Rules for the Human Zoo, also known as the Elmauer Rede, originally appeared in 1999 in the newspaper Die Zeit and was subsequently published by Suhrkamp in 2001. In this response to Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, Sloterdijk poses the basic question about the purpose of politics, governance, and civic solidarity. On the one hand, since Plato, politics has been conceived in part as concerned with the necessity of 'taming' humans into being good citizens. Sloterdijk thus follows Nietzsche and Heidegger in portraying humanism as one side in a "constant battle... between bestializing and taming tendencies". It is in the Hobbesian state of nature that humans are 'wolves' to each other; but who turns the wolves into friendly, loyal dogs? Humanism has claimed, according to Sloterdijk, that it is "reading the right books" which "calms the inner beast". It is the great books, the "thick letters" from one great thinker to another, that provide the "model presented by the wise", which enables "the care of man by man". At the present, Sloterdijk argues, we appear to have been abandoned by the wise. It is no longer the humanist but the archivist who bothers to look up the old, thick letters. Humanism thus gives way to archivism.

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... However, our proposal differs from Frischmann and Selinger's in three main points. First, we claim that paternalistic political programs must be honestly presented by acknowledging their kinship with Sloterdijk's (2009) controversial human zoo. Frischmann and Selinger's third strategy to face humanity's socio-technical dilemma, that is, to engineer socio-technical environments with transaction costs and inefficiencies that promote the development of the highest human capabilities, does not differ at all, in political terms, from the environmental enrichment activities that animal keepers carry out in zoos. ...

... Acknowledging this uncomfortable fact is something we do, but Frischmann and Selinger avoid. This is where Sloterdijk's (2009) controversial concept of the human zoo comes into play. The German philosopher, who considers Plato as the intellectual father of politics understood as the management of the human zoo, says the following after reflecting on the ideal Platonic organization of society proposed in the dialogs The Statesman and The Republic: "If there is one virtue of human beings which deserves to be spoken about in a philosophical way, it is above all this: that people are not forced into political theme parks but, rather, put themselves there. ...

  • Manuel Carabantes

One of the great dangers of our time is that the cumulative long-term action of smart (i.e., computerized and interconnected) socio-technical environments engineered to control thought and behavior results in an excessive loss of freedom. In response to this challenge, that we shall call humanity's socio-technical dilemma, we outline here some fundamental ideas of a political program to control these environments, which is similar to the one proposed by Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger. It is similar insofar as we share their paternalistic and humanistic approach. But it is different insofar as we claim, first, the duty to admit that it is a version of Sloterdijk's controversial human zoo; second, the theoretical and practical convenience of identifying the human capabilities to be promoted by these environments with the capabilities necessary for the democratic electorate to comply with the competence principle; and third, the awareness of the probable long-term unsustainability of the program in a context of competition between countries and companies, in spite of which it must be implemented because of its moral superiority.

... 42). Живковић наво/и како се рас2а/ање јасних Uраница између љу/и, машина и нељу/ске 2риро/е може схваFиFи као " 2реFња " онFолошкој хиUијени " човечансFва " , или начин /а се ви/љивим учини консFруисана основа 2арамеFара љу/ске 2риро/е (Živković, 2015Sloterdijk, 2009). СлоFер-/ајк овим указује на Fо /а су 2оCорници хуманизма о/увек 2окушавали /а кулFивишу љу/ско Cиће и /а Uа 2ри2иFоме уз 2омоћ FексFова, но /а је Fехнолошки развој са/а омоUућио нове начине оCликовања љу/скоU Cића, Fе и /а је за/аFак савременоU /оCа /а 2ревазиђе хуманисFичко Cављење FексFовима и /а размишља о еFици анFро2оFехнике (у2.Sloterdijk, 2009). ...

... Живковић наво/и како се рас2а/ање јасних Uраница између љу/и, машина и нељу/ске 2риро/е може схваFиFи као " 2реFња " онFолошкој хиUијени " човечансFва " , или начин /а се ви/љивим учини консFруисана основа 2арамеFара љу/ске 2риро/е (Živković, 2015Sloterdijk, 2009). СлоFер-/ајк овим указује на Fо /а су 2оCорници хуманизма о/увек 2окушавали /а кулFивишу љу/ско Cиће и /а Uа 2ри2иFоме уз 2омоћ FексFова, но /а је Fехнолошки развој са/а омоUућио нове начине оCликовања љу/скоU Cића, Fе и /а је за/аFак савременоU /оCа /а 2ревазиђе хуманисFичко Cављење FексFовима и /а размишља о еFици анFро2оFехнике (у2.Sloterdijk, 2009). Разлика између 2ојмова које СлоFер/ајк корисFи 2риликом Uовора о љу/ском оCликовању – 2ри2иFомљавање//омесFикација кулFуром и " узUој " уз 2омоћ FехнолоUије – несFаје у размаFрању исхо/а Cиоме/ицинске мани2улације који, Fакође, уFичу на /рушFвени и кулFуролошки ас2екF човека, о/носно, на 2роCлемаFику Uранице између оноUа шFо се може смаFраFи, с је/не сFране, љу/ским и, с /руUе сFране, нељу/ским (или вешFачким, машинским, 2а чак и живоFињским). ...

  • Branka I Ognjanović

The paper analysed different types of manipulation of human identity and development, the so-called anthropotechnics. This manipulation is described and analysed as material - the creation of soulless robots, as well as spiritual - the creation of fictional and fragmentary identity of John Carver (Howland), which originated between the multiple layers of narrative and under the influence of the constant monitoring by the Atlanteans. The starting point of the analysis is the idea of a human park by Peter Sloterdijk. The human park is a result of anthropotechnics as well as a reference to the zoological park, in which the taming occurs. The purpose of the paper is to seek the answer to the question on the nature of the relation between humans and their creations which Pekić presents in his novel.

... The local-tourist interaction becomes more relevant. It has been contrasted that a growing number of people are using tourism as an escape mechanism but in a different way than was previously the case, with more emphasis on the creation of some type of meaning (Sloterdijk, 2009), and travel becomes, in this context, an opportunity and a vehicle for self-discovery and personal growth (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2009;Robledo & Batle, 2017). ...

This paper analyses the profile of locals willing to meet tourists in a context of experience interchange peer-to-peer (P2P) and identifies factors that drive such contact in an authentic setting of shared passions. This is a first step in creating the experiential P2P subindustry that academia, innovators and experts/trend-watchers have been waiting for over a decade. The data was collected using the 'snowball' sampling technique among locals from Mallorca (Spain). The results indicate that passion (within idle capacity) for the activity is a central factor to take into consideration in experiential P2P activity, together with other personal (self-perception of managerial and other emotional and communication skills) factors. In addition, the expressed disinterest in becoming experiential P2P providers suggests that there are factors of self-image (especially regarding managerial skills and entrepreneurial attitude) that play a decisive role in the democratization of tourism – an unexplored area in tourism literature.

... Whilst social theory (Francis Fukuyama, 2002;Giovanna Borradori, 2003;Jürgen Habermas, 2003;Peter Sloterdijk, 2009) manifests deep concern for the moral and cognitive implications of the fate of the human at the end of the de-centring process brought about by the posthuman turn, which is viewed as a threatening prospect, posthuman ethical theory favours complexity, as Rosi Braidotti expounds in the interview given to Cosetta Veronese, having overcome such negativity regarding "the displacement of the centrality of the human" (Veronese 99). Posthuman subjectivity is "non-unitary" and characterizes "a relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity," constructed on "the ethics of becoming," based on a more elaborated sense of "interconnection between self and others, including the non-human or «earth» others," and on a more robust sense of "collectivity, relationality and hence community building" (Veronese 99). ...

  • Alina Preda Alina Preda

This paper examines, through the lenses of agential realism, the uncanny sense of posthumanist relational subjectivity that Winterson's utopia evokes through the twofold romantic encounter between female scientist Billie Crusoe and humanized sherobot Spike. This same-sex cross-species futuristic love affair that develops across two different space-times succeeds in blurring the boundaries between humans and machines, thus prompting readers to overcome their anthropocentric worldview and to abandon the deep yet narrow concern for the moral and cognitive implications of the humans' fate at the end of the de-centring process brought about by the posthuman turn, urging them to consider, instead, more significant and wider issues such as accountability and responsibility. Thus, it can be viewed as a fictional narrative embodiment of Karen Barad's theoretical reconfiguration of materiality as discursive and of performativity as a dynamic process of constraining iterative intra-actions rather than of determining interactions.

... The circumstance that utterly different, technological practices of human self-production were proliferating had hardly been taken into account in philosophical literature by the time Anders wrote the first volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. Particularly in the German-speaking world, the issue had scarcely been debated before Peter Sloterdijk (2009) caused a stir when he demanded Rules for the Human Zoo in his Elmau speech, not even 20 years ago. Whilst insisting that humanism had been discredited in the political catastrophes of the 20th century, Sloterdijk proposes that it might 'simply no longer' be possible 'to pose the question of the constraint and formation of mankind by theories of civilizing and upbringing ' (p. ...

  • Andreas Beinsteiner

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.

... The question as to what philosophy is has been one of the perennial questions in the writings of those who call themselves philosophers. The answers that have been generated are extremely diverse, ranging from claims for some kind of 'essence' of philosophy to views which emphasise the arbitrariness of what counts as philosophy, such as Richard Rorty's idea of philosophy as 'a kind of writing' (Rorty, 1978) or Peter Sloterdijk's characterisation of the philosophical tradition as a community of letter writing friends (Sloterdijk, 2009). Discussions about the definition of philosophy are often also attempts to police the borders of the field-a 'good' example being the opposition from a number of philosophers to the proposal to award Jacques Derrida an honorary doctorate at the University of Cambridge (see Derrida, 1995). ...

... The shift is not met with equal enthusiasm in all quarters. Social theorists from different political backgrounds, such as Habermas (2003), Fukuyama (2002), Sloterdijk (2009) andDerrida (in Borradori, 2003), express intense anxiety bordering on moral panic about the future of the human and the humanist legacy in our advanced technological times. Recently, Pope Francis (2015) joined this debate, supplementing Catholic dogma on Natural Law, with Naomi Klein's analysis of the destructive role of capitalism (Klein, 2014). ...

  • Rosi Braidotti Rosi Braidotti

What are the parameters that define a posthuman knowing subject, her scientific credibility and ethical accountability? Taking the posthumanities as an emergent field of enquiry based on the convergence of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism, I argue that posthuman knowledge claims go beyond the critiques of the universalist image of 'Man' and of human exceptionalism. The conceptual foundation I envisage for the critical posthumanities is a neo-Spinozist monistic ontology that assumes radical immanence, i.e. the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing matter. This implies that the posthuman knowing subject has to be understood as a relational embodied and embedded, affective and accountable entity and not only as a transcendental consciousness. Two related notions emerge from this claim: firstly, the mind-body continuum – i.e. the embrainment of the body and embodiment of the mind – and secondly, the nature-culture continuum – i.e. 'naturecultural' and 'humanimal' transversal bonding. The article explores these key conceptual and methodological perspectives and discusses the implications of the critical posthumanities for practices in the contemporary 'research' university.

... Beredskapstanken har mye for seg, men det er også grunn til å vaere skeptisk, blant annet av grunner som er utforsket av filosofen Peter Sloterdijk (2009). Om humaniora i for stor grad gjør seg til et arkiv -et oppbevaringssted for kunnskap med potensiell nytteverdi -oppgir man mye av kapasiteten til å drive fagutviklingen fremover, til å holde tradisjonen levende. ...

... As a result of the synergy of all three aspects, cultures initially and usually comprise closed survival units in which the individuals are kept as if in artificial enclosures or incubators. This is the state of affairs that is sometimes described with the metaphor of Menschenpark -"the human zoo" (Sloterdijk 2009). That "human zoo" is a local system of solidarity in a cross-generational process. ...

  • Peter Sloterdijk
  • Scott Lash
  • John Gray
  • Gianni Vattimo

The present volume is an aftermath of an international convention of philosophers and specialists in social theory, who sought answers to the question of how the idea of solidarity, as it is explored today, might point towards new hopes. Authors of the essays are Shlomo Avineri, John Gray, Ivan Krastev, Scott Lash, Pierre Manent, Peter Sloterdijk, Jadwiga Staniszkis, Gianni Vattimo, Marcin Krol and Jacek Koltan. By organising the meeting and by publishing this collection of essays we want to support the claim that without a broad discussion about the future there is no understanding of the present crisis of culture. To gain a profound insight into new forms of solidarity and trust, we would like to confront the current situation with a variety of historical and global contexts. The conference, organized in 2010 by the European Solidarity Centre and the Erasmus of Rotterdam Department of the University of Warsaw, followed the 30th anniversary of Solidarity trade union movement.

... "Humanity" is often posited in corporate and institutional dis­ courses as a new generic "we" -a unitary category -just as it emerges as a threat­ ened or endangered entity (Chakrabarty 2009). A panhuman bond of vulnerability engenders a negative or reactive sort of cosmopolitan interconnection, expressing intense anxiety about the future of our species (Habermas 2003;Fukuyama 2002;Sloterdijk 2009;Borradori 2003). I would respond to these anxious reactions with intense doses of monistic ethics of affirma­ tion (Braidotti 2006). ...

  • Rosi Braidotti Rosi Braidotti

This article situates the geological turn in media theory within the critical posthumanities, defining them in both quantitative and qualitative terms. They can be assessed quantitatively by reviewing the proliferation of interdisciplinary "studies" areas — such as media and gender studies — that have transformed the modes of knowledge production within the academic humanities and beyond. They are framed qualitatively by the neomaterialist, vital philosophy proposed by Gilles Deleuze's Spinozism, based on the concepts of monism, radical immanence, and relational ontology. They not only support the idea of a nature-culture continuum but also provide the philosophical grounding for technological mediation to be defined not as a form of representation but as the expression of "medianaturecultural" ethical relations and forces.

  • Morteza Hashemi Morteza Hashemi

Richard Rorty was a radical pragmatist philosopher in many aspects; particularly in his anti-metaphysical point of views. However, when it comes to religion he, for several decades, used to adopt an orthodox, metaphysical atheist standpoint. This chapter explains his 2003 transition from that intellectual idea to abandoning atheism as an untenable metaphysical position and replacing it with anti-clericalism which is a political standpoint and more defensible for an anti-essentialist and neo-pragmatist philosopher. I will also suggest that the mentioned transition implies that the Jeffersonian compromise defined and defended by him is also problematic. The Jeffersonian compromise, for Rorty of pre-2003, was an American version of a democratic compromise between believers of different faiths and also non-believers i.e. one trades dropping 'reference to religious beliefs in the public square' to 'religious liberty'. The chapter argues that this trade does not seem to be coherent with his transition to a more pragmatic anti-clerical standpoint. Moreover it shows the necessity of a new compromise. At this juncture, Peter Sloterdijk's neo-Nietzscheian approach to 'religions as anthropotechnic systems' becomes relevant. The author puts forward a synthesis of Rorty and Sloterdijk's approaches and calls it 'the primacy of training over truth'.

  • Jacob Wamberg
  • Mads Rosendahl Thomsen Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

The posthuman summons up a complex of both tangible challenges for humanity and a potential shift to a larger, more comprehensive historical perspective on humankind. In this article we will first examine the posthuman in relation to the macro-historical framework of the Anthropocene. Adopting key notions from complexity theory, we argue that the earlier counter-figures of environmental catastrophe (Anthropocene entropy) and corporeal enhancement (transhuman negentropy) should be juxtaposed and blended. Furthermore, we argue for the relevance of a comprehensive aesthetical perspective in a discussion of posthuman challenges. Whereas popular visual culture and many novels illustrate posthuman dilemmas (e.g. the superhero's oscillation between superhuman and human) in a respect for humanist naturalist norms, avant-garde art performs a posthuman alienation of the earlier negentropic centres of art, a problematization of the human body and mind, that is structurally equivalent to the environmental modification of negentropic rise taking place in the Anthropocene. In a spatial sprawl from immaterial information to material immersion, the autonomous human body and mind, the double apex of organic negentropy, are thus undermined through a dialectics of entropy and order, from abstraction's indeterminacy to Surrealism's fragmentation of the body and its interlacing with inorganic things.

  • Nik Brown

The introduction to Immunitary Life outlines the intellectual terrain in which immunity has been subject to humanities and social science critique. It begins with the politics and history of immunity found in the work of Emily Martin, Donna Haraway, Ed Cohen, Alfred Tauber and others. It then moves on to explore the contributions of continental philosophy. This primarily focuses on Roberto Esposito's efforts to etymologically trace communitas, immunitas and the ascendency of the 'immunitary paradigm'. The chapter then explores Peter Sloterdijk's writing on immunitary spheres, globes and foams. It finally turns towards Jacques Derrida's reflections on the excesses of autoimmunity and the need for protection from protection.

  • Elin Sundström Sjödin Elin Sundström Sjödin

Both inside and outside educational settings, reading literature is emphasized as something good, perhaps even something that makes us better people. This paper aims to open the 'black-boxed' conception of reading by studying how reading and (non)readers are conceptualized in relation to young people taken into custody. I examine a policy document describing a reading project in detention homes for young people as a case in which reading is perceived as having specific effects. Actor-network theory is used as a methodological approach to call attention to the way ideas, values, and knowledge about educational content are produced. The analysis shows that the seemingly coherent policy document produces radically different versions of what reading is and who the readers and non-readers are. I conclude that conceptualizations of reading and literacy always involve the creation of 'a dark side of reading'; the strong construction of 'reading as doing good' has marginalizing effects.

  • Massimo Mezzanzanica Massimo Mezzanzanica

The vision of an eco-phenomenology that Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka sketches in her Bergen interview and which is based on the concept of the ontopoiesis of life has some significant parallel outlooks of twentieth-century German philosophical anthropology. I will try to show here the value of the outlooks of Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, and Adolf Portmann and of the idea of a philosophy of nature, biology, and the body which they imply, and that against the background of today's reflections on science, life, and politics. In a situation where politics touches more and more on the human body and life (as pointed out by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Roberto Esposito), and where the development of the life and computer sciences and of medical and information technologies makes possible radical transformations of the human being—which developments seem to override the traditional distinctions between man, animal, and machine—philosophical anthropology can still be for us an important heuristic instrument. Its conceiving of man as an open and undetermined being, one who is at the same time natural and artficial and who builds and conducts his life through the power of imagination, can interact with the perspective of eco-phenomenology in its considering the human being to be a relational or, in Tymieniecka's words, "as a human condition within the unity of everything there is alive."

  • Stefan Herbrechter Stefan Herbrechter

This contribution distinguishes between different varieties of posthumanism. It promotes a 'critical posthumanism' which engages with an emerging new world picture at the level of ethics, ecology, politics, technology and epistemology. On this basis, it explores the question of a posthumanist and postanthropocentric education both from a philosophical, theoretical and practical, curricular point of view. By way of a critically engagement with the discussion about digital media, globalization and the notion of new literacies, it highlights some of the practical implications that a posthumanist education might have on educational policy. It concludes by emphasizing the risks but also benefits that new subjectivities and reading practices based on digital media convergence might have for posthumanist education.

  • Jessica Ludescher Imanaka

This paper explores how Pope Francis' critique of "the technocratic paradigm" in Laudato Si' can contribute to an environmental ethics governed by asymmetries of power and agency. The technocratic paradigm is here theorized as linked to forms of anthropocentrism that together engender a dangerous alliance between the powers of technology and technologies of power. The meaning and import of this view become clearer when the background of these ideas gets excavated in the works of Romano Guardini. The contemporary manifestation of Guardini's warnings appears in the form of myriad environmental injustices wrought by structures of power linked to technology. To counter such injustices, we must discern which types of technologies to develop and how to limit technocratic approaches for the sake of other values. The integral ecological outlook favored by Francis may be interpreted as a kind of eco-politics, or even, controversially, an eco-technology, with the cultivation of technologies of contemplation. Applying Peter Sloterdijk's conceptions of anthropotechnics and monogeism to the Ignatian Exercises animating the Jesuit Francis' work, we can see how such technologies hold potential for Catholicism to collaborate better with secular strategies in relating to Earth's agency in a new eco-politics. Such an eco-politics could furnish an alternative to bio-politics, especially if governed by aspects of the Franciscan form-of-life identified by Giorgio Agamben. Such a project ultimately moves us beyond Laudato Si' and the work of Romano Guardini, pointing up the limitations of Laudato Si' in engaging the agency of the Earth.

  • Jean-Pierre Dupuy

There is no science that does not rest on a metaphysics, though typically it remains concealed. It is the responsibility of the philosopher to uncover this metaphysics, and then to subject it to criticism. What I have tried to show is that cybernetics, far from being the apotheosis of Cartesian humanism, as Heidegger supposed, actually represented a crucial moment in its demystification, and indeed in its deconstruction.

  • Jacek Kołtan Jacek Kołtan

The society we used to know is no longer. Our imaginations of the social world are increasingly incompatible with the reality of our everyday experience. Nevertheless, we continue to use the same concepts, as if unaware of the radical cultural consequences of the crisis, whose influences extend far beyond the financial dimension. "Becoming" and "not-knowing" – these two concepts have been crucial to the descriptive discourse of the last decades of the twentieth century, retrospectively referred to as "reflexive modernization" (Beck, Giddens, Lash 1994). The concept of "becoming" not only indicates how profound a redefinition has altered the forms of social and political life but also opens our eyes to post-traditional models of individual and community life. Thanks to an increased awareness of autopoiesis we are now aware that social subjects, equipped with a certain potential, are capable of forming new identities. The concept of "not-knowing", in turn, reveals an inevitable component of technologically advanced societies – confrontation with permanent risk, which is the dark side of modernization processes. The catastrophe in the nuclear power plant in Fukushima was a powerful reminder of the uncertainties characteristic for our lives in risk societies. Do we still, therefore, remain the offspring of modernization, continuously disoriented between various creations of our identity and the inability of predicting the consequences of the modernized life?

  • Nikos Papastergiadis Nikos Papastergiadis

The political backlash against multiculturalism alongside the media portrayal of the global refugee crisis would suggest that the spaces for cultural difference have contracted and moved into a mode of transnational crisis management. This article addresses the moral panic over cultural difference by challenging some of the philosophical frameworks that have justified naturalized negative attitudes towards migrants and dismissed the viability of cosmopolitan perspectives. In particular, the author will critically evaluate the antagonistic perspective developed in Peter Sloterdijk's writings and Chantal Mouffe's theory of agonism. To grasp the complex and hybrid forms of cross-cultural exchanges, the author argues that a more robust vision of cosmopolitanism is necessary.

  • José Manuel Chillón

With this paper, I will try to investigate why ready-to-hand is one of the first philosophical findings on which all subsequent philosophical experience must be built. Therefore, I will establish a first approach to the concept ready-to-hand in Being and Time. Secondly, I will study the matter in the context of the phenomenological research about life considered an original problem for philosophy. Finally, we will discuss how this affects the relationship between man and the handiness world in terms of care (Sorge) in connection with technique and modern technology.

  • Mykhailo Bogachov

Artificial intelligence is a computer system that thinks or acts like humans. Features of AI systems embody implicit beliefs concerning the human nature that AI developers have. "Strong" AI, which has the general cognitive abilities of an adult, has not yet been created, while "weak" AI is already part of the planetary computation infrastructure. Neural network AI mimics specific types of human behavior, generalizing data about the everyday lives of its users. This AI approach corresponds to the philosophical mainstream of the 20th century, when everyday life was seen as a source of the linguistic and the social pre-given that yields mutual understanding. This approach is also based on the traditional human-machine dichotomy and the corresponding idea that human nature is stable and independent of the technological condition. However, in the post-metaphysical age, when human interaction with technology is communicative rather than instrumental, data on everyday life cannot be an independent paragon of the human nature. AI systems do not only codify the descriptive features of human nature, but also discipline their users, as the digital environment in which everyday data can be collected is already organized by AI. Accordingly, in the digital environment, people are forced to reproduce new norms of behavior, codified by AI, which became one of the forms of human self-mastery, or anthropotechnology. The impact of AI is rarely noted, as the digital environment in which people interact with AI is not organized in a way that is clearly understandable. The anthropotechnological nature of AI is a side effect of the development of platforms, so AI developers rarely take responsibility for the norms embodied in the systems they create.

  • Markus Lipowicz

Transhumanism promotes the application of emerging technologies and genetics in order to overcome the physical and cognitive limitations of the human species. In this article, the main question to be considered is the following: is Nietzsche's notion of educational self‐overcoming compatible with the idea of biotechnological self‐enhancement? After presenting some broad characteristics of transhumanist philosophy, the general line of reasoning in this article is based on two colliding interpretations of Nietzsche's 'overhuman' and its educational implications: Stefan Lorenz Sorgner's attempt to legitimise techno‐progressive aspirations through the 'will‐to‐power‐ontology' and Babette Babich's critique of transhumanism as a popular display of the 'ascetic ideal'. In the final part, I argue that Nietzsche's post‐anthropology can only be regarded as a possible onto‐axiological legitimisation for a kind of transhumanism that would not aim at strengthening the tendency to approach human development from a solely technocratic point of view. I further conclude that the rise of biotechnological power demands a critical educational reflection that would effectively prevent the enclosure of the individual within the network of techno‐science.

  • Jake Cowan

This article responds to the global resurgence of nationalist rhetoric, forgoing prior scholarship's equation of such rhetoric with demagoguery to instead position nationalism as a form of social organization within shifting rhetorical contexts. Using the framework of constitutive rhetoric, the article shows how material changes in our routine discursive infrastructure impact the ability of people to imagine themselves as composing a unified community. Following the digital revolution, nationalism now reflects its technological basis, a transformation that upends traditional forms of identification and leads to what the author dubs "late nationalism," a reactionary turn that has exacerbated global crises.

  • Simon Susen Simon Susen

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of the contention that, over the past decades, we have been witnessing the rise of the 'posthuman condition'. To this end, the analysis draws on the work of the contemporary philosopher Rosi Braidotti. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part centres on the concept of posthumanism, suggesting that it reflects a systematic attempt to challenge humanist assumptions underlying the construction of 'the human'. The second part focuses on the concept of post-anthropocentrism, demonstrating that it articulates a desire to reject the twin ideas of 'species supremacism' and 'human exceptionalism', which it seeks to replace with 'species egalitarianism' and 'monistic vitalism'. The third part is concerned with the concept of critical posthumanities, positing that its advocacy is based on the cross-fertilization of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism. The fourth part offers an assessment of the 'posthuman condition' thesis, evaluating the extent to which it sheds new light on the ways in which our engagements with the world are shaped by the confluence of zoe-, geo-, and techno-based dimensions. The paper concludes with a brief summary of the key insights gained from the preceding inquiry.

  • Stella Pennell Stella Pennell

Airbnb is emblematic of a set of business practices commonly known as 'the sharing economy'. It is a disruptive business model of homestay accommodation that has exploited conditions of growing precarity of work since 2008. Work precarity is particularly evident in regional tourist areas in New Zealand, which historically experience seasonal, part-time work and low wages. Airbnb draws specifically on the rhetoric of micro-entrepreneurism, with focus on individual freedom and choice: appealing concepts for those experiencing precarity. This article challenges the rhetoric of Airbnb and investigates notions of home, authenticity and hospitality that are reconceptualized under a specific regime of digital biopolitics. Drawing on research conducted in four regional tourist towns in New Zealand this article analyses the biopolitical interpellations that impact hosts' subjectivities as entities in motion and considers the ways that the rationalities of Airbnb's algorithms modulate the embodied behaviours of its hosts.

  • Russell Belk

I distill the content and moral lessons offered in four speculative fiction stories involving various types of transhuman. I derive insights from these stories involving six different issues: religious mythos, individual ethics, capitalist ethics, transhumanist ethics, humanity and the humanities, and love, sex, and murder. For each theme, I consider the deeper dilemmas raised by these tales and how they relate to different transhuman trajectories toward achieving immortality. These are 'what if' tales of possibility. They are neither uniformly utopian nor dystopian, even though some are apocalyptic and envision a cataclysmic bridge between humans and posthumans. I find that despite their sometimes-moralizing tones, the stories offer multiple sets of complex ethical perspectives that provide insight into present and future challenges to accepting transhumanism. Together, they offer rich glimpses into the possible roles of science and technology in affecting the future well-being of whatever beings the future may bring.

  • Simon Susen Simon Susen

Introducción E l principal objetivo de este artículo consiste en examinar algunos temas centrales discutidos por Daniel Chernilo en su libro Debating Humanity: Towards a Philosophical Sociology (2017). Con este fin, el análisis se divide en dos partes. La primera parte brinda un breve resumen de la estructura temática del libro y presenta algunos de sus argumentos centrales. La segunda parte examina los aspectos más controvertibles y resalta sus principales limitaciones. A modo de conclusión, este artículo sostiene que el estudio de Chernilo es un importante recordatorio del hecho de que un entendimiento verdaderamente comprehensivo de la sociedad requiere un encuentro crítico con el concepto de humanidad. Argumentos clave El libro Debating Humanity de Chernilo es una importante contribución a la teoría social contemporánea. Allí se exploran las maneras en las que importantes académicos de la sociología y la filosofía han intentado 77 Journal of Classical Sociology.

  • Hana Worthen

In Confessions, Augustine condemns the Roman spectacles, but not their medium. Reworking the potential of spectacle to shape the Christian reader's and communicant's sensibility, Augustine instantiates a medial critique in which spectacle has a strikingly beneficial purpose, not only in sustaining the ritual performativity of Christianity but also in modeling Christian reading and writing as performative activities. The intermedial liaison registered in Confessions provides for the redirection of performance in humanities discourse, as is suggested in an account of Tony Davies's Humanism. While Augustine sees reading and spectating as interpenetrating sites and acts of performance, Davies reproduces the humanist reduction of performance to enervating spectacle yet complementarily frames reading in metaphors of theatrical experience, tellingly pointing to the mutual embeddedness of these practices.

  • Hana Worthen

This chapter takes up Martial's Liber Spectaculorum (On the Spectacles), centering on the damnatio ad bestias, in which criminals were cast as protagonists in a mythic, legendary, or literary scene to be executed by wild beasts in the Roman arena. Spectacularizing a legal punishment through the form of drama and deploying performance to require, to engage, and to shape the contours of a civic audience, these dramatic spectacles contest a set of humanist biases—the segregation of the mise-en-page from the mise-en-scène, the drama from the opsis, the narrative from the technology, the human from the nonhuman animal, the fictive from the material, the private from the public—and so provide opening for a revised, tangentially posthumanist, understanding of Roman spectacular performance.

  • Facundo Bey Facundo Bey

The aim of this article is to provide a philosophical conceptual framework to understand the theoretical roots and political implications of the interpretations of Plato's work in Jaeger's Third Humanism and Krieck's v€ olkisch-racist pedagogy and anthropology. This article will seek to characterize, as figures of localitas, their conceptions of the individual, community, corporeality, identity, and the State that both authors developed departing from Platonic political philosophy. My main hypothesis is that Jaeger's and Krieck's interpretations of Platonic paide ıa shared several core-elements based on a modern conception of State sovereignty and human will, whose fundamental ground is the subjectivist-technical metaphysics. The "production" of a human type (spiritual and/ or racial) and a unitary State political community appears in both authors mediated by a theory of political education, that I define as «State typohumanism», that sought its sustenance in Plato's political philosophy, mainly by means of a distorted understanding of the notions of t ypos and e^thos, and that, I argue, played a key role in the intellectual legitimization of v€ olkisch-racism. This would be broadly translated into a programmatic and literal understanding of the Platonic Republic which assumes that the inherent function of any State is to produce subjectivities based on national identities grounded on homogeneous characteristics. In these varied characterizations similar appropriations of humanitas have been expressed both in Jaeger and in Krieck.

  • Simon Susen Simon Susen

The main purpose of this article is to examine central issues discussed by Daniel Chernilo in his Debating Humanity: Towards a Philosophical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). To this end, the analysis is divided into two parts. The first part, in addition to giving a brief overview of the book's thematic structure, considers some of its key arguments. The second part scrutinizes its most controversial aspects and highlights its principal limitations. By way of conclusion, the paper argues that Chernilo's study is a powerful reminder of the fact that a truly comprehensive understanding of society requires a critical engagement with the concept of humanity.

  • Ron Welters Ron Welters

Philosophy is often epitomized as the noble art of asking the right questions. In this chapter I will also try to formulate a sport philosophical answer to the question how we are to live in times of environmental crisis and moral desorientation. I will do so by broadening the practical philosophical perspective I developed so far. Firmly rooted in continental philosophy, over time I have increasingly become infected by William James's pragmatist adage that truth can only be found in the practical consequences of philosophical thinking. Integrating the pragmatic stance into my continental approach, I now will argue in favour of a life fully lived in strenuous endurance sport, for I regard both traditions as complementary rather than exclusionary. Endurance sport, conceived as a committed and holistic lifestyle, rather than as a gratuitous playful pastime, is a preferential tool for carving out the good life we are to lead, and which leads into a sustainable future.

  • Fernando Llano Fernando Llano

p>The transhumanist movement is much more than a simple utopia, a new school of thought or a fashionable ideology; as a matter of fact, it is a scientific and philosophical project that is already underway, and defends the use of the most advanced emerging new technologies —from biogenetics to computing, from nanotechnology to cognitive sciences, to robotics and Artificial Intelligence— with the clear goal to exponentially increase the physical, cognitive, sensory, moral and emotional capabilities of human beings. Transhumanism entails a change in the anthropocentric paradigm defended by humanism, and aims to break through the limits of nature, which until recently we deemed insurmountable, in order to create a new species that is more evolved than the Homo sapiens : the Homo excelsior , a posthuman species which is superior to ours, composed by exceptionally gifted beings that have been genetically selected, designed and improved and which —according to the transhumanist imaginary— will dominate the posthuman future and will be happier, more virtuous, long-lived and intelligent than us. In this article, we propose technological humanism as an intermediate formula in the doctrinal debate between bioprogressive and bioconservative legal philosophers, so as to make possible the development of scientific research and the advancement of new technologies, although without ever having to sacrifice dignity and liberty, which are inherent qualities of the human being (who has to be viewed, in Kantian terms, as an end in itself). Received : 22 May 2019 Accepted : 10 September 2019 Published online : 20 December 2019 </p

  • Sverre Raffnsøe Sverre Raffnsøe

This study provides a general overview of the crucial and critical stages in the history, organization and production of knowledge in Western societies since the establishment of the modern university around 1800. A recurring subject of examination, forming a guiding and unifying theme, is the momentous influence of the human sciences as well as their decisive, yet also unstable and shifting role and position within this context.

  • Rosi Braidotti Rosi Braidotti

Rosi Braidotti's contribution to the Deleuze Studies Conference 2016 held in Rome (University of Roma Tre, 11–13 July), later transcribed and then revised by the author, points firmly to the current need for an affirmative thinking approach, actively standing to the present, while assessing its becoming and imagining new configurations. Saying yes to the world, being worthy of it, does not entail passive acceptance but rather the activation of transformative and critical thinking. To this aim, Braidotti looks at Deleuze as well as at feminist theory. The ontology of immanence turns into a materialist, collective, vital, embodied and relational ethics.

  • Thomas Sutherland

Centred on Foams, the third volume of his Spheres trilogy (2011, 2014, 2016), 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 (drawing in part upon the work of Martin Heidegger) 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.

  • Robert Briggs

Jacques Derrida's The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008) presents a sustained reflection on a concept of 'the animal' that has underpinned the work of much of the philosophical tradition. Based on a series of lectures originally presented in 1997 Derrida's speculation on the question of the animal was thus written at a time when Derrida's thought was often turned to the motif of 'to-come' (see Derrida 1992; 1994) such that one may wonder at the apparent evasion, both in Derrida's text and in its subsequent review, of the chance to think the two themes together, in the guise of 'the animal-to-come'. Picking up on Derrida's asides on the verb 'to follow', this discussion considers what it might mean to follow, 'methodically' perhaps, the thought of 'the animal-to-come'? What problems might it help to bring into focus and what forces and lineages may yet bear upon its very thought? And where in our thinking goes the animal if it is to remain always to come?

  • Rosi Braidotti Rosi Braidotti

This essay proposes a genealogical cartography of the emergence of a posthuman turn in critical theory, including feminist theory, based on the convergence of posthumanism with post-anthropocentrism. The former critiques the universalist posture of the idea of 'Man' as the alleged 'measure of all things'. The latter criticizes species hierarchy and the assumption of human exceptionalism. It then explores the implications of the posthuman turn for political subjectivity, notably in terms of the relation between human and nonhuman agents. The essay then critiques the current tendency to create new negative or reactive re-compositions of a new pan-humanity based on vulnerability and fear. The case is made instead for critical posthuman thought and a definition of the subject as nomadic, that is to say: transversal, relational, affective, embedded and embodied.

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Allan H, 2001, ``Forward'', in Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt) de Fontenay E, 1998 Le Silence des Beª tes (Fayard, Paris)

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Kollekten des Geistes: Die Zerstreuung im Visier der Kulturkritik

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Schneider M, 1999,``Kollekten des Geistes: Die Zerstreuung im Visier der Kulturkritik'' Neue Rundschau number 2, 44^55

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Dufour D R, 1999 Lettres sur la Nature Humaine a© l'Usage des Survivants (Calmann-Le¨vy, Paris) Edmundson M, 1997 Nightmare on Mainstreet: Angels, Sadomasochism and the Culture of the American Gothic (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)

Frankfurt) Conditions of use. This article may be downloaded from the E&P website for personal research by members of subscribing organisations. This PDF may not be placed on any website (or other online distribution system)

  • P Sloteridjk

Sloteridjk P, 2001 Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt) Conditions of use. This article may be downloaded from the E&P website for personal research by members of subscribing organisations. This PDF may not be placed on any website (or other online distribution system) without permission of the publisher.