A Plague of Toadies: An Other End of History

 

One of my favorite Toadies from popular culture 

There is a rather influential thesis that comes down to us from Hegel as read by Kojève and then later Francis Fukuyama and Axel Honneth. The thesis, as it has been interpreted, states quite simply that history is driven by a drive for mutual recognition. In other words, we strive to be recognized by people who we also recognize, to be an equal among equals. Built into this argument is the idea that the recognition must be reciprocal, it is not enough to be recognized by someone, to have someone see us as who we want to be seen as, the person seeing us must be someone that we could recognize in turn, someone whose perspective and criteria we respect.. As the blog "Philosophy bro" put it, no one wants to receive a compliment on their fashion sense from someone wearing cargo shorts. (apologies to anyone who likes cargo shorts, but I think that we can all fill this in with our own example of some particular aspect of taste that calls a person's judgement into question). The various interpretations might agree or disagree on whether or not we have achieved this ideal of mutual recognition, but they all agree that it is what drives history--the revolutions of democracy have made this ideal more and more of a reality. 

Living in Uncanny Valley: On the Forces and Relations of Production of AI

 

One common refrain one hears about AI is that it is inevitable. It is nothing other than the progressive development of the possibilities of technology. Such an assertion could be considered a version of technological determinism. It is technology, what Marx called the forces of production, that drive history. On this view history proceeds from the engineers workshop to the factory and into society.

From Baruch to Benedictus and Back Again: On Gilah Kletenik's Sovereignty Disrupted

 

Oleksander Roitburd, Spinoza in Tuscany

from The Gallant Age of Enlightenment

Michael Hardt's Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy was a formative book for me in graduate school. Formative in the sense that it shaped my reading of Deleuze, but also in that it shaped my idea of what a book on a philosopher could or should do. What impressed me about Michael's book way back then is that he did the necessary work to excavate some of the concepts underlying Deleuze's books, not just Spinoza, Nietzsche and Bergson, but also Dun Scotus and Hegel, while at the same time recognizing that Deleuze's work is not pointed towards the past, to its history, but to debates with such philosophers as Althusser and with such movements such as autonomy. It is rare to find a book that is equally comfortable discussing scholastics and Nanni Balestrini.