Sloterdijk's 1999 lecture, known as the Elmau Speech, posited that all existing humanisms, including Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology, were rendered obsolete by the emergence of the so-called new media, and that education faced a similar fate. Taking a step further, the Elmau Speech establishes a connection between post-humanism in the sense of post-literary and postepistolary and Nietzsche's prophetic philosophy, suggesting the potential for genetic intervention in human life and education, thereby giving rise to social controversy. This paper begins (...) by examining Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, which offers criticism of traditional humanisms and introduces his concept of Fundamental Ontology. It then delves into Sloterdijk's critique of Heidegger in Rules for the Human Zoo, as well as Sloterdijk's own conception of posthumanism, analyzing their implications for contemporary education. (shrink)

(2006). Straw Dogs, Blind Horses and Post‐Humanism: The Greening of Gray? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 243-262.

One can rightly say of Peter Sloterdijk that each of his essays and lectures is also an unwritten book. That is why the texts presented here, which sketch a philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger, should also be characterized as a collected renunciation of exhaustiveness. In order to situate Heidegger's thought in the history of ideas and problems, Peter Sloterdijk approaches Heidegger's work with questions such as: If Western philosophy emerged from the spirit of the polis, what are we (...) to make of the philosophical suitability of a man who never made a secret of his stubborn attachment to rural life? Is there a provincial truth of which the cosmopolitan city knows nothing? Is there a truth in country roads and cabins that would be able to undermine the universities with their standardized languages and globally influential discourses? From where does this odd professor speak, when from his professorial chair in Freiburg he claims to inquire into what lies beyond the history of Western metaphysics? Sloterdijk also considers several other crucial twentieth-century thinkers who provide some needed contrast for the philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger. A consideration of Niklas Luhmann as a kind of contemporary version of the Devil's Advocate, a provocative critical interpretation of Theodor Adorno's philosophy that focuses on its theological underpinnings and which also includes reflections on the philosophical significance of hyperbole, and a short sketch of the pessimistic thought of Emil Cioran all round out and deepen Sloterdijk's attempts to think with, against, and beyond Heidegger. Finally, in essays such as "Domestication of Being" and the "Rules for the Human Park," which incited an international controversy around the time of its publication and has been translated afresh for this volume, Sloterdijk develops some of his most intriguing and important ideas on anthropogenesis, humanism, technology, and genetic engineering. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk presented a reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism at a conference held at Elmau in 1999. Reinterpreting the meaning of humanism in the light of Heidegger's Letter, Sloterdijk focused his presentation on the need to redefine education as a form of genetic ‘taming’ and proposed what seemed to be support for positive eugenics. Although Sloterdijk claimed that he only wanted to open a debate on the issue, he could not have been surprised at the level (...) of opposition this suggestion aroused. In the weeks following, he blamed Habermas for raising this opposition and for refusing to engage with him openly. Although Luis Arenas has chronicled the aftermath of Sloterdijk's paper, it may be of interest to educators to examine how Heidegger's text is presented. What is this new humanism? If Heidegger's new humanism was based on a mystical attitude towards Being, so Sloterdijk's new humanism was to be based on the materialist principles of a biotechnological age. Unlike Heidegger who rejected technology as yet one further example of the forgetfulness of Being, Sloterdijk seems to embrace technology and the enhancement of the human body and mind as the next great step forward in educational theory. Could he possibly be right? Is education in these times a partner or an opponent of the technological enhancement of the human being? This article tries to identify Sloterdijk's disagreements with Heidegger on the question of the human. (shrink)

Humanism, the dominant underpinning theory of modem philosophy, has gone through significant challenges from the antihumanist critiques coming from thinkers such as Heidegger, Lacan, and Foucault. While humanism is certainly not dead, the pre-critical humanisms of thinkers such as Locke and Rawls are no longer sufficient ways to theorize the human after the anti-humanist critique. The anti-humanist critique has been sufficiently successful that we now stand in a philosophical landscape that is best understood as “posthumanist.” This does not mean that (...) the desire to theorize the human from the human perspective, a la Husserl, is altogether dead. Rather, it is to suggest that any successful attempts at theorizing the human must take the anti-humanist critique into account. Theories that do so are best labeled “post-humanisms.” If, as Foucault suggested, Sartre and Lacan once stood as “alternate contemporaries” in the humanist/antihumanist landscape of the 1950s, then now, in this post-humanist landscape of contemporary philosophy, it is Lacan and Levinas, antihumanist and post-humanist, who stand as alternate contemporaries. Lacan’s anti-humanism is a powerful and attractive critique of the excesses of earlier humanisms that relied too heavily on transparent self-knowledge and freedom, instead placing the unconscious as the forefront of the human experience and encouraging us to dissolve “the subject who is supposed to know.“ Levinas’s post-humanism is a powerful and attractive way of attempting to rescue humanity from the totalizing forces of earlier humanisms while taking seriously the antihumanist critique, placing an an-archic responsibility to the other person at the forefront of the human experience. New possibilities await the philosopher in this new landscape, new ways of theorzing the human without falling into the pre-critical naivete of earlier humanisms. As we move philosophy deliberately into this post-humanist landscape, exciting new work has begun emerging, and will continue to emerge. (shrink)

A series of dialogues with the most exciting and controversial German philosopher writing today. Peter Sloterdijk first became known in this country for his late 1980s Critique of Cynical Reason, which confronted headlong the “enlightened false consciousness” of Habermasian critical theory. Two decades later, after spending seven years in India studying Eastern philosophy, he is now attracting renewed interest for his writings on politics and globalization and for his magnum opus Spheres, a three-volume archaeology of the human attempt to (...) dwell within spaces, from womb to globe: Bubbles, 1998; Globes, 1999; Foam, 2004, all forthcoming from Semiotext. In Neither Sun nor Death, Sloterdijk answers questions posed by German writer Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, commenting on such issues as technological mutation, development media, communication technologies, and his own intellectual itinerary. Iconoclastic and provocative, alternatively sparkling and bombastic, a child of '68 and a libertarian, Sloterdijk is the most exciting and controversial German philosopher to appear on the world scene since Nietzsche and Heidegger. Like Nietzsche, Sloterdijk remains convinced that contemporary philosophers have to think dangerously and let themselves be “kidnapped” by contemporary “hypercomplexities”; they must forsake our present humanist and nationalist world for a wider horizon at once ecological and global. Neither Sun nor Death is the best introduction available to Sloterdijk's philosophical theory of globalization. It reveals a philosophe extraordinaire, encyclopedic and provocative, as much at ease with current French Theory as with Heidegger and Indian mystic Osho Rajneesh. (shrink)

For virtually all the major schools of Western opinion, the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, between 1989 and 1991, represents a triumph of Western values, ideas, and institutions. If, for triumphal conservatives, the events of late 1989 encompassed an endorsement of “democratic capitalism” that augured “the end of history,” for liberal and social democrats they could be understood as the repudiation by the peoples of the former Soviet bloc of Marxism-Leninism in all (...) its varieties, and the reemergence of a humanist socialism that was free of Bolshevik deformation. The structure of political and economic institutions appropriate to the transition from post-Communism in the Soviet bloc to genuine civil society was, accordingly, modeled on Western exemplars—the example of Anglo-American democratic capitalism, of Swedish social democracy, or of the German social market economy— or on various modish Western academic conceptions, long abandoned in the Soviet and post-Soviet worlds, such as market socialism. No prominent school of thought in the West doubted that the dissolution of Communist power was part of a process of Westernization in which contemporary Western ideas and institutions could and would successfully be exported to the former Communist societies. None questioned the idea that, somewhere in the repertoire of Western theory and practice, there was a model for conducting the transition from the bankrupt institutions of socialist central planning, incorporated into the structure of a totalitarian state, to market institutions and a liberal democratic state. Least of all did anyone question the desirability, or the possibility, of reconstituting economic and political institutions on Western models, in most parts of the former Soviet bloc. (shrink)

The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk seemed to agree with Heidegger’s critique of humanism when he delivered a Conference address at Elmau in 1999. He rejected, however, the way Heidegger used the metaphor of a shepherd to explain the proper essence of the human and developed a counter-position and a contrary understanding of shepherding that he considered truer to contemporary times. During his speech, Sloterdijk used some examples from Plato’s Statesman to support a distinction between good breeding and civility (...) and thus implied that humanistic education had to incorporate efforts to promote biomedical improvements in the human condition, effectively broadening the work of education centred traditionally on the “reading of good books.” Did Sloterdijk then commit himself to some kind of eugenic programme? He immediately denied this. Did his view amount to a logical progression from Heidegger’s position or was it a radical departure? To clarify this question, this paper first sketches out Heidegger’s argument as put forward in the Letter on Humanism, then notes Sloterdijk’s response to Heidegger’s analysis before finally attempting to identify some key differences between these writers on the issue. (shrink)

The idea this article relies on is that we should rethink cultural distance between modernism and post-modernism. We can no longer support the thesis of a radical break between the two cultural periods since many of the changes that have marked our contemporary world were initiated or at least announced in the modern period. Besides the cultural and epistemic factors, the socioeconomic conditions have also contributed to shape a new sensitivity and a new outlook. One of the major contributions (...) to this change was the replacement of the epistemic pedestal - oriented toward the metaphysical knowledge of the world - with a kind of knowledge inspired by the model of sciences which determined the understanding of the world as a „standing-reserve" (Heidegger). Thus, we speak about a techno-world, which is not merely a consequence of our way of interacting with our fellow beings or the environment. It is also a consequence of our wayof creating reality. The post-humanist approach of the man - similarly to modern utopias - considers technology the main means of improving human condition. Furthermore, we need to see in post-humanism the hope of rethinking humanity in a world growingly devoid of spiritual values. (shrink)

When humanism is thought, especially within the borders of 20th century philosophy, one of the things that first comes to mind is the statements which have occurred in 1950s between Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be named as Heidegger-Sartre Controversy on Humanism and mainly based on two texts. Sartre, in one of his speeches, builds an essential connection between humanism and existentialism and in here he defines Heidegger as an existentialist like himself. In return, Heidegger, probably as a criticism (...) to Sartre's attribution to him, told about his thoughts on humanism within the expanded version of one of his earlier letters. By this controversy the context and content humanism had been expanded, the understanding of humanism is deepened. The aim of this article is to manifest if there are some things that the controversy between Heidegger and Sartre could contribute to the terms -as a problematic humanism has nowadays- like post-humanism, trans-humanism, meta-humanism, super-humanism, alter-humanism whose terminological meanings aren't quite well-defined. It is to investigate if there are any solutions that humanism -which is being shaped again and obtaining new contexts through these terms- could gain by this controversy against this current terminology problem. (shrink)

This revised second edition from our bestselling _Key Guides_ includes brand new entries on some of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth- and twenty-first century: Zizek, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Butler and Haraway. With a new introduction by the author, sections on phenomenology and the post-human, full cross-referencing and up-to-date guides to major primary and secondary texts, this is an essential resource to contemporary critical thought for undergraduates and the interested reader.

"Why, in present-day French writing, are we most likely to encounter the word "humanist" only as a term of glib dismissal? In this introduction to the controversy over "humanism", Kate Soper explains how the argument (developed by existentialists and Marxist humanists), that human experience and action play a fundamental role in "making history", has fallen into disrepute. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' shows how the "humanist" standpoint emerged in the post-war period, out of a convergence of arguments derived from Hegel, Marx, (...) Husserl, and Heidegger, then traces its elaboration within existentialism and Marxism, and finally examines the "anti-humanist" reaction in the works of Lèvi-Strauss, Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, and Derrida. Soper clearly explains what is at stake in the debate between "humanists" and "anti-humanists", and contends that this can be understood only in the context of Cold War politics and the crisis for Marxism presented by Stalinism. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' is written from a position of critical sympathy with "humanism" and is aimed chiefly at readers with no previous knowledge of Continental philosophy." -- book cover. (shrink)

Heidegger's thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of "resoluteness" in Being and Time with Heidegger's post-war account of "releasement" in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly 'anti-humanist' thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O'Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger's movement from authenticity to the search for (...) an authentic free relation to the world - as captured by the term "releasement". By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger's thought in its entirety, O'Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy. (shrink)

Culture After Humanism asks what happens to the authority of traditional Western modes of thought in the wake of postcolonial theory. Iain Chambers investigates moments of tension, interruptions which transform our perception of the world and test the limits of language, art and technology. In a series of interlinked discussions, ranging in focus from Susan Sontag's novel The Volcano Lover to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Jimi Hendrix and Baroque architecture and music, Chambers weaves together a critique of Western humanism, (...) exploring issues of colonization and migration, language and identity. Culture After Humanism offers a new approach to cultural history, a 'post-humanist' perspective which challenges our sense of a world in which the subject is sovereign language, the transparent medium of its agency, and truth, the product of reason. (shrink)

The dual aim of this article is to show both how Heidegger’s existential philosophy enriches post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis enriches Heidegger’s existential philosophy. Characterized as a phenomenological contextualism, post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds philosophical grounding in Heidegger’s ontological contextualism, condensed in his term for the human kind of Being, Being-in-the-world. Specifically, Heidegger provides philosophical support (a) for a theoretical and clinical shift from mind to world, from the intrapsychic to the intersubjective; (b) for a shift from the (...) motivational primacy of drives originating in the interior of a Cartesian isolated mind to the motivational primacy of relationally constituted affective experience; and (c) for contextualizing and grasping the existential significance of emotional trauma, which plunges us into a form of Being-toward-death. Post-Cartesian psychoanalysis, in turn, (a) relationalizes Heidegger’s conception of finitude, (b) expands Heidegger’s conception of relationality, and (c) explores some ethical implications of our kinship-in-finitude. (shrink)

This article discusses two twentieth-century examples of humanist controversies in order to demonstrate some rhetorical paths of thought involved in developing and securing rhetorical humanism within philosophy and rhetorical studies. The article begins with Martin Heidegger's antihumanist provocation and examines Ernesto Grassi's response in his revisionist interpretation of a nonmetaphysical Renaissance humanism. Next it takes up the post-Heideggerian moment of late twentieth-century postmodern critiques, including attacks on humanist foundationalism and essentialist notions of agency, and compares Grassi's defense of rhetorical (...) humanism within Continental philosophy to Michael Leff's reinterpretation of Ciceronian humanism within communication studies. Both Grassi and Leff propose a rhetorical humanist alternative to Heidegger's and postmodernism's philosophical antihumanism. These two rhetoricians demonstrate an interpretive power and a rhetorical creativity that not only revitalize rhetorical humanism in the present age but also provide valuable resources for its extension into the future. (shrink)

RESUMEN Frente a la hybris de la subjetividad que culmina en el proyecto moderno-humanista, surge la necesidad de pensar de otra manera la esencia del hombre ya sin el lastre de toda la tradición filosófica occidental. Este viraje que Heidegger imprime al pensar se explica aquí desde lo que denomino tesis para la reconstrucción de un posthumanismo en la perspectiva de la kénosis y que se resume en: la superación de las leyes de la gramática y el acento en el (...) decir poético; el reconocimiento del mientras tanto de la existencia humana finita siempre en camino; y, por último, el preciso abajamiento del pensar tal y como corresponde no ya a la incontestable potestad del señor del ente sino a la esencial pobreza del pastor. ABSTRACT Before the hybris of subjectivity that culminates in the modern-humanist project, there arises the need to think the essence of man, in another way, a way already without the burden of the entire western philosophical tradition. This turn that Heidegger gives to thinking is here explained from what I call: thesis for the reconstruction of post-humanism in the perspective of kenosis, which can be summarized as overcoming the laws of grammar and accent in the poetic saying, recognition of a meanwhile of the finite human existence always on its way and, finally, the precise reduction of thinking as it corresponds not to the power of the lord of the being but to the essential shepherd’s poverty. (shrink)

Centred on 'Foams', the third volume of his Spheres trilogy, this article questions the privilege granted by Peter Sloterdijk to motifs of inclusion and exclusion, contending that whilst his prioritization of dwelling as a central aspect of human existence provides a promising counterpoint to the dislocative and isolative effects of post-industrial capitalism, it is compromised by its dependence upon an anti-cosmopolitan outlook that views cultural distantiation as a natural and preferable state of human affairs, and valorizes a purported (...) ontological security attained through defensive postures with respect to perceived foreigners or externalities. Sloterdijk’s conceptualization of culture as a kind of immune system, it is argued, although posited as a rebuke to models of essentialism and ethno-nationalism, provides ontological support to the xenophobic critiques of immigration that are today finding increasing currency. (shrink)

Le débat qui partage les partisans et les détracteurs de l'humanisme n'est pas seulement dicté par l'ampleur des événements planétaires. La question de l'humanisme est d'abord l'héritière de toute l'histoire de la pensée. Qu'il ait cependant appartenu à Martin Heidegger, à peine arraché à un temps d'inhumanité radicale, de transformer, dans sa fameuse Lettre sur l'humanisme de 1947, le simple recours aux " valeurs ", de l'humanisme en l'affaire par excellence de la pensée, constitue une énigme sur laquelle il valait (...) la peine de s'arrêter. Depuis lors, le débat sur l'humanisme a occupé la pensée française à travers les contributions majeures de Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault ou, récemment encore, hors de France, de Sloterdijk. Des philosophes appartenant à plusieurs générations ont voulu proposer une nouvelle lecture de la lettre fondatrice de Heidegger. On trouvera dans cet ouvrage toutes les facettes du dossier, les circonstances de la publication de la lettre, sa réception européenne jusqu'à nos jours, le débat avec la pensée de la Renaissance qu'elle implique, ainsi que les différentes voies pour dialoguer avec un texte aussi ambigu que les événements auxquels il se mesure. Bruno Pinchard est professeur à l'Université jean Moulin-Lyon 3 Ont également contribué à ce volume Pierre Aubenque, Alain Boutot, Pierre Coye, Pascal David, Emmanuel Faye, Marc Foglio, Thierry Gontier, Dominique Janicoud, jeanFrançois Marquet, Jean-François Mottéi, Rita Messori, Henri Mongis, Roger Munier, Alexis Pinchard, Alexandra Roux, Luco Salzo, Alain Séguy-Dtrclot, Jean-Marie Voysse et Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron. Themis la Titanide, née de Ciel et de Terre, incarnait chez Hésiode la figure de la Justice qui réunissait les dieux sur l'Olympe et les hommes au caeur de la cité. En un temps de dispersion du sens, "Thémis" s'ouvre à la philosophie pour recueillir ses interrogations sur notre partage commun. Au carrefour de l'éthique, de la politique, de l'art et des sciences, cette collection présente des essais originaux qui explorent les voies obscures de notre avenir à la lumiere de notre plus ancienne tradition. Repenser la philosophie à partir de ce commencement qui était, pour Hésiode, l'exigence éternelle de la justice, c'est découvrir, en un autre mode que l'éclaircie grecque, ce que donne à voir la naissance de Thémis, pF. M. (shrink)

In recent years Derrida has devoted a considerable number of writings to addressing “the question of the animal,” and, more often than not, this question arises in a reading of one of Heidegger's texts. In order to appreciate more fully the stakes of Derrida's posing of this question in relation to Heidegger, in this essay I offer some prefatory remarks to the question of the animal in Derrida's reading of Heidegger. The essay opens with a careful analysis of Derrida's early (...) essay “The Ends of Man,” in which Heidegger's “Letter on ‘Humanism”’ is read in terms of the motif of man's “proper.” Taking my point of departure from this Derridean reading of Heidegger's humanism, I return to Heidegger's “Letter” in order to uncover the manner in which Heidegger distinguishes man's “proper” from what is “improper,” namely, animality. This reading reveals that, while Heidegger offers a convincing account of the limits of metaphysical humanism, this critical account nevertheless ends up uncritically reinforcing the anthropocentrism of this same tradition. My closing suggestion is that Derrida's rethinking of animality should be understood as an extended meditation on the various consequences and effects of this dogmatic anthropocentrism in Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian thought. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical analysis ofHeidegger and Nietzsche's approach tometaphysics and the associated problem ofnihilism. Heidegger sums up the history ofWestern metaphysics in a way which challengescommon sense approaches to values education.Through close attention to language, Heideggerargues that Nietzsche inverts thePlatonic-Christian tradition but retains theanthropocentric imposition of ‘values’. Ihave used Nietzsche's theory to suggest aslightly different definition of metaphysicsand nihilism which draws attention to theontological parameters of human truths as astruggle between competing sets of conflictingor contradictory values (perspectives) thatopens (...) space for rethinking and re-educatinghuman possibilities. How this openness willshow up in educational theory and practice isonly beginning to be evoked. The twophilosophers indicate an approach to issues ofmorality, decision making and knowledgeproduction which may surprise and disconcerttraditional views. As the forefathers ofpost-structuralist thinking, Nietzsche andHeidegger offer a critique of Humanism whileretaining the Renaissance tradition ofpositioning education as the well spring ofvalues in society. It is through the generationof new knowledges, the development of critiqueand the nurturing of character that societyreformulates itself in relation to the earth.The ethical evaluation of these new forms ofknowledge is crucial to the creative and caringregeneration of the human environment, asopposed to the corrosive adoption ofconsumerism and usury. (shrink)

The publication brings together contributions by many scholars, academics and researchers on the work of the German philosopher from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Prominent thinkers from various disciplines engage in a fascinating dialogue with the work of Martin Heidegger in an attempt to explain and critically evaluate his controversial legacy. The volume is an attempt to go beyond the polarised perceptions about the philosophy of Heidegger and present a neo-humanist reading of what can be still considered "livable" in (...) it. Contributions also examine the consequences of Heidegger's thinking for a wide range of modes of cultural production and aspects of philosophical enterprise. Finally the volume attempts the first post-political interpretation of his work by focusing on the texts themselves for the conceptual values they formulate and the modes of thinking they established. Contributors are: Gianni Vattimo, Jeff Malpas, Anthony Stephens, Peter Murphy, Elizabeth Grierson, Paolo Bartoloni, John Dalton, Colin Hearfield, Jane Mummery, Robert Sinnerbrink, Ashley Woodward, Peter Williams, George Vassilacopoulos and Vrasidas Karalis. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of the problem of modernity, formulated as the following multivalent question: How should we understand the scope, character, and limitations of our historical age? The study approaches this question from the point of view of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. We will, first, clarify how Heidegger and Gadamer think about modernity, thereby shedding light on their widely misunderstood intellectual relationship; and, next, uncover and defend a distinctively Gadamerian response to modernity as a viable argument, and (...) as potentially more coherent and hopeful than Heidegger’s answer to the problem of the modern age. -/- In the first part, I present my reading of how these figures think about modernity. I outline Heidegger’s deconstruction of the modern age, that is, his main critique of modernity and his account of the movement into a postmodern future. Next, I motivate a contrast between Heidegger’s vision of modernity and Gadamer’s. Contrary to numerous misreadings, Gadamer proceeds along his own path of thinking, one that crucially begins with Heidegger but goes its own direction by advancing past the shortcomings of Heidegger’s thinking of modernity. -/- The next part outlines my interpretation of Gadamer’s post-Heideggerian response to the modern age, arguing that he accomplishes this task by rediscovering what remains most true and meaningful in the guiding metaphors of the modern age, while criticizing the pernicious elements of modernity’s bequest to the present. First, I reconstruct and defend Gadamer’s rehabilitation of modernity’s guiding epistemic metaphors, namely, transcendental thought, humanism, experience, objectivity, and curiosity, against the backdrop of his critique of other elements of modernity’s epistemic regimes. Next, I make the same type of argument with regard to guiding ocular metaphors of infinity, perspective, and mirroring. -/- A speculative Conclusion, on the political implications of Gadamer’s differences from Heidegger, suggests that the Gadamerian rehabilitation of modernity successfully engenders a more genuinely hopeful response to modernity than Heidegger provides. This short Conclusion again makes the case for Gadamer’s appreciable advancement beyond Heidegger. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk first became known in this country for his late 1980s Critique of Cynical Reason, which confronted headlong the "enlightened false consciousness" of Habermasian critical theory. Two decades later, after spending seven years in India studying Eastern philosophy, he is now attracting renewed interest for his writings on politics and globalization and for his magnum opus Spheres, a three-volume archaeology of the human attempt to dwell within spaces, from womb to globe: Bubbles, 1998; Globes, 1999; Foam, 2004, all (...) forthcoming from Semiotext. In Neither Sun nor Death, Sloterdijk answers questions posed by German writer Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, commenting on such issues as technological mutation, development media, communication technologies, and his own intellectual itinerary.Iconoclastic and provocative, alternatively sparkling and bombastic, a child of '68 and a libertarian, Sloterdijk is the most exciting and controversial German philosopher to appear on the world scene since Nietzsche and Heidegger. Like Nietzsche, Sloterdijk remains convinced that contemporary philosophers have to think dangerously and let themselves be "kidnapped" by contemporary "hypercomplexities"; they must forsake our present humanist and nationalist world for a wider horizon at once ecological and global.Neither Sun nor Death is the best introduction available to Sloterdijk's philosophical theory of globalization. It reveals a philosophe extraordinaire, encyclopedic and provocative, as much at ease with current French Theory as with Heidegger and Indian mystic Osho Rajneesh. (shrink)

The genomics “revolution” is spreading. Originating in the molecular life sciences, it initially affected a number of biomedical research fields such as cancer genomics and clinical genetics. Now, however, a new “wave” of genomic bioinformation is transforming a widening array of disciplines, including those that address the social, historical and cultural dimensions of human life. Increasingly, bioinformation is affecting “human sciences” such as psychiatry, psychology, brain research, behavioural research (“behavioural genomics”), but also anthropology and archaeology (“bioarchaeology”). Thus, bioinformatics is having (...) an impact on how we define and understand ourselves, how identities are formed and constituted, and, finally, on how we (on the basis of these redefined identities) assess and address some of the more concrete societal issues involved in genomics governance in various settings. This article explores how genomics and bioinformation, by influencing research agendas in the human sciences and the humanities, are affecting our self-image, our identity, the way we see ourselves. The impact of bioinformation on self-understanding will be assessed on three levels: (1) the collective level (the impact of comparative genomics on our understanding of human beings as a species), (2) the individual level (the impact of behavioural genomics on our understanding of ourselves as individuals), and (3) the genealogical level (the impact of population genomics on our understanding of human history, notably early human history). This threefold impact will be assessed from two seemingly incompatible philosophical perspectives, namely a “humanistic” perspective (represented in this article by Francis Fukuyama) and a “post-humanistic” one (represented by Peter Sloterdijk). On the basis of this analysis it will be concluded that, rather than focussing on human “enhancement” by adding or deleting genes, genome-oriented practices of the Self will focus on using genomics information in the context of identity-formation. Genomic bioinformation will increasingly be built into our self-images and used in order to tailor and adapt our practices of Self to our “personalised” genome. We will keep working on ourselves, no doubt, not by modifying our genomes, but rather by fine-tuning our behaviour. What we are experiencing is a bioinformatisation of the life-world. Genomics-based technologies will increasingly pervade our daily lives, our autobiographies and narratives, as well as our anthropologies, rather than our genomes as such. (shrink)

It discusses the philosophical and ethical perspective of human rights and points its framming on post-modern and anti-metaphysical nowadays tendencies. It scopes in general, to explain the concept and foundations of human rights under the historical premisses of legal humanism. Specifically, it aims to shows the historical evolution of human rights to the posr- modernity, and to analyze how the methaphysical entwining of the man reflects on human rights interpretation. Methodologically, it uses the existential analytic theory (Heidegger) and applies (...) it to the construction of an anti-metaphysical legal humanism. It indicates, as a result of the research, a huge philosophical gap on ethical and ontological perspectives of human rights. It concludes there a more intense philosophical study could be done about this theme, to entablish plural social and ethical grounds on legal-normative database. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

This essay engages with Bernard Stiegler’s discussion with Martin Heidegger in The ordeal of Truth, published in Foundations of Science 2020. It appreciates Stiegler’s progressive reading of Heidegger’s work but critically reflects on several elements in his work. A first element is the methodological aspect of Heidegger’s being historical thinking, which is missed by Stiegler and confirms the indifference towards philosophical method that can be found in the work of many contemporary philosophers. A second element concerns Heidegger’s and Stiegler’s remaining (...) humanism and the necessity to move beyond humanism and post-humanism in the era of global warming. A third element of reflection concerns Stiegler’s idea of the obligation of making our being-in-default come true, which shows a hidden metaphysical orientation in his work. (shrink)

Despite all attempts at restoring it, the great humanist tradition could not resist the double trauma of Auschwitz and Hiroshima in which the very idea of humanity had been swallowed up by its opposite. Yet, beyond the critique of humanism carried out by twentieth-century philosophers such as Heidegger, the ancient profile of man as essentially humanus delineates itself again. On the other hand, as soon as the Nietzschean anthropo-technical – or biopolitical – vector of artificial intervention into the characteristics of (...) human nature enters into synergy with the Darwinian presupposition about the contiguity with the animal world, the social consequences can be devastating. But is this the only – destructive and self-destructive – face of post-humanism? Is it necessary for it to turn into a form of patent anti-humanism? In opposition to both Heidegger’s foreclosure of biology and the animal as well as the biopolitical misuse of an immunitarian semantics that has led to the most brutal forms of homicidal eugenics, in this article I claim that the overbearing entrance of biological life into socio-political dynamics is not necessarily a danger from which we have to defend ourselves in the name of a self-centred purity of the individual and the species. It might also be regarded as the future of man, a threshold from which he could be stimulated in view of a more complex and open elaboration of his humanitas. (shrink)

Resumo: A máxima de Píndaro “torna-te o que tu és” representou por muito tempo o mote da formação humana, pautada historicamente por diversos humanismos, até ser ressignificada em um perspectiva pós-humanista por Nietzsche, que a retoma no subtítulo de sua obra autobiográfica Ecce Homo. Coube a Foucault, no entanto, apresentar uma versão transformada da velha máxima. “Tornarmo-nos o que nunca fomos” é a reivindicação de um cuidado de si liberto dos pressupostos metafísicos e ideológicos dos muitos humanismos que almejam impor (...) tipos humanos universais. O objetivo deste artigo é recuperar as linhas gerais desse movimento histórico-filosófico em dois momentos: primeiro, na transformação do sentido originário da máxima de Píndaro no uso que Nietzsche faz dela; depois, na crítica ao humanismo que segue com Heidegger e desemboca em Foucault. Argumenta-se que a versão foucaultiana da máxima de Píndaro, “torna-te o que nunca fostes”, pode ser assumida como um lema da formação pós-humanista. Palavras-chave: Formação; Humanismo; Pós-humanismo; Nietzsche; Foucault “To become what we have never been”: Foucault’s post-humanist version of the traditional motto of human formation Abstract: Pindar’s maxim “become what you are” represented for a long time the motto of human formation, historically guided by different humanisms, until it was re-signified in a post-humanist perspective by Nietzsche, who takes it up in the subtitle of his autobiographical work Ecce Homo. It was up to Foucault, however, to present a transformed version of the old maxim. “We have become what we have never been” is the demand for self-care freed from the metaphysical and ideological assumptions of the many humanisms that aim to impose universal human types. The aim of this article is to recover the general guidelines of this historical-philosophical movement in two moments: first, in the transformation of the original meaning of Pindar’s maxim in the use that Nietzsche makes of it; then, in the critique of humanism that follows with Heidegger and ends in Foucault. It is argued that the Foucauldian version of Pindar’s maxim, “become what you have never been”, may be assumed as a motto of post-humanist education. Key-words: Formation; Humanism; Post-humanism; Nietzsche; Foucault “Convertirse en algo que nunca se ha sido”: la versión poshumanista de Foucault para el mote tradicional de la formación humana Resumen: La máxima de Píndaro “conviértete en lo que tú eres” representó desde hace mucho tiempo el mote de la formación humana, pautada históricamente por diversos humanismos, hasta ser resignificada en una perspectiva poshumanista por Nietzche, que retoma en el subtítulo de su obra autobiográfica Ecce Homo. Sin embargo, cupo a Foucault presentar una versión transformada desde la vieja máxima. “Convertirse en algo que nunca se ha sido” es el reclamo de un cuidado de uno mismo liberto de los supuestos metafísicos e ideológicos de los muchos humanismos que desean imponer tipos humanos universales. El objetivo de este estudio es recuperar las líneas generales de ese movimiento histórico-filosófico en dos momentos: primero, en el cambio del sentido originario de la máxima de Píndaro en el uso que Nietzche hizo de ella; enseguida, en la crítica al humanismo que sigue con Heidegger y termina en Foucault. Se argumenta que la versión foucaultiana de la máxima de Píndaro, “Conviértete en lo que nunca has sido”, puede ser asumida como lema de la formación poshumanista. Palabras-clave: Formación; Humanismo; Poshumanismo; Nietzche; Foucault Data de registro: 22/08/2022 Data de aceite: 13/12/2022. (shrink)

I am trying...to go back through all those places where I was exiled-enclosed so he could constitute his there. To read his text to try to take back from it what he took from me irrecoverably...I am trying to re-discover the possibility of a relation to air. Don’t I need one, well before starting to speak?

This article considers how artistically performative practices, especially the scenic embodiment of words, problematizes our accustomed understanding of language, both in a philosophical and an everyday sense. In classical phenomenology à la Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty, language is considered a medium of the process of appearing or expression. As I try to sustain, language should instead be understood as the medium of appearing; not as the primary medium, nor as a medium among others, but as an intrinsic aspect of all appearing, (...) no matter what its medium, user, or level of development. This conclusion, if it holds, leads towards an expanded idea of language where being linguistic and being or having a body coincide. The idea is sustained by evidence rising out of consideration of the basic corporeal operations of a scenic performer as they try to embody their textual material performatively. Through this idea, the article seeks a reconciliation to a debate between post-structuralist and post-humanist thought regarding the role and scope of language in knowledge formation. (shrink)

This article examines overpopulation as a basis for historical interpretation. Drawing on the ideas of T.R. Malthus, Elizabeth Kolbert, John Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Edward O. Wilson, I make the case that the only concept of ‘progress’ that accurately describes the human enterprise is the uncontrolled growth of population. I explain why a Malthusian/Gaia interpretation is not a historicist or eschatological narrative, like Hegelian idealism, Marxism, fundamentalist religion, or ‘end of history’ neoliberalism. My article also includes a discussion of the (...) ideas and prescriptions of contemporary commentators like physicist, Adam Frank, and the philosophers, John Gray, and Roy Scranton. What makes my article distinctive is bringing together ideas of population theory through a lens of sociobiology and post-humanist philosophy. Through this interpretive synthesis, I form a basis for recasting history as the record of the growing imbalance of our species in light of the unprecedented crises of the environment that are its byproduct. I conclude with the idea that regardless of whether the world is dying or simply going through a fundamental chaotic transformation, the role of the critical-rational historian remains the same: to tell the truth as best as she or he can know it. (shrink)

The "immeasurable lightness and fragility of the human fact." Jan Patočka and the Crisis of HumanismThe article addresses Jan Patočka’s writings in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The paper’s title – "The Immense Lightness and Fragility of the Human Fact" – is taken from a short, yet immensely crucial 1946 text of his that formulates a severe criticism of ideology/ideologies and eventually offers a profound questioning of humanist ideals. Accentuating his critique against the backdrop of Sartre's and (...) Heidegger's contemporaneous challenges to humanism, the paper argues that Patočka debunks a misconceived "cult of the human being" and ideologies of progress while insisting on the integrity of a human life in confrontation with its inherent weakness and fragility. (shrink)

While the postmodern critique of universals provides important insights, it also leaves us in an unacceptable position---lacking solid justification for moral judgments and political action, and unable to generalize about human experience. I argue that the best response to relativism lies in a new humanism. Any new humanism must be "post-humanist"---taking into account valid critiques of past humanisms, incorporating multicultural voices, and building upon an understanding of the common human condition that does not erase or ignore difference. My project (...) is to present a re-conceptualized notion of the "human condition" that meets these conditions, to serve as a basis for a new humanism. ;As a starting point, I take up the framework found in Jean-Paul Sartre's later Marxist-Existentialist works. These are helpful in two respects. First, as he attempts to reconcile Marxism and Existentialism, Sartre re-examines central categories of human experience and ultimately arrives at an understanding of the human that transcends both essentialism and anti-essentialism. Second, I argue that the methods Sartre develops anticipate crucial postmodern insights without losing moral and political ground, and that a reworking of these methods enables us to theorize beyond postmodernism today. My project also draws upon Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Postcolonialism, African Philosophy, and the Frankfurt School. ;The central elements of my articulation of the human condition include: a rethinking of the relationship of the individual and the social; an account of the social constitution of the individual; a new approach to understanding freedom and necessity in human experience; and a reconsideration of social identities such as race, class, and gender. I ask, given this understanding of the human condition, what problems remain inherent to human relationships, and what are the possibilities? Are we doomed to alienating and objectifying interactions with others, or are authentic love and cooperation also possible? Finally, I explore the ways in which we might achieve equality and reciprocity in a democracy necessarily built upon differences in identity and social power. (shrink)

Digital humanism emerges from serious concerns about the way in which digitisation develops, its impact on society and on humans. While its motivation is clear and broadly accepted, it is still an emerging field that does not yet have a universally accepted definition. Also, it is not always clear how to differentiate digital humanism from other similar endeavours. In this article, we critically investigate the notion of digital humanism and present its main principles as shared by its key proponents. These (...) principles include the quest for human dignity and the ideal of a better society based on core values of the Enlightenment. The paper concludes that digital humanism is to be treated as a technical endeavour to shape digital technologies and use them for digital innovation, a political endeavour investigating power shifts triggered by digital technology, and, at the same time, as a philosophical endeavour including the quest to delineate its scope and to draw boundaries for the digital. Methodologically, digital humanism is an interdisciplinary effort to debate a broad range of digitisation shortfalls in their totality, from privacy infringements to power shifts, from human alienation to disownment. While it overlaps with a range of established fields and other movements, digital humanism reflects a new academic, engineering, and societal awareness of the challenges of digital technologies. (shrink)

To the extent of contesting visions of AI technology, both utopian and dystopian views of AI and humanoid technology resonate particular assumption of human subjectivity originated from modern enlightenment philosophy (i.e., Descartes, Kant). Accordingly, the series of transhumanism including Kurzweil, Moravec and Harrari envision evolution of human capability through the advancement of AI technology while assuming human subjectivities based on Cartesian dualism. As transhumanism is critically viewed by diverse perspectives including from philosophical, technological, cultural and religious stand points, post-humanism (...) address issues of human subjectivities and human/environmental relations with regard to evolution of AI technology. This article delves into media representation of futurist vision of AI technology in different regions in the world. Em(dis)bodiment of AI and humanoids in Hollywood and Asian SF (science fiction) films, for example, resonates philosophical and cultural debates between transhumanism and posthumanism. This article addresses theoretical discussions in relation to the development of AI technology and design of humanoid by comparing liberal views of human subjectivities (i.e., Descartes and Kant) with critical views against it (i.e., Heidegger and Foucault). The issues of cultural diversity in relation to the development of AI technology is particularly highlighted by introducing theories of non-Western scholarship and examining distinctive media representation of AI in the East and the West. (shrink)

The idea this article relies on is that we should rethink cultural distance between modernism and post-modernism. We can no longer support the thesis of a radical break between the two cultural periods since many of the changes that have marked our contemporary world were initiated or at least announced in the modern period. Besides the cultural and epistemic factors, the socioeconomic conditions have also contributed to shape a new sensitivity and a new outlook. One of the major contributions (...) to this change was the replacement of the epistemic pedestal - oriented toward the metaphysical knowledge of the world - with a kind of knowledge inspired by the model of sciences which determined the understanding of the world as a „standing-reserve" (Heidegger). Thus, we speak about a techno-world, which is not merely a consequence of our way of interacting with our fellow beings or the environment. It is also a consequence of our wayof creating reality. The post-humanist approach of the man - similarly to modern utopias - considers technology the main means of improving human condition. Furthermore, we need to see in post-humanism the hope of rethinking humanity in a world growingly devoid of spiritual values. (shrink)

Von Peter Sloterdijk kann man zu Recht sagen, daß jeder seiner Aufsätze, jeder seiner Vorträge auch ein ungeschriebenes Buch ist.

This paper situates Günther Anders’s diagnosis of a shift in the modes of human self-production from hermeneutic and educational practices to techno-scientific interventions in the broader context of observations concerning posthumanism and biopolitics (e.g. Peter Sloterdijk, Giorgio Agamben). It proposes to reframe the problem of human self-production within the philosophy of media and traces a common anti-hermeneutic trajectory to which both technoscientific transhumanism and certain strands of posthumanism belong, insofar as they are based on an ontology that exclusively considers (...) causally effective agency. With Anders and Martin Heidegger it is argued that such a focus on agency neglects the dimension of meaning that irreducibly guides technoscientific interventions. The paper claims that, with regard to the escalating dynamics both of human enhancement and of the Anthropocene, neither a truly critical theoretical stance nor a practical subversion is possible without taking the horizons of meaning into account that drive these dynamics. The last section sketches an outline of the complex interrelations of humans, technologies and meaning that cannot be mapped in terms of causally effective agency. (shrink)

Die vorliegenden, bisher nicht veröffentlichten Briefe, Post-karten, Widmungen, Anzeigen und Telegramme von Prof. Dr. Martin Heidegger und seiner Frau Elfride an Walter Schloss aus den Jahren 1950 bis 1976 sind zusammen mit einigen Briefentwürfen von Schloss Teile einer Korrespondenz, die Schloss dem Herausgeber vererbte. Es geht darin um Danksagungen, Wünsche, Termine für Besuche bei Heidegger und zur Verfügung stehende Zeit, um Angaben zur Anwesenheit, Widmungen, auch um Angaben zum gesundheitlichen Befinden und Älterwerden, um Anmerkungen zur Anhängerschaft und zum Persönlichkeitskult, (...) um einige Bemerkungen zum Wesen des Denkens und vor allem um den Berliner Heidegger-Kreis, den Schloss gegründet hatte. (shrink)