Modern technology within the Western theological imaginary

In this paper, I claim that modern technology possesses certain general ‘onto-formative’ characteristics that indicate that our contemporary technological condition now defies orthodox theoretical forms of comprehension. In the light of this claim, I will propose that any adequate conceptual understanding of modern technics requires a decisive shift of disciplinary register: specifically, towards theology and to the formation of new philosophical paradigms founded upon metaphysically-inspired interpretations of the ‘total significance’ of modern technics. Such theological conceptions, I will argue, emerge from a startling recognition of modern technics’ incipient association with the infinite, the transcendent as well as with its capacity to “bring new worlds into existence”. I attempt this, in the first instance, by drawing upon the work of two major thinkers who I believe paved the way towards just such a theological conception: Martin Heidegger and Ernst Jünger. In a non-standard interpretation of their respective philosophies of technology, I will go on to claim that these two thinkers should be viewed as attempting to find a way towards a “radically conservative” revalorisation of ancient theological truths that they believed could provide 20th century modernity with the philosophical groundwork for a new techno-political order that they posited in contrast to a dying Platonic Christian civilisation. For both of these thinkers a theological understanding of modern technics created the possibility of a new spiritual condition/zeitgeist where the very idea of modern technology is rearticulated as the focal point of a post-Platonic-Christian social imaginary that they believed to be revolutionary in its necessarily destructive relationship to extant historical worlds and their corresponding traditions. By these lights, I suggest, that modern social imaginary can only be con conceived within a new theological synthesis that transcends the Platonic/Christian dichotomy of techne and theoria - of the worker and the philosopher/ priest - in a way that allows for the poetic root of both to be revealed in its primal, world-constituting, form. I will conclude with a brief comparison between these ‘pagan’ conceptions of technology and contemporary Christian theological conceptions which have been acutely aware of the highly ambiguous position of modern technics within Christian metaphysical schemes and the need to reform these in the light the manifestly destructive potential of modern forms of technological innovation

A Neglected Route to Realism About Quantum Mechanics

Bell's Theorem assumes that hidden variables are not influenced by future measurement settings. The assumption has sometimes been questioned, but the suggestion has been thought outlandish, even by the taxed standards of the discipline. (Bell thought that it led to fatalism.) The case for this reaction turns out to be surprisingly weak, however. We show that QM easily evades the standard objections to advanced action. And the approach has striking advantages, especially in avoiding the apparent conflict between Bell's Theorem and special relativity. The second part of the paper considers the broader question as to why advanced action seems so counterintuitive. We investigate the origins of our ordinary intuitions about causal asymmetry. It is argued that the view that the past does not depend on the future is largely anthropocentric, a kind of projection of our own temporal asymmetry. Many physicists have also reached this conclusion, but have thought that if causation has no objective direction, there is no objective content to an advanced action interpretation of QM. This turns out to be a mistake. From the ordinary subjective perspective, we can distinguish two sorts of objective world: one "looks as if" it contains only forward causation, the other ``looks as if'' it involves a mix of backward and forward causation. This clarifies the objective core of an advanced action interpretation of QM, and shows that there is an independent symmetry argument in favour of the approach.Comment: 35 pages, LaTex (forthcoming in MIND, July 1994; written for a philosophical audience, but perhaps of some interest here

The «Morbid Fear of the Subjective» : Privateness and Objectivity in Mid-twentieth Century American Naturalism

The “Morbid Fear of the Subjective” (copyright by Roy Wood Sellars) represents a key-element of the American naturalist debate of the Mid-twentieth century. On the one hand, we are witnessing to the unconditional trust in the objectivity of scientific discourse, while on the other (and as a consequence) there is the attempt to exorcise the myth of the “subjective” and of its metaphysical privateness. This theoretical roadmap quickly assumed the shape of an even sociological contrast between the “democraticity” of natural sciences and the fanaticism implicit in supernatural metaphysical systems. In between these two extremes stood phenomenology, in its early days on American soil. Its notion of “evidence”, which is less easily to naturalize than it might seem, was in fact hardly consistent with the widespread concept of “natural experience” of the world

Reason and the nonrational in Lovejoy, Montague, and Tsanoff

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University.Reason as the instrument of philosophy is under attack at the present from the standpoint of psychology, critical philosophy, the experience of evil, science, and existentialism. Rationalism as deduction no longer is an adequate concept of reason. This dissertation investigates the nonrationalistic content of reason required to supplement deductive rationalism in order to develop a coherent and synoptic view of reason as the instrument of philosophy in current times. Mind is defined as the sum total of consciousness, with emphasis upon the unity of the self. [TRUNCATED

The genealogy of Nick Land's anti-anthropocentric philosophy: a psychoanalytic conception of machinic desire.

Ph.D thesisIn recent years the philosophical texts of Nick Land have begun to attract increasing attention, yet no systematic treatment of his work exists. This thesis considers one significant and distinctive aspect of Land's work: his use of a psychoanalytic vocabulary, which is deployed to try and avoid several problems associated with metaphysical discourse. Land's larger project of responding to the Kantian settlement in philosophy is sketched in the introduction, as is his avowed distaste for thought which is conditioned by anthropocentricism. This thesis then goes on to provide a genealogical reading of the concepts which Land will borrow from psychoanalytic discourse, tracing the history of drive and desire in the major psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Chapter one considers Freud, his model of the unconscious, and the extent to which it is anthropocentric. Chapter two contrasts Freud's materialism to Lacan's idealism. Chapter three returns to materialism, as depicted by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus. This chapter also goes on to consider the implications of their 'schizoanalysis', and contrasts 'left' and 'right' interpretations of Deleuze, showing how they have appropriated his work. Chapter four considers Lyotard's works from his 'libidinal period' of the late sixties to early seventies. These four readings, and the various theories of drive and desire they contain, are then contextualised in relation to Land's work in chapter five. This final chapter considers Land's theory of 'machinic-desire', and evaluates if his construction of the concept, via psychoanalysis, offers a superior approach to anti-anthropocentric positions constructed in metaphysics. The role of psychoanalytic thought in constructing Land's cosmological theory of thermodynamic entropy and extropy is also considered

Matter-Reality in Cinema: Realism, Counter-Realism and the Avant-Gardes

The present text investigates the dialectics of reality and materiality in cin­ema theory and practice. It attempts an epistemological and meta-semiotic approach. Based on Louis Hjelmslev's model of sign-function, it reformu­lates both the haunting of cinema by reality and the avant-gardes' focus on materiality as problematising the relation of cinematic semiosis to the exo-semiotic[1] realm. It starts by laying down the philosophical background of the issues investigated. It then explores the epistemological and ethico-political parameters of the debate over aesthetic realism. Finally, it discusses avant-garde cinema's techniques of drawing attention to the expression-plane, attempting their provisional systematisation. It suggests that avant-garde interest in materiality constitutes a stance against the ideology of re­alism, proposing an alternative relation to reality.[1] "Exo-semiotic" means "outside of the semiotic". For the exact use of the term "exo-semiotic", as well as for the full analysis of the semiotic model on which this text is based, see Wallden, "Reaching Toward the Outside: Saussure, Hjelmslev and Cinema Semiotics", in the present volume

Going Beyond the Kantian Philosophy: On McDowell's Hegelian Critique of Kant

The Kant-Hegel relation has a continuing fascination for commentators on Hegel, and understandbly so: for, taking this route into the Hegelian jungle can promise many advantages. First, it can set Hegel's thought against a background with which we are fairly familiar, and in a way that makes its relevance clearly apparent; second, it can help us locate Hegel in the broader philisophical tradition, making us see that the traditional "analytic jump from Kant to Frege leaves out a crucial period in post-Kantian thought, third, it can show Hegel in a progressive light, as attempting to take that tradition further forward; fourth, it can help us locate familiar philisophical issues in Hegelian thought that other-wise can appear whooly sui generis; and finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, focusing on this relation can help raise and crystalise some of the fascinating ambiguties concerning Hegel's outlook, regarding whether Hegel's response to Kant shows him to have been a reactionary, Romantic, pre-critical thinker, who sought to turn the philosophical clock back to a time before Kant had written, or a modernist, Enlightented and essentially critical one, who remained true to the spirit if not the letter of Kant's philosophy

The Substance of Things Hoped For: On the Faith and the Economy (Promoting what we Oppose, Part 2)

In the first part of this series it was argued that there is an inextricable bond between economic and cultural liberalism such that when Catholics identify the faith with the defence of neoliberal economics, even though they may oppose abortion, they end up promoting exactly that which they oppose. In this the second part this point is expanded upon and the argument made more explicit and that by reference to Pope Francis’ recent Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudium Evangelii. The Exhortation evidences a view of matters economic that sits ill with capitalism, a point understood by Catholic commentators who champion Neoliberalism. This essay argues that Francis’ comments are nothing new, especially when compared to what John Paul II and Benedict XVI have written on the subject; indeed, that Francis’ Exhortation can be seen as a tempering of their critique of economic liberalism. The essay attempts to tease out what it is that informs the critique of the popes and shows that it has to do with what flows out from the rejection of metaphysics proper, a rejection that defines Modernity, and which ends in the deracination of all things such that even the very concept of ‘substance’ is dissolved and, thereby, all is made plastic and malleable, including human life. The important point the essay wishes to make is this: the popes are quite clear that the form a culture’s economy takes can both ground and exacerbate this anti-essentialist logic, what’s more the economy above all others that does this is the one they identify with neoliberal capitalism. As a consequence, Catholics who champion this form of economic theory must think seriously as to whether or not they or the popes are wrong on this matter