Hybris and Nemesis of Techne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Truth of the Anthropocene and the Question Concerning Technology After Stiegler and Belhaj Kacem<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pieter Lemmens<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Although officially dismissed last year by the International Union of Geological Sciences and despite all the criticism it has received since its introduction at the turn of the century, the narrative of the Anthropocene is arguably still the most appropriate and striking conceptual framework that we possess for understanding our current historical condition and predicament as a species on this planet. As Clive Hamilton has stressed correctly, the Anthropocene signifies both<\/em> the emergence of the human as a major if not decisive geo-force and the increasingly intrusive agency of the Earth in human affairs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the human has been able to become this geo-force first of all thanks to technology \u2013 the \u2018operating principle\u2019 and \u2018driving force\u2019 behind anthropos<\/em> being techne<\/em> \u2013 it is obvious that the truth<\/em> that is revealed through or as the Anthropocene should be of prime interest for the philosophy of technology. Indeed, technology becoming a planetary force has major implications for what Heidegger has referred to as the question concerning technology, and as has been argued earlier, it calls for a \u2018terrestrial turn\u2019 which, for one, demands a renewed questioning of the transcendental nature of technology and thus of the nexus<\/em> between physis<\/em> and techne<\/em> manifesting as anthropos<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the current philosophical landscape it is in particular Bernard Stiegler and Mehdi Belhaj Kacem who have taken up these questions and developed highly original answers to it \u2013 both in response to Heidegger that is. For both, the Anthropocene is the apocalyptic- eschatological (truth) event in which the hybris<\/em> that is anthropos-techne<\/em> is meeting its planetary nemesis<\/em>, an event calling for a turning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In my talk I will first, and very briefly, present Stiegler\u2019s meanwhile well-known diagnosis of the Anthropocene as Entropocene, thereby attempting to show that what seems to be missing in his analysis is an account of what may be called the monstrous<\/em>, expansive or confiscating<\/em> dynamic profoundly inherent<\/em> in techne<\/em> \u2013 the one Heidegger alluded to in the 1930s with the Greek notion of deinotaton<\/em> but didn\u2019t think through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, secondly, I will introduce Kacem\u2019s hardly known \u2018pleonectic\u2019 diagnosis of the Anthropocene as the eschatological macro-event, possibly leading to humanity\u2019s collective suicide, that results from the anthropic event on Earth of techne understood most basically as a new, extreme, indeed monstrous form of appropriation<\/em> based on techno-mimesis<\/em>, engendering \u2013 in a tragico-dialectical manner pronounced at the origin of Western culture by the pre-Socratic thinker Anaximander and first theorized explicitly by Kacem \u2013 a huge, planetary regime of expropriation<\/em> that we all know too well as the global ecological crisis and which Kacem is not afraid to identify as the reign of evil<\/em> (rather than nihilism). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirdly and finally I will reflect on how we might rethink what Heidegger first called the turning, based on these new insights regarding the question concerning technology, thereby asking what kind of \u2018ethico-ontological\u2019 response to our inherent technicity (or techno- mimeticity) could be imagined to ward of our possible and even probable collective suicide, focusing, with Stiegler, on the notions of hybris<\/em>, dike<\/em> and aidos<\/em> and, with Kacem and Johan Huizinga, on evil and play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hybris and Nemesis of Techne. The Truth of the Anthropocene and the Question Concerning Technology After Stiegler and Belhaj Kacem Pieter Lemmens Although officially dismissed last year by the International Union of Geological Sciences and despite all the criticism it has received since its introduction at the turn of the century, the narrative of the Anthropocene is arguably still the most appropriate and striking conceptual framework that we possess for understanding our current historical condition and predicament as a species on this planet. As Clive Hamilton has stressed correctly, the Anthropocene signifies both the emergence of the human as a major if not decisive geo-force and the increasingly intrusive agency of the Earth in human affairs. As the human has been able to become this geo-force first of all thanks to technology \u2013 the \u2018operating principle\u2019 and \u2018driving force\u2019 behind anthropos being techne \u2013 it is obvious that the truth that is revealed through or as the Anthropocene should be of prime interest for the philosophy of technology. Indeed, technology becoming a planetary force has major implications for what Heidegger has referred to as the question concerning technology, and as has been argued earlier, it calls for a \u2018terrestrial turn\u2019 which, for one, demands a renewed questioning of the transcendental nature of technology and thus of the nexus between physis and techne manifesting as anthropos. In the current philosophical landscape it is in particular Bernard Stiegler and Mehdi Belhaj Kacem who have taken up these questions and developed highly original answers to it \u2013 both in response to Heidegger that is. For both, the Anthropocene is the apocalyptic- eschatological (truth) event in which the hybris that is anthropos-techne is meeting its planetary nemesis, an event calling for a turning. In my talk I will first, and very briefly, present Stiegler\u2019s meanwhile well-known diagnosis of the Anthropocene as Entropocene, thereby attempting to show that what seems to be missing in his analysis is an account of what may be called the monstrous, expansive or confiscating dynamic profoundly inherent in techne \u2013 the one Heidegger alluded to in the 1930s with the Greek notion of deinotaton but didn\u2019t think through. Then, secondly, I will introduce Kacem\u2019s hardly known \u2018pleonectic\u2019 diagnosis of the Anthropocene as the eschatological macro-event, possibly leading to humanity\u2019s collective suicide, that results from the anthropic event on Earth of techne understood most basically as a new, extreme, indeed monstrous form of appropriation based on techno-mimesis, engendering \u2013 in a tragico-dialectical manner pronounced at the origin of Western culture by the pre-Socratic thinker Anaximander and first theorized explicitly by Kacem \u2013 a huge, planetary regime of expropriation that we all know too well as the global ecological crisis and which Kacem is not afraid to identify as the reign of evil (rather than nihilism). Thirdly and finally I will reflect on how we might rethink what Heidegger first called the turning, based on these new insights regarding the question concerning technology, thereby asking what kind of \u2018ethico-ontological\u2019 response to our inherent technicity (or techno- mimeticity) could be imagined to ward of our possible and even probable collective suicide, focusing, with Stiegler, on the notions of hybris, dike and aidos and, with Kacem and Johan Huizinga, on evil and play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-365","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":370,"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/365\/revisions\/370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nature-strikes-back.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}