Anthropological aspect of Postmodernity

presentation made in Beijing Thinkers Forum

Technological progress has reached the point of the passage to the posthuman reality

  • strong AI and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)
  • Genome and genetic manipulations
  • 3D printing and replacment of human organs
  • networks being new Life World (Lebenswelt)

Postmodenism and Speculative Realism reflects this on philosophical level

  • Real as nothing (Lacan)
  • Active nihilism  non-philosophy (F.Laruelle, Ray Brassier)
  • Rizoma and schizo-masses (Deleuze, Guattari)
  • Object Orientated Ontology ( Harman, Meillassoux, Toscana)
  • Accelerationism (left -- Nick Schrnichek, Alex Williams --and right – Nick Land -
  • Possession of radical Other (Reza Negarestani)
  • Singularity (Kurzweil)
  • Cannibal metaphysics (Viveiros de Castro)
  • Anti-essentialism (subjectivity without subject)

Technic and Being (ontology, anthropology, metaphysics) are profoundly interconnected

Heidegger thought that technic is the METAPYSICAL fate of humanity: through it (as gestell) humanity will cease to exist as such loosing irreversibly the Being (Seyn)

Today we just in that point:
one pass forward and the human will be lost

That demands most radical return to the question what is human?

All modern political ideologies have their own answer what is normative subject:

  • Individual of liberalism (and the global victory of liberal capitalism is responsible for Postmodern conditions and the approaching end of human)
  • Class of communism (tradition concept of classes is not any more valid)
  • Nation (early bourgeois concept directed against traditional medieval society – Empire, Church,  General States)

All this ideologies with idea of progress imbedded in their core are responsible for
achievement of point of the point Posthumanism

So existing political theories are not sufficient to put correctly the problem of Human Being loosing its essence because in them there is no essence : everything is just artificial concept  -- individual, class, nation

  • We need to rethink the essence of human on the verge of loosing it irreversibly outside of all 3 political theory of Modernity that have led us to the Postmodern nihilism
  • So we need to go beyond them: I call that Fourth Political Theory
  • Instead of subject of Modernity I suggest to come to Heideggerian idea of Dasein

If Man (Human) is Dasein so the shift to posthuman is the loss of Dasein

  • I argue that in different cultures there are different Daseins
  • So all these Daseins are in immediate existential threat in the Postmodern conditions.
  • Dasein is the relation to Being through the experience of Death
  • Loosing Dasein we are loosing Death (hence artificial immortality essential to Posthumanism)
  • All cultures have their approach to Death and through it to Being
  • Hence the Posthumanism tends to destroy all cultures and all identities
  • It is (post)anthropological meaning of globalism and capitalist hegemony

Multipolarity should be first of all philosophical project and not only geopolitical

  • The Pole in multipolarity should be understood as culture (=civilization)
  • Multipolarity means Pluriversum, plurality of civilizationS, cultureS
  • Anthropologically that means the plurality of DaseinS
  • Posthumanism is globalist, totalitarian and universalist pretending that  such is very essence technic; so Posthumanism is unipolar and more than that – its unipolarity tend to destroy all identities – Western identity included. It is global suicide imposed by Postmodern West on itself and on other
  • Pole is not only sovereignty but above all identity.
  • Multipolarity means the final fight for human identity threatened by Postmodern moment

The main challenge of new humanism and Multipolarity

  • To save and reaffirm in front of approaching Singularity our Daseins
  • And to help to the other cultures – Western and non-Western to do the same
  • This demands greatest philosophical efforts and the fundamental return to the Tradition where lies the most profound roots of our identity.
  • But Heidegger helps us to secure this identity not as something abstract and fixed but always living, dynamic – as something existential, always related to Being on the edge of non-being.
  • So the death obtains here its maximum values – cultural understanding of death – Chinese, Russian, Muslim, Indian
  • Defend Chinese, Russian, Muslim, Indian  ways of life is strictly connected to defense of  Chinese, Russian, Muslim, Indian way of death

China and Russia are in vanguard of multipolarity

  • Hence the first problem is to save Chinese and Russian cultural identities,
  • To defend Chinese and Russian  Daseins
  • The main tools of multipolarity are not economy, missiles, resources, demography, development, technology and so on. They are important but always secondarily
  • Main tools and main goals at the same time are thought
  • So multipolarity depends on intellectuals. In Gramschi’s terms: organic intellectuals should conclude historical pact with Dasein, with peoples against fatal powers of anti-human Technic threatening the very nature of Man.