Please. Sure. Yeah, so I'm Aaron. I am, after a long absence, back in New York. I'll keep it short and just say, this is the class I've always wanted Reza to teach. It's sort of philosophical anthropology. So I'm pretty excited for it. And my background is sort of German literature and political science. Thank you so much, Aaron. Next, Erica, please. Hello, my name is Eric Adil. I'm a painter and I'm in rural Ohio right now, but I'll
be in Rome in a few weeks and life will be so much better. I'm taking this class because I'm interested in new ways of thinking about the world that I'm living in right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I think next should be David Muriel. Hi there. I don't like today, sorry about that. But can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I don't have much of a background in philosophy, much of like a professional training background. I just read a lot of it on my own. I'm interested in philosophers like Marx and in the analytic
tradition like Brandom and Sally Haslinger and in general people who take social relations seriously. And I'm excited to take this course because I read The Labor of the Inhuman a long time ago and was very intrigued by it and this seems like it'll follow up on those themes. So yeah that's all I I have to say thank you. Thank you so much, David. Then we have Kenneth. Hi, my name is Kenneth. I'm an artist in New York. Excuse me. And yeah, I would say I'm here and doing this program and in this class because a lot of
my work is in the interest of how knowledge is useful and what's the difference between knowledge and coordination and is there such a thing as objective coordination, can we tell the difference, etc. So yeah, so excited to learn more and meet more people. Thank you so much. Can I have Pablo Aguilar? Pablo Padilla- Hello everyone i'm Pablo I. Pablo Padilla- i'm in Mexico City right now well always. Pablo Padilla- I have a background in architecture theory and some philosophy. Pablo Padilla- i'm an architect, but I took a lot of classes in the philosophy departments.
And I'm interested in this class because I've always had like a very skeptical view of humanism understood in the classical sense. And I've just been always really critical of some of its consequences or at least like, I don't know how to put it more eloquently. the thing is i uh i just i'm here because i hope that this course this seminar will help me to um just articulate way better criticism of humanism again understood in its more classical sense so i'm excited to be here and happy to meet you all this is my second course at the
new center so my second seminar so i'm i'm i'm still i'm still feeling that excitement or was It was the myth of the master with Jason. Yes. Still going on. And it's blowing my mind. It's very, very good. Okay. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next. I couldn't hear. Are you talking about me? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Sorry. All right. So hi, everyone. Hi, friends. So I'm Gökhan, I'm from Istanbul. I have a bit MA in comparative literature. I am interested in longevity and blockchain technologies.
So I'm here because I like Reza, and I just wanna understand why I quit academy like five years ago, that's all. I think that both of those sources of curiosity are misplaced. Great that you actually quit academia, And it's very sad that you like my work. But great to have you, Goran. I also quit smoking a Montego. That's all. Love you. Love you too. Thank you. Now, Alfredo, please. Hi, I am Alfredo from Mexico City as well.
I'm a mathematician and artist, doing artistic research in things like science, microbiology, and interested in social epistemology and the construction of utopian thought. So that's why I'm interested in this course, to get inspiration and new ideas. Thank you so much. Then we have here Rodolfo I think. Hi I'm Rodolfo Sousa. I am Mexican as well but I live in Jalapa, another city.
I am an artist as well but I work with the erosion of the images and I work with gossip and with the gaps between communication. I guess that's my main interest in life. And I'm really, yeah, that's all I have to say right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, Gabriela Rosemey. Hi, you can call me Gabby. I'm so excited to take this class. I'm a painter in Los Angeles, and I just felt that it was going to be really beneficial to my practice,
and this is my first course at the new center. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. So now we have Alexander Seiden. Hi, it's me. I'm also in Los Angeles. My background is in art and fabrication. I'm excited to take this class because I think I'm interested about recent developments around humanism and its many diverse enemies. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you very much. Now we have Max, I guess.
Yes. Hi, everyone. My name is Max Valencič. You hear me? Yeah. And I'm a certificate student at the new center. Otherwise, I'm finishing my studies in media studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. and I'm managing editor of Schum Journal and my interests lie in accelerationism, neorationalism and non-standard philosophy and for example recently I was inspired by work of Davor Loeffler and his new conception of I don't know what technologies or how can we understand it. By the way, if some of you don't know Shun Journal, I absolutely recommend it.
It's one of the best, most brilliant journals that's being published these days. It's S with the accent on top, U end. So now it's Emily Viewmaster. Emile Wuma or, sorry I couldn't quite. That's it, that must probably be that. Okay, easy bit. No, no, no, Wally's. Hi, I'm Emile. I'm from Wellington, New Zealand.
If I trail off a bit or get a bit distracted during class, it's 3.30 in the morning here. I'm trying my best. I do fashion. I studied at Massey University in Wellington doing fashion and communications. I got a sort of hobby of philosophy and I'm starting to get involved with sort of acceleration critiques. I'm interested specifically about accelerationists, or specifically residents. Analysis of contemporary politics, because to me it seems like accelerationism is the radical wing of economism, and I want to know what political solutions they offer to contemporary
uh political discontents um i'm also very involved with sort of contemporary marxism around wellington and i'm involved with the wellington workers education association and i've done some work based off res's um and some artwork uh sculpture based off res's uh demonology course and it's not this is my first time with the new school for the new center for research practice my first course but i've been following for a while so i'm very excited for this course thank you so much thank you very much and of course you know philosophy is not an excuse to lose the sleep essentially i will be disappointed in any person who actually chooses philosophy over sleep by principles
All right, then I think we have Dylan. Dylan Botak. Yeah, hi. I'm Dylan. I'm from Texas. I studied art in undergrad, and I've been taking new center classes since like 2015. I'm basically like a wannabe autodidact and I'm interested in left accelerationism and pretty much everything like urbanomic adjacent and I'm really excited to be here thank you so much great to have you here again thanks
now we have Ivan Loginov Hi there, I'm a PhD student in philosophy and history of science. I'm also interested in theoretical biology and work as a researcher at the Center for Theoretical Study in Prague, where I work on sound studies. Here I'm enrolled as a certificate student in critical philosophy, so I'm here just because I'm interested in contemporary critical philosophy, right? Superb, thank you so much. I'll be here now. Eduarda Tamato.
Hi everyone, I am Eduarda, I live in Curitiba, Brazil. I am a visual artist and researcher, graduated by the Universidade Estadual do Paraná. And my interest on this course is based on an interest that I have of fiction, history, and mythology, and also to have a more nuanced and better elaborated critique of humanism. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Sean Francis? Yeah, hi. So I'm Sean and can you hear me?
Absolutely. Okay, yeah. So I'm Sean. I'm in and from Singapore. I'm currently doing my master's at the National University of Singapore in Critical Theory. I primarily work in continental philosophy, specifically in the areas of metaphysics and metaphilosophy, currently doing my dissertation on trying to construct an ontology slash fashionology of style through Deleuze. And I'm in this class because I think I'm interested, after hearing all of the critiques, the relentless critiques of humanism and the subject and man, interested in hearing a positive account of what exactly the subject is or what man is or what humanity is, you know, beyond, you know, like empty sets or becoming. So, yes.
Okay, we have a Deleuze and a skeptic in Atomist. That's good, that's good. Now on to Nima Baravan. Nima Baravan, yes. Hi everyone, my name is, yeah, hi everyone. My name is Nima. I am from Iran, living in Boulder, Colorado, somewhere in the mountain. And background in art, and in my art practice I deal with. Do we lose Nemo? It's colder.
Okay. I think you're lost. Nemo, you got cut off. I think. You got cut off. I'm sorry. Let me. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah, so I said that I live in the mountain and I'm so excited for the next week because we are going to have Reza here in CU Boulder and yeah. I'm actually looking forward to it. Thank you so much, Nima. Next is Akshat Kharit.
Hello, am I audible? Yes. So, I'm a novelist and a poet. I'm from New Delhi. And I'm mostly all over accelerationism. And as a matter of fact, my recent novel is actually an attack on it. But as far as contemporary philosophy goes, because I'm from India, Iran is right there. And Jason's work, Reza's work has been very interesting to me. And a lot of it largely because they also interact with a lot of the writers that I like, like Sadek Hidayat and Hassan Blasim.
So I'm really interested to see what this course has in store for me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Okay. And then this one would be Selma Poscaja. Hello, I'm Selma. I'm curator and researcher based in Berlin. Originally, I come from Bosnia-Herzegovina, where I graduated in Art History and Comparative Literature at Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo. I've also attended postgraduate programming in curatorial practices, a Kuldumagazan, and I hold masters in media, art, cultures at universities in Austria, Denmark, Poland and Hong Kong.
I'm also co-founder of the New Liquidity, interdisciplinary research platform for artistic and curatorial practices. and the reason why I'm interested in this seminar is because I've already done quite a lot of research on post-humanism and one of my master theses was on post-human body perspectives and basically I would like to expand my research and this is my first week at the new center as certificate students so I'm quite excited to be here thank you pleasure is mine thank you so much great to have you here I'm going around the list and I just noticed we still have something like 18 more people
so how about this we just volunteer our greatest students to introduce in case that particularly if you're coming from either an extremely different background than what we have had so far, art, philosophy, or if you are actually take have taken this class for very specific philosophical or artistic reason. You know, just hitting people, blonde philosophical objects or something like that. I do have a specific reason for taking this course that's ties into my overall reason for for wanting to get involved in the new center, which is that as a software engineer and studying
computer science in college, I was really, all my bad grades were in computer science, all my good grades were in philosophy. And after undergrad, trying to do political organizing, I was really inspired by Paulo Freire's work on critical pedagogy. But keeping up philosophy as kind of a hobby in the background, as I delved into it and the questions of how in practice do we raise class consciousness if you're a Marxist or learn in general, et cetera. And comparing whatever I was studying with Freire and his humanism, I kept finding it so hard to find like a good theoretical grounding for all of those important questions about critical pedagogy and consciousness. And so I wanted to come to the New Center and this class in particular to revisit humanism
itself and build up like the new theoretical tools and discipline and skills for myself to be able to research questions of that nature and maybe push something new forward nice well most probably this class is going to disappoint you fundamentally um the reason as i mentioned that uh so this is something that i have noticed that you know as someone had engineering background philosophy and always I'm interested. The thing is that with philosophy, it always, it's not, it's, I'm not demanding that everyone to be a philosopher, right? But there is a threshold at which you cross to a certain sort of questions, and those questions are not provided methodologically by certain other
disciplines. Your fall into the rabbit hole of philosophy is inevitable, and then you cannot take it or keep it at the background as something that this is like my basically base camp and I'm going to navigate venture out the wilder land or desert of whatever sort of topic you are trying to explore precisely because there would fundamental discontinuity emerges between these two ideals of researching in your field, which is respectable in itself, and those sorts of extremely nebulous, demanding, and oftentimes esoteric, not esoteric in an occult sense, but esoteric in the
sense that the nature of these problems is not obvious to us at some times either, right? So there is there is a sort of thing that i would say that precisely this class what it's going to do is to kind of start to flesh out the nature of this problem such that you cannot leave philosophy on the background as a hobby or as a base camp you need to have to take it with yourself with all its goddamn sweating baggage and so on so forth but superbly superb introduction thank you so much i mean i can pick two or three people um and then we will have a break
five minutes break and we come back and we start in good spirit um Catherine, as far as I know, has a very peculiar background. Hi, yes, hi everyone. Yeah, I did my first degree in philosophy in the US. Now I work as a curator. I'm also a graduate student at CCS Bard. And my specific reason for taking the course is my research is now looking a lot at techniques and cultural techniques. So I think this course should be quite relevant to that, or at least extensions of that. So I'm here. Thank you so much. And please, any person who wants to introduce themselves on those principles, feel free so.
If not, I mean, there are so many good people I know here I've been working with, either through consultation, Paige, Zenobio, all of you guys. Carol, however, is the first time that he's actually here. And I know him through social media and some stuff here and there. Maybe you should introduce yourself. Oh, but I'm just a cheapskate lurker, I'm afraid. I'm an English teacher, so I've just finished teaching. I was kind of why I couldn't sign up properly. But that is not exactly your background. You have certain sorts of interests that are quite specific. Okay, I'm a PhD student in human-computer interaction, which I approach through Soviet psychology and mixing that with the philosophy of Ray Brassier as well.
and interested in Reza's work like what he's doing at the moment in Carnap although I don't like Carnap No one likes Carnap let's put it away for now Our Iranian mafia I know there are some Iranians there you are not going to name them yes, we are talking to you if you want to introduce yourself. And then of course Maria, Zanonio, Cassia, my dearest friends. I think Sahaj has his hand raised. Oh absolutely, absolutely. Thanks. So I actually have a kind of
of political reason to take this course with you. I kind of see the human as this exclusionary concept and essentially what's happening in India right now is there's this kind of dehumanization process is happening very through bureaucratic systems where minorities are being targeted and like you know sort of fundamental rights being revoked and I see this as an extension of the humanist project itself like you know where first people are kind of deemed less than human and then you know all sorts of violences are like enacted upon them and I do think that the human form is essentially like hollow right now and like I mean I'd like to think through what comes next
essentially that that's and uh yeah your research like had a profound influence on me like it's a honor thank you so much thank you thank you very much okay my dear friends uh oh cassia uh puts her introduction there uh on the sidebar uh feel free uh before uh having a short break introduce yourself otherwise. Yes, absolutely, Paige. Hi, my name is Paige. I am an artist based in Tongva land known as Los Angeles. My work explores the ecological body and its interactions with a focus on where infrastructures of worlds building intersect with practices and this
exploration has a lot of intersections and interests in inhumanism and I do not have any any philosophy background. Good, good, good. Excellent, thank you so much. I know that we have talked about some of our stuff in the past. Anyone else before the break? If not, let's have a five-month break. I mean, the first session is always, looks like this. 11 30 uh we'll only have one hour to actually talk about stuff uh so just have uh five to eight minutes break then reconvene
Emile, were you trying to drop it in? Is that what you were doing? Yeah, I was trying, but I can't figure out my Google email thing. So my Google Drive, I can probably get it off my Google Drive, but I'm going to have to guess my password a few times. And my Dropbox thing, if I could just drop it in the chat.
Yeah, you can probably drop it in here. Did you try that? I did. I did. I'll try it again. Maybe that'll work again. I'll drag and drop. But it's like the first thing if you search up leotard and human and it's got nice little annotations on the thing and you can you can select the text so I imagine you can control V. It's great. It's a good reading. I was like really enjoying it. Yeah. I'm gonna try. I'll try to drive. you said reflections on time
uh yeah there's yeah that's a real real useful thing for me um kind of helped me i think he's I'm going to take a stab in the dark but I think he's kind of going to like a Kantian critique of time mediated and cognition and reconstructed or maybe taking Kant further apparently he's known to be like a postmodern return to Kant I'm not that trained in modern French philosophy I'm just an autodidact guy who likes to get his off I'm just really enjoying as you say it, you're like not me the whole time. A discord classroom, very good, good suggestion.
Hold on, I'll try connect. If not, it will be in the Google classroom. I'll drop the PDF. Yeah, looks like it's gonna have to be in the Google password. Yeah, I just tried to do it too in there.
Thanks for mentioning it. The opposite of a kitsch Marxist is a gram shim. Sorry, this is for the chat. Okay, let's try and do the Google cluster now. Thank you.
Upload file. Okay. I'm all good. Start. god almighty this is like this is like fall and i've never seen such a hot sun in this wasteland on the east coast No, it's awful. I moved back here for fall and now we're not getting it. No. I missed fall so much. Fall on the east coast is not fall like in Iran or some great land.
It is essentially a recipe for depression. you can ask about that later yes i'm sure that people like really live in london they would actually laugh at this sort of stuff because they live in uk right where basically you always have that sort of setup i left the uk reza oh you did yeah i got that like i was saying i was going to for so long I live in Berlin now I live on the very outskirts Oh my god So you have joined our great comrades
at the news center One of the things about Berlin I would say that I love that city but my god It is the very source of hipsterism Yeah it is I live on the outskirts for just this month which gives me some distance I actually went for a run the other day And I saw a bit of the Berlin Wall, but not like the Berlin Wall that divides Berlin, but the bit of the Berlin Wall that's... Well, that's the whole thing. The only thing that you can actually see is just part of the Berlin Wall. Otherwise, it wouldn't be the Berlin Wall. But no, but it's like the bit that separated West Berlin from East Germany. That's how far away I'm living from. Yes, I mean, you should understand it's like people who are Berliners, West Germany was a hellhole, you know, before things.
The only thing that made it interesting, that Western part, when Eastern Europeans and the wall broke and those good people, those intellectuals and artists came and started to mingle with Western Germany and Western Berlin. Otherwise, Western Berlin was always like, just imagine like some sort of administrative nowhere land. That's always been West Germany. The only reason that Berlin is interesting is precisely because of the people who came to it after the wall was taken down. Okay, shall we start now?
our moderator uh where's our moderator yeah should we start let's go for it yes please so my dear friends thank you so much for all the introductions uh uh i'm glad to have you here As I mentioned, by virtue of the nature of this topic that this class tries to cover, we're obviously going to disappoint a lot of you, precisely because we won't be able to cover
were certain sorts of answers or right questions that you were seeking before taking this class some of them might not be actually even discussed and if you want to be discussed then you have to put that shyness away and ask me questions right otherwise we won't be able to do all of that We can only do that if you actually participate. I know that you think that, oh, well, I don't have a background in philosophy and stuff, but who cares? You know, essentially you're trying to struggle with a question that even a philosopher might not be able to answer.
But nevertheless, we can start to kind of claw at that sort of question and see if there might be a sort of answer for now. All in all, the trajectory of this class is very simple. I am trying to anchor the problem very specifically in a certain problem emerged from the advent of critical modern philosophy, particularly Kant. This is obviously, you might say that Reza is being selected here and there are other
source of philosophy. Yes, I know that. But I would say that by virtue of the systematicity that goes into how Kant formulate certain sort of problems to which we have either answered or to which we have made certain answers, but they were not legitimate answers. I think this is a good starting point and then we'll take it from there essentially we are going to start warning i'm using a very bad word here with the question of what man is what i is talking about here i am using this is for this session and probably a couple of next
sessions are we talking about the question of man what is man famous question of Kant in lectures on logic. Now obviously this word man to many of us seems antiquated rather problematic or perhaps wholeheartedly problematic. As a Farsi speaker, I don't have that much of a reaction to this world, even though I understand that this world is extremely loaded in English at this point. Why I'm saying that as a Farsi speaker? Precisely because I know for the fact
to the question of man, man, the word man, that means basically Sanskrit, Abistan, Pahlavi origins coming from India and Persia. It is not actually about male species. We are not talking about male species by any sort of male gender or whatever of that sort of stuff. We are not even talking about an individual so to speak for now i will talk about individuals we are talking about mortal mortal is the root of the word man but mortal you might ask say that well birds are
mortal right animals mortal trees are mortal and why is that we are applying this word to human beings precisely because the origin of this word which was hijacked by germaniac tectonic philosophy is mortal by virtue of you understanding the fact of your own mortality to come to grips with the facts of being mortal
used to be a standard to distinguish humans from non-humans. Precisely because that fact of mortality, once you come to grips with it, and you treat it as an actual subject matter of reflection, brings you to several other sort of consequences, which might not be available to other sorts of animals. And we are also animals. The fact that we can derive values, systems of axiology, practical and theoretical reasoning
out of that sort of fact that we are mortal, it's quite astonishing to the ancients. In fact, I think that if we did not have a self-reflective encounter with the fact of our own mortality, being mad, being man, being mortal, it would be just like anything else. Right? It would be just like a rock. So there is a, there is, I wanted to say that even though the word mensch, man, stuff in the philosophy with the beginning of, you know, late 17th century, take from a very
neutral Sanskrit Avastayan meaning take a rather chosen people connotation or male-oriented species or patriarchal stuff that does not really uh destroy the fact that this word originally came to European culture as precisely in its fundamental understanding within Eastern cultures. Right? For fidelity to Kant,
and also fidelity to the subsequent attacks on Kant in contemporary times in terms of racism, questions of racism, gender, so on and so forth. When it comes to Kant and perhaps Hume or even Darwin, we will use the word man as precisely that ambiguous word that might be riddled with fundamental biases contemporary biases that began to emerge in European culture or even they existed there in the eastern cultures to begin with but also with a understanding of the origin of the concepts
This is, this was a digression, but I just wanted you to know, so you don't say Reza used the word man against, as opposed to human, just versus session, out of blue. As we move forward, we start to talk about the concept of the human, as we move toward this sort of period of historical philosophy. I wouldn't say that Aaron said that shockingly Heideggerian digression.
I would say that this is more rather a Schopenhauer digression on the fate of man. So let me begin with a sort of, I have already, this is what I wanted to say, that already I have, essentially this class is my idea, right? And I will try to be best as possible to be faithful to the history of philosophy. But essentially, every sort of class that you ever take in philosophy, it is the product of ideas and motivations, sometimes explicit or ulterior motivations by the very person who teaches you philosophy.
And yes, I have explicit motivation. I already know how the class is going to end, right? just like a movie director. I know how this script is going to end and where I am going to take it. It is up to you to try to hijack it from. And if you don't, then I have no problem to simply take where it should, according to my own philosophical convictions, it should go. Simple as that. This is like any sort of philosophy class. You can hijack it and you can convince me and other people that this is not actually the real course. Of course, we are going to get to fights and people who have taken my class, they know that there are certain moments that class has become extremely intense.
That's what I love about philosophy. Obviously, the end of the class would be that Kant was right, but not entirely. we have go through huge amounts of material to understand why Kant was right but not entirely or why Kant touched upon a certain sort of problem that neither post-humanism, anti-humanism, Marxist humanism, Marxist anti-humanism at all, because they have never managed to touch in its entirety questions, reactions before we just start.
I have something I don't know if it's too much for now, but. No, go on Cassia. We're reading the text for today's class. I was thinking about precisely the thing that you start mentioning, that is death. And this is a very important thing for me. And I was wondering how much of the importance attributed to Negredo, as you attribute to in the text that you wrote to Collapse, How much of this importance of nigredo as a coupling of the living soul with the dead body, the necrophilic intimacy, persists in what we see today as some kind of Promethean or new rationalist thought?
And if Nigredo does constitute something different than merely an object of comparison to a robust metaphysics of the idea of the Aedos, or does it mean something more in the context of the prehistory of intelligence? because I was paying attention to the occurrences of death in the text by Wolfendale, and I was correlating with what I have seen you write about death, and five occurrences called my attention that are the death of God, the death of man,
extinction, but more closely to what Brassier was doing in Nayo Unbound, Nigredo in your text in Collapse, and existential risk. That is something that you develop more in the end of Intelligence and Spirit. So I was thinking if something like an explication of the concept of death is possible or even desirable, and how that fits in the general context of humanism. Sure. You see, when I wrote that article, I was just a drooling baby in its cradle. So I've rethought about it. In fact, I've been rethinking about it
in a different sort of problem, the problem of heterogeneity that we are going to talk about either this session or next session, that is actually part of one of the main problems of what is man in a Kant's sense of what is the human being. The problem heterogeneity is that how can you have mind and body together such that mind actually knows that there is a body to which it is attached or vice versa or so on so forth, all sorts of variations. It's called the problem of heterogeneity. It goes as far as rational
metaphysics of Christian Wolfe and Leibniz, and even perhaps elder philosophers. This, for me, is actually quite this whole idea of coupling of mind and body, which is a problem of heterogeneity. is actually a part of the problem of theory of knowledge. It's quite central, yes, to this sort of stuff that we are going to talk about. The problem of extinction, existential risk, so on and so forth, to me, belong to a different sets of problems when it comes to this idea that if we manage to explicate
the idea of death or mortality, there would be different sorts of concepts of risk and uncertainty and this stuff. And each of them have their respectable philosophical questions and philosophical weight. But I would say that precisely because of the nature of this class, I wouldn't be able to talk about them that much. But the problem of heterogeneity, the coupling of mind and body in a canonical sense is also an offshoot of the problem of death. But in a very specific sense, precisely because it creates problems within the theory of knowledge itself in a Kantian sense. I
I will talk about this within the context of the history of philosophy. Aaron. So a question that I think always important is what you see is the sort of stakes in this debate. Obviously there are a lot of directions that you can go in and it's a huge question. The sort of stakes of critiquing or defending humanism from certain kinds of critique. But I guess you could answer that in a general or a more specific philosophical sense. And I think it's always like a really important question to ask. You can always have with any sort of problem,
you know, the philosophers have a trick up their sleeve that they start to answer it generally first. And then when they get into some sort serious danger situation they start to actually answer it specifically i would say that i will do exactly this is what i didn't want to say to spoil the whole idea of the class for you who have taken it as if i'm going to talk about some other sorts of stuff unfortunately the whole idea of the class is simply the explication of the concept of philosophical anthropology as can't understood Good. And then my question is precisely is sort of why does that debate matter or what, yeah, what can we get from this that... That debate matters precisely because the moment
that we understand that there are open wounds or open problems within the problem of of philosophical anthropology. I would actually argue that yes, Foucault, Althusser, so on and so forth have seen parts of that, but you cannot actually see the entirety of the problem if you sidestep the problem. And to not sidestep the problem, you should take Kant seriously, so as Hegel's critique of Kant, But ultimately, that what makes humanism in that sort of what you call it inhumanism, whatever, I don't care.
I really don't care. I would say just with humans, for the sake of brevity. I would say that that's what makes humanism an important and extremely unexplored question. You already know that philosophers have the habit, and this is the same thing with Kant, any sort of philosopher, Plato particularly, but all philosophers. So the question of what is man is being posed by Kant in lecture on logic. And before that, there is a really sharpened text called Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.
I think it's 1798. 1798, lecture on logic is 1800. And then before all of this is critical, pure reason, if I'm not mistaken. The thing is, I mean, critical, pure reason is already set. That's my reason. The chances of if paraphrasing the real codes to be discovered, my reason has always been beset upon. my reason has always, whether speculative or theoretical or practical, has always be set upon three questions. What do I
know? What should I do? And what should I hope for? Right? This is the critical pure reason. That is, for him, is the ultimate ground of any sort of idea of reason and philosophy in a respectable critical sense, right? But then a few years after this, by way of the pragmatic anthropology, by way of the pragmatic point of view, and then lecture on logic, the question of what is man? he starts to notice that there are some really extremely disturbing problems upon which he has stumbled and he has not solved them and this is where the story of this class begins
Kant is sitting as always if he's not actually basically walking across the neighborhood, going to the pub that he always does he's sitting and he's looking back at his writings just like all philosophers and he sees that the circle of philosophical revenge is still open, it's not closed yet that he has stumbled on a question that he has not yet answered. And he thinks that this question is so monumental and momentous that if this question is going to be answered,
we will definitely find ourselves encountered with the advent of a new conception of philosophy. And if we fail to do so, perhaps all of the philosophy that has come before it has been intellectually feeble in grappling with the consequences of what they are actually talking about. This is, let me actually read the codes for those of you who do not know the citation from this part from lectures on logic.
My apologies, Marcus, we will get back to you. Sorry, my apologies. No, no, that was my question and basically sort of leading. So why don't we just start? He says the field of philosophy in its cosmopolitan meaning, in the broadest sense, can be brought down to the following questions. One, what can I know? Two, what should I know? Three, what can I hope for? Four, what is man or human? The first question is answered by metaphysics, the second by ethics, the third by religion, and the fourth by anthropology.
Basically, however, all these could be counted to anthropology, because the first three questions relate to the last one. Think about this. The first three questions, epistemology, ethics, religion. in critical reason for them for for for cant is essentially whatever reason can talk to right what might this is what my reason can actually uh approach now this is like a few years after that he relegates the answering to all such questions the first three one epistemology
ethics and epistemology ethics or what we call axiology and then religion relegated to the question of what is man the question of what he calls philosophical anthropology Now, philosophers throughout history have approached this idea of how the first three questions relate to the fourth question, namely, what is man, what is human, in different source of weight. Some have thought that in answering the first three questions, one essentially
answers the fourth question. What is the human? What is man? In answering what do I know? What should I do? What ought I to do? And what can I hope for? I essentially answer the fourth question. But there have been certain kinds of philosophers also throughout history, of course Kant. They have thought that, no, you can still answer rightfully to the first three questions of epistemology, ethics, axiology, and religion, but still there might be a chance by the virtue of the nature of the fourth question,
what is man, that you might not be able to answer the fourth question, even if you have answered correctly the first three questions. I belong to the second category, that I think that even if you answer correctly the first three questions, you might not still be able to answer correctly, or even formulate the question, which is the last one. What is the problem here? I mean, what is wrong with this guy?
Wasn't the critical pure reason already a torturous enough book? Why is he besetting us to different sorts of problems? But as I said, that's unfortunately the job of philosophers. There are professional torturers of mind. We should understand And what is that that somehow disturbed Kant, first of all, teased him to come up with this fourth question? And then, most importantly, thinks that all the first three questions relate to the fourth question.
So there are two horns of the problem here. What actually teased this man to come up with this fourth question? I mean, what was wrong with the first three questions? I mean, why couldn't you just leave us with those three questions? You have to go on and make a fourth one. And then they say that the first three questions are relating to the fourth question. Screw you. Yeah? I saw that some people raising their hands and stuff. I raised my hand.
Do you mean that I can ask my question? Yes. Not going to the bathroom, but to have a question. My question was that how could you answer the first two questions right, correctly, and then answer the fourth question wrongly? Or in another way, what is the difference between these questions? Do the first question entail a human? And if not, what is the surplus of stuff? Well, that's the whole point. essentially you are bringing to this, let me abbreviate if I may so, and please let me know if I'm not correct. Essentially you're asking that,
so we have two scenarios, answering the first three questions, and we will arrive naturally to the answer of the fourth questions. In the sense that the fourth question is the consequence of the first three questions. But how about the scenario within which the first three questions are subsumed are subsumed within the fourth questions? Meaning that essentially what is man or what is the human has a surplus ace up its sleeve that it has not yet revealed. But the question will be, what is it?
No, that's what I would say that this is essentially you are trying to spoil as being a spoiler sport and you are revealing the entire scenario of my class. Think about this, and we are going to this, and it's extremely fascinating the story. That sort of question of subsumption, we have already have it within Kant's canon. The relation between sense sensation and understanding within the edifice of productive imagination. That thing is a schematism. The subsumption of the sensory given under the concepts, right? And you remember
Kant's way of basically talking about eschematism. I'm not going to spoil the entire thing, but Aaron, who I'm sure that is a Kant's scholar, knows the German sources, knows already what that specific troubling thing about eschematism and imagination is when he talks about something from the deepest recesses of the soul. Go on, Aaron. Oh, dear. I'm not sure I do, though I did take your class and not all that deeply versing but I mean, I guess it's that we can't know the soul or the freedom of the will,
but these are things we have to take on. Take on, yes. Yeah, this is the third question. Yes. When I'm having trouble formulating, right? One is the possibility of knowledge or what our capabilities are. Two is how we orient practices, right? We've got theoretical and practical reason. Three is where I stumble. What are we permitted to hope? And has to do with our sort of social intentions, right? or are are or the consequences of our values from yeah yeah in terms of value is the right values yeah so if i may say so i'm not going to take questions someone said antinomy here now this
is actually a very interesting question we are just probably jumping starting but so be it this is the first session we can do that but from next session we are not flash forwarding we are taking a step by step to go through all of this stuff someone said antinomy antinomy applied to god human or both this is actually a very interesting word here you know that i'm not going to again you know just like revealing all the plot twists of this course that yes the question of what is man ultimately leads to a certain kind of antinomy if ill formulated if ill formulated
it. Cameron. Would you be able to don't worry. If you can just you don't need to turn on your camera just turn on your microphone and just a little bit talk about this. Don't worry. Yes, there is a question of antinomy that I will get into that.
But let me just go on. My apologies not to take any more questions precisely because we had a little bit of too much introductions and stuff which wasn't necessary completely, but I need to at least get to certain kinds of problematics for the next session. So, as I said in lecture in logic comes with four questions, whereas in critical pure reason he only comes with three questions. In his words, Kant says, all the interests of my reason, both speculative and practical, are united in the following three questions.
What can I know? What ought I do to do? And what can I hope for? Then obviously, if we are really interested in the question of what is the human, in this sort of Kantian sense, we should ask ourselves how the fourth question managed to contain the first three either in the first sense that
it is the consequences of the first three questions epistemology, ethics and religion or axiology I mean you can axiology here is quite vague the system of values so either the fourth question is simply the consequence of the three questions such that if you answer the first three questions you arrive at the fourth question or the fourth question is something fundamentally distinct within which the first three questions of epistemology, knowledge, ethics, and religion,
or system of axiology, are subsumed. When we are dealing with a case of subsumption, we are essentially meaning that something... subsumes some other things under itself precisely because it has something that other those things don't have. Meaning that even if we have correctly answered the first three questions, we wouldn't still have arrived by virtue of answering those three questions with a correct answer to the fourth question. Let me start with the first three questions.
Why is that actually in the critique of pure reason? And even in earlier one, but particularly in critical pure reason, these three questions, first three questions, are so important to Kant. This brings us to a historical context of the emergence of such questions in philosophy. Does anyone know what is the source of trepidation of Kant? And particularly the history of philosophy before Kant, that they begin to take such questions extremely seriously as opposed to post-Aristotelian uh pre-critical philosophy
what is that source that that enervates them that makes them nervous that such questions ought to be answered if they cannot be answered then the entire idea of human questioning about about this sorts of stuff is in danger. Does anyone know? Well, the question is the emergence of something we call the mechanistic world. The emergence of the new science of mechanics.
The hardest blow ever given to a philosophy. A pre-critical philosophy. What does that actually do? You see, You see, how our Sicilian worldview looked like, the great chain of being, right? Within the great chain of being, everything that is there, a shoe, a rock, you, your partner, God, maybe not God.
something actually in a Sotelian way. A house. They are all actually at the same level, despite the idea that we always think about that there is a chain of being, like a ladder of being. The ladder of being is actually not really an accurate picture of our Sotelian world in the pre-critical worldview. Ladder simply means that there is a certain kind of ranking in nature or ranking. There is a ranking in Great Chain of Being, but not in that sort of strong sense of ranking.
Like human is better than this, and the bird is better than worm, and worm is better than rock, and so on and so forth. And God is better than human. and so on and so forth. The great chain of being simply means that the appropriation of excellence to every sort of being is quite the same across the chain. What distinguishes them, a human from a rock, is the amount of this appropriation of excellence. So they are all under the same sort of appropriation of excellence.
Appropriating excellence to something, to a worm, to a rock, to a house, to me, so on and so forth. Now, and the soul, of course, soul and the world and God, part of the great chain of being. Now, with the mechanics, the mechanistic worldview, this sort of worldview that we had is utterly annihilated.
In Kant's words, talking about the great chain of being, as in soul, world and God, is no longer an object of scientific knowledge, but of the faculty of judgment. And hence, impossible to be approached scientifically. But there is actually a far more, Kant understood it, the British empiricists understood it, and the French rationalists understood it. There is a far more consequence to this. And that consequence is quite simple.
there is a distinction now between primary qualities and secondary qualities primary qualities that can be measured by and quantified by science and what you might call to be lowly rejectoid properties. What are those lowly or rejectory qualities or characteristics? Things like feelings, feels, emotions, thoughts, intentions, color, smell, pain, so on and so forth. That completely
annihilates that sort of worldview, renders it asunder. the advent of scientific mechanics. This creates a fundamental reverberation in the very theory of knowledge. What do I know? What should I hope for? What can I do? What is man? So, before moving forward, any questions? And I think that we are getting close. And I need my apologies. For three sessions from now, actually four sessions, I have to go to somewhere 30 minutes after the finishing of a class on time, doctor appointment.
After that, as usual, the classes can go on until 5 p.m. I don't care. but these four sessions I absolutely need to end them at 12.30 so I think that with these sorts of problematics that we have talked about and I'm going to hone out this sort of problematics to arrive at why is that the question of what is the human is the source of all problems but before then we need to have certain kind of with our great moderator certain sort of a standard for the next presentation precisely because you are a
legion at this point we cannot let you to have just one presentation we need three or four people to make presentation no more than 15 minutes after 15 minutes you will be sorry you will be cut short simple as that so first and foremost before i take the the questions who are going to be victims of the next presentation the first presentation you should work together and you are going to go through introduction of Foucault on philosophical anthropology at a lot of camps and talk about some of this stuff
and I'm going to still talk about these next session as well and then session afterward Okay, Sean. We need two or three more volunteers. I can do it. Sure, excellent. Thank you, Pablo. So two more. Do we get to choose the presentations? Sorry? Do we get to choose which are we going to present?
No, you are not presenting individually. You are presenting collectively. Together. You have to collaborate precisely because everyone is trying to make an individual presentation. Then no one actually manages to have a presentation, unfortunately, because of the size of the class. And also, this is a good exercise for dialectics. dialectics from the back room. Yeah, sure. Yeah, Emil, magnificent. Okay. If there is another person... These people should be actually given
Medal of Honor because they are actually putting their feet on a landmine. I'm not too scared of Foucault, but if there's an Alphyser class, or there's an Alphyser presentation on his anti-humanism, I can pull into the Jew. But as long as it is within the context, and I know that I also share human controversies within the context, essentially what we want to formulate a presentation within the context of Kantian, the question of what is the human, right? And Althusser, I know that deals with that, so was basically Marx, Hegel, Grimeshi and all sorts of people.
My question is kind of, would I be able to bring Biddu into a Biddu's ethics, into a critique of Kantian ethics of the human ideal? There is something for me to answer, unfortunately. precisely because you are not dealing with me first hand you are dealing with your collaborators they might not decide to do that right okay we have it i think uh we have we have four volunteers for the first presentation you can make a very sexy uh powerpoint or not or just like be very dry it doesn't matter as
long as it has philosophical substance uh you are the first victims and you will be commemorated for what you have done So, I just want to think about what should we read next. I think that it's too early still to read the focal one, because of the introduction I couldn't actually manage to the actual problem that is at hand. We just got into a little bit of partially to what we might actually get at. Now, I think that just like anyone who can suggest something,
but still Peter Wolfendale is great just to have a kind of an overarching idea of what all these sorts of stuff we are talking about. But there is, I cannot believe that I'm suggesting this. Pasco. Right? As I said, always through my classes, we have set materials that we are going to, we have to use as resources, but we can also introduce new materials. Paschal passages on mechanics
and the new science of mechanics. They're quite damning on human homelessness. You know, the whole idea of humans being homeless, not having a home, comes from Paschal. Not from Schopenhauer or any person. It's coming from Pascal. It's not coming from this sort of spectacular realist terror drama. No, it is actually something much worse. So Pascal, if you want, if someone wants to volunteer to actually get those passages, that would be great. Otherwise, I mean, I have some passages
that I can actually tell you which one actually you should read. They're quite actually fundamentally strong and moving. And obviously, these are the sort of stuff that absolutely moved British empiricists and Kant eventually. uh just let me know i mean there is this for example i'm going to uh read this uh part for you from pascal you know the question of heterogeneity why we have been talking about and how pascal
turns this of mind and body understanding and sensation as a source of knowledge this question being reposed after the advent of a new mechanics that renders asunder first qualities from secondary qualities. The quantified from those which I said reject to it in the scientific sense like emotions and so on and so forth, color, smell, and pain. Says who would not think to see
us give all things a mind and a body but we thoroughly understand this combination. Yet it is the very thing that we understand least. Man is to himself the most miraculous object in nature. For he cannot conceive what matter is, still less what is mind. And least of all, our body can be joined to a mind. you see these are really the most damning inclinations of how something like today's anti-humanism or post-humanism might actually arise from the pre-neal questions about the
question of what the human is but as I said don't get so high on this sorts of stuff because the plot twist is that can't always, even though it would be a mutated can't. So I can take three questions and that was that would be about it. I really need to run. So three questions. OK. I think um sahaj has his hand raised for a longer time um thanks uh so i'll keep it really quick uh so
reza you spoke about uh how the first three questions are sort of subsumed uh in the fourth uh i was just wondering uh the inverse is also kind of true right like i mean you kind of see it with the way sort of capital capitalist structures sort of work where uh essentially who are you is the fundamental question that's asked. Like, you know, you're supposed to define yourself on the basis of identity, biology, you know, community. The self is kind of siloed in that way. Isn't the inverse also kind of true? Like, where it does happen, in fact, that's kind of, I guess, if there's this kind of game playing out. There is a definitive relation here.
But the thing is that you see, again, just a flash forward here to future sessions, you know, after Kant and Hegel's rectification of Kant, Marx and some Marxists become to develop, to reclaim this idea of the human, right? The idea of human as a historical, and yes, they see that the idea of human, precisely because it's historical, it has an affinity with social relations, socioeconomic relations, right?
So there are a fork emerges here. Those who really think, like me, or left accelerationist and early Grameshi, who thinks that human is own making by virtue precisely of all this historical development, but not in a shallow historicistic sense, that it can make its own self. and that's what essentially man is from a pragmatic point of view, or human is from pragmatic point of view. But there is a different sort, which I don't see is completely opposite in its weak sense to the first sense. The second sense is that if the human
is really have this sort of fundamental endemic affinity with social historical relations, then precisely it is the definition of what is the human can be also subsumed within the definition of capitalism. And capitalism ultimately not hijacks really the question of what is the human but it is really the question of what is the human once understood from an overarching social economic sense so and within the question of capitalism then again other kinds of questions happens uh you know whether as marx understood it communism is nothing but the self concrete
self-consciousness of capitalism to understand its own limitation within the historical progression right or it is merely basically the sort of a static sort of basically mode of a species being within which what you might call to be all sorts of calamities and conundrums of race and gender can never be solved and hence it completely needs to be annihilated from the scratch, right? So we are
going to get into this but the thing is that we should understand that look the only thing that we can do talk about the sorts of different trajectories of how the problem moves and all of these consequences is by creating a fork in a very basic problem and take that fork into other sorts of philosophical forks. Navigate the consequences of each of these ramifying paths and then within our constraints compare the consequences of taking these ramifying paths and then see if there is actually a way to create a certain kind of point of convergence between all of these paths.
So even in Marxism, the question of humanism is fundamentally barricaded. It is not just this. Capitalism is not just this or that. Capitalism, as I said, capitalism really understood correctly from Marx 101 is proto-communism right but the thing is that you then you should have a certain kind of understanding of the problematics that these people are talking about to say that why is this is the case and not the other one why is that we We have, for example, this sort of sordid capitalism and not the sort of capitalism that
Marx was talking about, right? But this all comes back to that idea of ramifying the problem. And we are philosophies in the business of ramifying the problem. First, fork from very single seed, fork it. Then it starts to ramify that fork to create a whole slew of other problems. see if we can actually have a synoptic view of such problems without just simply navigating in one of these problems and not the others. Okay.
Thank you. Who has his end raised as well? I think Aaron and Sean. So perhaps Sean can go first, or Aaron has. All right. Sorry. So my question is very quick, right? I love how you've sort of teased out this problematic between philosophical anthropology and the three critiques. I guess the bit that's a little bit unclear to me now is, hasn't this kind of been attempted by, let's say, more contemporary thinkers like Deleuze or Bajiu, right? Deleuze very explicitly opens what is philosophy with the statement that philosophy cannot exist without the outside.
And then Bajiu also really emphasizes that questions of metaphysics and ethics and transcendence require almost like a sort of neo-Marxist affinity with the outside, with the political situation. So I'm sort of wondering, the bit that's unclear to me now is, I guess, why are we returning? As I said, it's essentially the question of a ramifying path, right? So, Badiou, I'm actually more of a Badiou here than Deleuze, even if I used to be a very staunch Deleuzean. I would say that, but all of such problems are lenses to a bigger synoptic problem. The practice of philosophy does not concern itself with philosophers,
but the very fact of historical synapticization of the problems. And essentially what we are trying to say here is that the sort of outside, what sort of outside is it? Is it event? Is it contingency? Is it nominum? Is it really regulative judgments? What is it? And then obviously based on And the sort of answers that we do specifically to such explication of the concept of the human and trajectories that have arised from it, then we might actually find ourselves at either old paths with some new maps or some new paths, new maps with some new territories to be covered.
essentially we are not in the business here of saying that this stuff has not been talked about essentially we are going to say that majority of this stuff have been talked about in one way or another but how is it possible to create a synoptic view i.e. a truly historical philosophical view of such trajectories or navigational pathways, such that we do not abide by the diktats of one philosopher or another. But we, as always, in a true sense of philosophy, fall back into the abyss of the history of philosophy itself.
Okay, got it. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you so much. One more question. One more question. I have to run out. So I think Aaron, please go on. I guess quick then, or we could start with it next time. But yeah, I just do two, like very different texts come to mind thinking about this, but it would be sort of good sort of sort of if we're all familiar with our base basis to go from and yeah i guess i would ask how you would treat sellers treatment of this and philosophy in the scientific image of man uh which sort of does explicitly kind of play out these issues in a philosophical sense before kind
of trying to leave us off at where their political implications are the other uh which i'd be curious if you or anyone's familiar with is a text uh from a german catholic theologian actually also from the 50s uh romano guardini called the end of the modern age i don't know anything about that text would you be able to put it on the sidebar i can uh yeah i can or send it send it us send it us there is one third text that i actually think that it's quite actually necessary and i cannot believe that i'm actually talking about this you know this is not my source of material martin Buber between man and man. Because Buber actually was a fundamental critique, but also provenance
of such ideas within the existentialist basically tenet. Great, yeah, I'll find if I can drop it in the drive, I'll do so. There are so many good texts here. I mean, but I just wanted to, because, you know, because of Pascal, the reason I actually said Pascal, precisely because, you know, Pascal's wager is quite is probably one of the most sordidly cursed ideas I've ever come across. I think that only a man with a demonic mind, primed to torture innocent people, can come up with such an idea.
But nevertheless, Pascal, in its real philosophical kick, is actually quite good. It's very good. But yes, I would say that Pascal Wager is only designed for people who have some sort of disproportional fear for death. Like, what's that? John von Neum who says that it's like this great scientist who actually doesn't believe in anything. It's just like an agnostic Jew. And he converts to Catholicism and says, look, I actually prefer to not take the chance
or the probability of eternal damnation if all it requires for me is to convert at the end of my life. I would say that some people can be duped, even in the last moment of their lives. Many brilliant ones were unfortunate. Yes, yes. No, I mean, we are going to talk about God, by the way. I forgot about, this is something that, essentially the question of what is man will lead us to question of God in a Kantian, Hegelian sense. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is the last one, though.
This leads on to my question. Because from what I understand of Kant, isn't the quest for knowledge fundamental to our human condition? It says that we can't ever be God. We can't even know God. So we have to try to know God. So it's like, if we're made in the image of God, is it that kind of return to ecclesiastical thing of wanting to know God, wanting to know be... No, essentially we do not even want to know God. From Kant's perspective, knowing about God is an antinomy problem and hence impossible and should be cast aside. The thing is that we can think about God. Thinking and knowledge are two different things.
Knowledge in Kant's sense is a very specific sort of category of activity. Right? we cannot know God by virtue of the very principles by way of which this activity is being primed and propped we can think about God, we can have, believe in God as long as we do not fall in certain kinds of contradictions, simple as that right, but I would say that I, as a as an atheist, who is not actually, who hates new atheists like Dawkins and stuff I would say that God is probably one of the greatest topics ever invented. I would say this is actually,
I'm going to, as a teaser for the next session, I would say that God is, the invention of God as a subject matter of great consequence is not of theology, but of human technology. Okay. Thank you so much. see you not next week my apologies oh philip okay my god you always need to be the last one no i was only saying bye-bye resident oh okay i love you if you want to stay please stay because i'm loving this i love you my apologies so nema knows that i have i have a talk next week at their place, Boulder, Colorado. So next week, we won't have a class.
This actually gives the volunteers, aka victims of the first presentation, to actually create something great so other people can follow the lead. I will send you a couple of texts, some sections from Pascal and some other stuff, and we won't see each other next week, but the week after. My apologies, sincere apologies. Thanks, Reza. Love you. Thanks. And goodbye, everyone. Bye. Have a great day. Bye-bye. Thanks, Wayne. All the best. Thanks.