Prometheanism and Rationalism Future Shocks i The Dehumanisation

Prometheanism and Rationalism

Future Shocks i) The Dehumanisation of the Environment: Anthropogenic climate change and terminal resource depletion – exemplified by permafrost melt and soil erosion – threaten to push the planetary environment beyond the threshold of human habitability. ii) The Dehumanisation of the Economy: The current wave of technological automation – driven by advanced robotics, machine learning, and big data – is expelling labour from the production process faster than it can be reintegrated, disrupting the balance between labour and capital, and threatening a phase shift in global capitalism. iii) The Dehumanisation of the Human: The rapid development and increasing accessibility of technologies that modify human biology, psychology, and sociality – spearheaded by the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science – threatens to dissolve the cognitive, reproductive, and evolutionary unity of our common form of life.

Egalitarian Options i) Fatalism: We reject our historical agency, resign ourselves to the worst possible outcomes, and commit to a politics of amelioration. ii) Messianism: We reject our historical agency, cultivate hope for the best possible outcomes, and commit to a politics of anticipation. iii) Prometheanism: We embrace our historical agency, investigate the tendencies and their possible outcomes, and commit to a politics of intervention. How do we assess these options?

Anti-Prometheanism / Anti-Rationalism The most powerful source of Anti-Prometheanism is found not in rejection of any particular technological solution, but in more general critiques of technology. How do these critiques feed into fatalism/messianism? i) Fatalism: The essence of fatalism is skepticism about our capacity for action. It allows that we can understand our fate, but denies that we can change it for the better. ii) Messianism: The essence of messianism is skepticism about our capacity for understanding. It denies that we can understand our fate, and thereby affirms that it may be better than we predict. If such skepticism is motivated by a general critique of our capacities, then it must be driven by worries about Reason (practical reason / theoretical reason).

Provisional Definitions Prometheanism: The rejection of predetermined limits upon action and self-transformation. Rationalism: The rejection of predetermined limits upon thought and self-understanding. Prometheanism entails rationalism. What constitutes a predetermined limit?

Mythology Humanity and Nature The Fall: Resemblance to the Divine, Theoretical Knowledge, Transgression Prometheus: Absence of Innate Capacities, Practical Knowledge, Subversion Freedom and Necessity (Causal / Normative) The Fall: The possibility of transgressing the moral order presupposes free will, understood as independence from the causal order. Prometheus: The subversion of the natural order is a process of empowerment, in which we circumvent causal necessities by expanding our causal capacities

The Gift Freedom is a gift given to humanity, which comes with certain causal constraints on possible action and normative constraints on permissible action. This produces a systematic ambiguity between causal and normative constraints, which drives rationalising dynamics: i) Inertial Rationalisation: The gradual interpretation of social norms governing historically stable societies as causal conditions of human survival, or the conversion of social equilibrium into natural equilibrium. ii) Reactive Rationalisation: The sudden reinterpretation of constraints on what we can do as constraints on what we should do once they have been overcome, or the conversion of empowerment into transgression.

Enlightenment Radical Enlightenment (Spinoza) vs. Moderate Enlightenment (Locke). Epistemology Rationalism: inference, metaphysics Empiricism: experience, skepticism Politics Radicalism: Freedom as power and autonomy. Politics as design for freedom. Liberalism: Freedom as natural right (Life, Liberty, and Property). Politics as negotiation and rationalisation.

Theological Residue The ineffability of the gift protects rationalisation from Reason. We can be both thoroughly agnostic about the divine principle within nature (God) and hopelessly gnostic about the divine spark within humanity (the Soul). Political Liberalism: Free will is independent of the causal order. The free agent is indexed to a series of unmarked particulars: white, male, heterosexual, bourgeois, cis, etc. Classical Rationalism: Reason is independent of the causal order. The knowing subject is also indexed to unmarked particulars. This undermines classical Prometheanism.

Contemporary Prometheanism (L#A) Left-Accelerationism: The insistence that the transition between capitalism and postcapitalism should be understood in the same terms as the transition between feudalism and capitalism – as a complex process that can and should be accelerated – rather than a radical break in the horizon of thought and action. Focal Tendency: The dehumanisation of the economy – accelerating automation and postwork politics. Associated Ideas/Slogans: no going backwards; collective self-mastery; left-modernity; hegemony; UBI; FALC; #Accelerate

Contemporary Prometheanism (L#A) Opposed to contemporary political liberalism: negative freedom and formal freedom. Kantian Liberalism: communicative rationality, free discourse, public sphere (e. g. , Rawls, Habermas) Neoliberalism: economic rationality, free contract, the market (e. g. , Hayek, Friedman) How does L#A agree/disagree? – ends/means, causal autonomy What does contemporary rationalism supply? – synthetic freedom, collective agency. What is the anti-rationalist egalitarian alternative? – voluntarism (e. g. , insurrectionism, neoanimism, etc. )

Contemporary Prometheanism (XF) Xenofeminism: The insistence that the artificiality of identity must be embraced – rejecting the givenness of material conditions (sex) and social forms (gender) alike – and harnessed as part of an exploratory programme that progressively ramifies existing modes of selfhood and integrates them into a generic model of autonomy. Focal Tendency: The dehumanisation of the human – proliferating technologies of selfhood and emancipation through alienation. Associated Ideas/Slogans: repurposing technology; intersectionality as generic universality; gender abolitionism; be a cyborg not a goddess; if nature is unjust, change nature!

Contemporary Prometheanism (XF) Opposed to contemporary normative naturalism: material reality and social reality. Identity as Essence: biology as destiny, perversity as pathology, diagnostic selfhood (e. g. , #Born. This. Way, evo-psych) Identity as Authenticity: position as power, intersectionality as taxonomy, situated selfhood (e. g. , #Gamer. Gate, facebook) How does XF agree/disagree? – technologies of the self, intersectionality as genericity What does contemporary rationalism supply? – normative autonomy, mutable selfhood What is the anti-rationaist egalitarian alternative? – gnosticism (e. g. , sacralisation of the body, suffering vs. autonomy, etc. )

Contemporary Rationalism What Reason is. Functionalism. Universality. Information Integration. Consciousness/Self-Consciousness. Perspectival Navigation.

Contemporary Rationalism What Reason is not. Intellectual Intuition. Deduction. Perfection. Preference Maximisation. Disembodied, Affectless, etc. Normalisation.