Enlightenment Reloaded 1/4 — Transcript

Hello everyone, and welcome. This is the first session of Enlightenment Reloaded with instructor and professor Reserani.

I'll read the seminar description and Res's description, and then we can start. Um, this module, in line with the Pasco Center seminar Cartesian conflrations, examines Descartes and, in addition to Noa, the heretic Jewish prince of philosophy as a revolutionary progenitor of a radical enlightenment.

In doing so, the seminar challenges fatigued interpretations with which the project of enlightenment in its Cartesian lineage is often associated, with mind-body dualism and rigid rationalism, among others.

We will explore how Descartes' mature philosophy initiated a stark philosophical movement that posed the greatest challenge to institutionism, where philosophy had become a branch of sciences with inbuilt blind spots with regard to where they have come from and where they are headed.

The seminar traces the Cartesian schema for rational and computational mechanics back to the systematization of perennial philosophical ideas from Plato, dialectica, Toludes, Euclid, dogmatic codification of it, and subsequently Razimi's algorithmic take on the latter. Where does the algorithm by which this first Latin translation of Razimi begins is more akin to a profound distillation of philosophy, revolutionary ideas than an AI-informed ratification of a legacy of the enlightenment that has been observed and now is being taken for granted.

To this end, central to our investigation are the methods and ethics put forward by Descartes and Spinoza asarians of an authentic enlightenment by all means, an emancipatory revolutionary labor in its inception that has been hijacked by a surviving scholastic counterrevolutionary force that was never fully quashed.

This counterrevolutionary force, as we shall investigate, has moved through the likes of Thomas Hobbes, religious attendance, who dreamt at which points the project of enlightenment simplifies itself, settled and rested upon mere consolatory epistemological or knowledge acquisition problems riddled with an ad hoc and arbitrary political and religious attendance whose major purpose is to whitewash over the falsehearted spirit of disappropriated enlightenment we have inherited.

Resnari is a philosopher. He has contributed extensively to journals and anthologies and lectured at numerous international universities and institutes. His current philosophical project is focused on rationalist universalism, beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge and advancing toward contemporary philosophies of rationalism, their procedures as well as their demands for special forms of human conduct. He is the author of Sinopedia and Intelligent and Spirit. Resa, you can take away and start.

Thank you so much, Eter. Uh, hello everyone. Uh, thank you for coming. Uh, one thing, any person who is an attendee, uh, you can let them in if they want to. Uh, it's fine with me. Uh, as they come. Uh, those people who are simply auditing, uh, you can let them into the room.

So basically, uh, this seminar is based, uh, on a talk that I gave in Delft, uh, during the bombing runs of, uh, Beirut. Uh, and, uh, I remember that, uh, this was, um, Ray Briier, uh, was supposed to be there. I intentionally, uh, wrote this, uh, you know, as a kind of, you know, opening up a discussion with him, uh, and of course Katarina Novice. Um, but of course Ray could not come, uh, given the situation in Beirut.

Um, so I gave this, it was like 25 minutes long, almost 3,000, less than 3,000 words. Uh, so this is a kind of an extensive expansion of that talk.

Uh, and the talk, um, if I remember correctly, it was, uh, Does Spoke, Does Spake, uh, the algorithm because, uh, you see, uh, the, uh, the first Latin compendium, uh, of, uh, Aljaba, uh, is, uh, starts with this, uh, line Does Fake Algorithmi, uh, which is Alharasmi, uh, Latinized, uh, version. So, um, as it was in the, you know, um, abstract of the seminar, uh, we are primarily trying to, uh, focus on certain sort of, you know, uh, things, uh, processes, historical, philosophical that have happened in, uh, the genealogy, ology and development of the enlightenment project and why enlightenment, uh, mostly has somehow from within itself crushed by a counterrevolutionary, uh, core, some sort of coup d'etat.

Uh, the first session, which is this session, uh, I'm mostly going to give a certain sort of, um, introduction and mostly I will be talking about the legacy of Descartes. Uh, next session we will go to Spinoza and then from that point onward, uh, uh, session three and four we move toward certain sort of, you know, uh, highly contemporary issues around the, you know, the idea of the enlightenment. Uh, in the fourth session, uh, I want to bring, you know, construct all of these stuff that I have been talking about, particularly with regard to the concerns about AI and computation, bring it back into a, uh, this sort of revived enlightenment into a revolutionary, uh, revolutionary fold. Uh, and I'm, I'm not going to spoil this story but nevertheless it is going to be a prequel, uh, to, uh, my next seminar, uh, which is called A Techtologist Autodidactus, uh, as a reference to Alexander Bdonov's technology and also, and, uh, uh, books, philosophers and theologians Autodidactus, um, about a certain sort of revolutionary intelligence, uh, that we need at this point and with what sort of problems this revolutionary intelligence is now, um, you know, confronted with.

So I'm going to read this. It's probably I'm not going to finish this. This is I wrote this for this session. It's around, uh, 7,000 words. I think that we can do it since we have two and a half hours.

Uh, it would be great if we keep all the questions after I finish reading this, right? And then we can, you know, open the gates and, you know, let everyone ask questions and heckle this and that.

Uh, sorry I forgot to get my, uh, pack of cigarettes. Let me just go get my pack of cigarettes and I start reading. Okay.

So this is session one. Its title is Descartes Underground. Uh, I know that I gave, uh, some, you know, reading materials for you. Uh, but I have added, you know, I, I'm going to, um, you know, make references to some materials which I haven't shared and I can actually, um, um, put them in the Google Drive for you.

Uh, but these are just like, you know, um, kind of supplementary materials. So, um, first we have to start with the wrong enlightenment and the older one.

Let's begin with a provocation, as always we do in these seminars. The enlightenment didn't fail because reason became too ambitious.

It failed, or rather it was repeatedly disfigured because reason was not permitted to become ambitious enough.

The irreputable or malignant enlightenment. The enlightenment of administration. Imperial bookkeeping. Racial hierarchy, you know, gender disparity, um, colonial pedagogy, uh, scientistic self-congratulation, liberal police metaphysics, uh, you know, and technical mastery without the possibility of emancipation is not the truth of enlightenment at all. It's one of its captures. It is a counterfeit that survived by wearing the face of what it had neutralized.

The counterfeit enlightenment is reason after the police have edited the minutes. So the task of this seminar, uh, is not really to defend enlightenment in the usual exhausted way.

I am not going to defend it as a self-image of Europe, a secular maturity, as a victory of science over religion, as a heroic tale of brave men escaping superstition by means of measurement, experiment, and good manners.

That story, uh, unfortunately is rather too shallow even when it's not actively obscene. Nor will I join the opposite chorus that says enlightenment is nothing but domination, abstraction, whiteness, disenchantment, calculation, and the murder of worlds, indigenous or not.

That story gives, unfortunately, the enemy too much credit. It mistakes the hijacking for the project and then congratulates itself for having exposed what the hijacker wanted to see to begin with.

What I want to call enlightenment and what I want

So this is session one. It title is daycarts underground. Uh I know that I gave uh some you know reading materials for you. Uh but I have added you know I I'm going to um you know make references

to some materials which I haven't shared and I can actually um um put them in the Google Drive for you.

uh but these are just like you know um kind of supplementary materials. So um first we have to start with the wrong enlightenment and the older one.

Let's begin with a provocation as always we do in these seminars. The enlightenment didn't fail because reason became too ambitious.

It failed or rather it was repeatedly disfigured because reason was not permitted to become ambitious enough.

The irreputable or malignant enlightenment. The enlightenment of administration. Imperial bookkeeping. racial hierarchy, you know, gender disparity, um, colonial pedogy, uh, scientistic self- congratulation, liberal police metaphysics, uh, you know, and technical mastery without the possibility of emancipation is not the

truth of enlightenment at all. It's one of its captures. is a counterfeit that survived by wearing the face of what it had neutralized.

The counterfeit enlightenment is reason after the police have edited the minutes. So the task of this seminar uh is not really to defend enlightenment in the usual exhausted way.

I am not going to defend it as a self-image of Europe, a secular maturity, as a victory of science over religion, as a heroic tale of brave men escaping superstition by means of measurement, experiment, and good manners.

That story uh unfortunately is rather too shallow even when it's not actively obscene. nor I will join the opposite chorus that says enlightenment is nothing but domination, abstraction whiteness disenchantment calculation and the murder of worlds, indigenous or not.

That story gives unfortunately the enemy too much credit. It mistakes the hijacking for the project and then congratulate itself for having exposed what the hijacker wanted to see to begin with.

What I want to call enlightenment and what I want us to recover over these four sessions is something rather older, a stranger and particularly more dangerous.

the labor of reason as a reconstruction of the conditions under which thought can free itself from inherited images of authority and essentialism.

Enlightenment in this sense is does not refer to a period not or a style or a secular etiquette and definitely not a doctrine of scientific progress.

It is by all accounts a procedure but not a formula. It's an armamentarium, a philosophical armamentarium but not a machine that works by itself.

It is a discipline by which the mind learns to break the grip of what appears self-evident natural sacred empirical, ancestral or politically inevitable.

This is why the opening word is not progress but reduction. Not reduction in impoverished sense of flattening everything into physics, biology, economics, data or mechanism.

reduction in the older sense that we are going to talk about as as a core principle of uh the enlightenment project particularly one of its main core um principles this is a questioning back in rock frail's idea of questioning back you

to the foundations and of course that is the whole point of daycart's meditations you know a questioning back a stripping of images from the authority they have now acquired a return from the noisy prestige of the given to the elementary operations by

which something becomes initially thinkable, right? Reduction is the art of forcing an image to disclose the conditions under which it became sovereign.

It is the first act of sabotage against any form of false immediacy. Right. Next section. Sorry for the noise in the background. Uh, our neighbor is doing some repair. Uh, genealological interruption against the provincial ownership of reason.

Before fully moving to Decart, however, we have to interrupt the familiar genealogy at the stake here. There is a peculiar cognitive dissonance in much contemporary western discussion of enlightenment. In one mood, Europe congratulates itself.

Enlightenment is our gift to humanity. In another mood, often only a few minutes later, it denounces itself.

Enlightenment is bad because it's western. Right? The second sentence pretends to be critique but it keeps the grammar of the first sentence.

It still grants Europe the copyright over reason method universality critique and of course emancipation.

And at this point it merely changes the effect from pride to guilt. But guilt as we know it is often vanity after the custom change.

This is why the slogan that enlightenment is a western project must be handled with absolute suspicion.

If the phrase denotes particular 18th century European formation with its institution, pamphlet wars, salons, academies, clandestine books, censorship, battles and political consequences, then it is deceptively descriptively uh useful. But if it means that the conditions of enlightenment, the techniques of reason and the project

of rational emancipation are civilizational property, then it's not critique, but rather a fraudulent invoice.

It gives too much credit to Western civilization from the get-go. Worse, it actually repeats colonial accounting in negative form such that Europe remains the owner, source, center, culprit and measure of everything even when it stands accused before the rest of the world.

We cannot give Europe such dignity of being both the inventor and the culprit at the same time.

Sorry, this is not going to happen on our humble watch. Therefore, a more serious genealogy must be less provential and probably more destructive in its true ethos. The project that later erupts in European Enlightenment is not born from a sealed

Western interior at all. is prepared by translations appropriations distortions inventions and recompositions across Greek, Syriak, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, among other worlds.

The point is not here to replace a European trophy case with an Islamic or Persianet one.

That would merely reverse the vanity. The point however is that reason has no native soil and it will never enjoy such a homeland or himat.

Its history is a chain of displacements, exiles, commentaries, technical mediations, migrations, and conceptual thefts that sometimes become universal precisely because they survived the collapse of their first homes.

A civilization that mistakes its relay stations for birthplaces has already turned history into customs control.

So in this case, Alharazmi was credited you know for the invention of algebra. It's not by any means an exotic Middle Eastern precursor in this story is one of the names at the point where number procedure and rational operation

become historically irreversible. From his name latinized through the medieval transmission of arithmetical texts we inherit the line that leads to algorithm or algorithm from aljab completion and balancing.

We inherit not the word algebra but a style of rational operation which states restore what has been broken. Move terms across a relation cancel false asymmetries. Bring the hidden structure of the problem into the foreground.

If this is not already a philosophical image of enlightenment, then the word enlightenment has been made much too small.

The same is true of optics, vision, and natural light. Long before Daycart turns the rainbow into a theater of method and beauty of cosmos, althazam works on vision and light had already transformed the problem of seeing into a

discipline inquiry into conditions, media, geometry, experiment and of course error. The question is no longer what appears but how appearance is produced through which apparatus under which constraints and with what possibility of deception.

Right? That's why the genealogy of enlightenment cannot be separated from the genealogy of optics.

In so far as a critique of enlightenment is actually an optical uh critique to begin with in its very backbone because we are talking about images of power, right? And deceptions and distortions that go with them and how they are being transmitted,

proliferated, so on and so forth. To see is never merely to receive an image. To see is to enter a contest over the conditions under which images acquire authority.

So seen from this perspective, the anti-enlightenment gesture that says we must abandon enlightenment because it's western is not radical enough.

It abandons enlightenment at the e very exact moment it should be rested away from western self ownership precisely because it mistakes a hijacked inheritance for the whole of the inheritance and as such the task is not anymore to purify enlightenments of its

Arab Muslim, Jewish, Persianet, African or Mediterranean meditations in order to make it properly purely European, nor to condemn it for the same fantasy of purity, but rather the task at and is to reconstruct the older relay of reason in which

method mathematics, optics, metaphysics, and emancipation were never the possessions of a of a people, but the dangerous effects of certain planetary transmissions.

So when we begin with Decart here, we don't begin with Europe beginning from itself.

We begin with a late and explosive reconfiguration of a much longer sequence. Decart's I would say matters for us because he takes this scattered inheritance of dialectic geometry, algebra, method, a natural light and turns it into a problem of of the

subject capable of science but also doubt but also a radical new philosophy. But of course he's not the owner of that inheritance is one of its incendiary relay points.

The west didn't invent the light. It built some powerful lamps named itself custodian of the sun and then charged the rest of the world admission to daylight. In our story to reload the enlightenment today is also to destroy the bad provincial myth

that reason belongs either to western pride or western guilt. Reason belongs to no civilization at all precisely because it's alien through and through.

It belongs only to the labor required to make its claims intelligible, answerable transmissible and ultimately emancipatory.

This is why we are going to begin the first session with Daycart. Not because Daycart is a sovereign founder of modern philosophy in the textbook sense that pattern myth is of no interest for us. We begin with Daycart because his

philosophy marks the point the exact point at which an older philosophical program is reloaded under modern conditions refraraming the problem a new right Plato's struggle against the tyranny of images organization of proof and judgment alazmi's procedural art of restoration and

balancing and the early modern demand that science cease to be a scholastic monument and become a practice of self-discovery.

Decart does not invent reason. He doesn't invent method. He doesn't even invent the subject.

What he does is more actually exclusive in its true essence. He turns them into a discipline for deposing an inherited authority.

So this is this is a book by Tarak Dika. Uh I will definitely upload it. It's called uh is essentially method in Decart's uh work.

So this is the formation of the subject of science universality without uniformity. And this is the sort of enlightenment. One of the main problems with enlightenment has always been that uh you know um we have um talked about

a universalism that amounts to uniformization. Right? which of course we have seen the consequences of such uh you know um problems. So the most important correction to make at the beginning is actually this cartisian method par excelance is not just a little algorithm

that can be mechanically applied to every problem. In the same way, yeah, we can actually extract political edict out of this.

This is the mistake Tactica calls the uniformity thesis. The assumption that if Daycart has one method then the same procedure must be applied uniformly to metaphysics, mathematics optics morals ethics, natural philosophy and so on and so forth.

That's actually not Decart's method. That's just gerrymandering of Deart's cartisian method. It's a fundamentally flawed image of the method.

So Dika's decisive formulation is that Decart's method is universal without being uniform and it is universal in scope because it concerns the formation of the subject capable of science.

But it's not uniform in application because different problems require different actualizations of the same acquired disposition.

The method is not in fact an ordinary script. It's what usually is being called a habitus.

Meaning a durable cognitive disposition acquired through practice by which the ingenuum in Decard sense becomes capable of solving problems.

This is important for us politically and philosophically you know precisely because a revolutionary method that cannot vary with the problem is not in fact a revolutionary method.

It's bureaucracy with some metaphysical opaque black box ambitions. A method that can't change. It's a stride when the train changes of course is not reason.

So we should therefore be careful whenever we speak of something like algorithm, program or rational mechanics.

These are useful terms for us only if we do not turn daycart into the sort of you know bad prophet uh of automatic procedures.

Yeah. And algorithms into AI. This shitty AI that we have which is still interesting, magnificent. I like it.

The Cartisian method is not a button and not a dream of frictionless computation. Is closer to the formation of a trained intelligence. An intelligence that has learned how to move between intuition, deduction enumeration imagination, order, measure, and in fact the limits

of knowledge, hypothetical or otherwise. If there is an algorithmic dimension here, it's not the algorithm as black box.

nor the algorithm as technical oracle. It's the algorithm as disciplined sequence of acts whose conditions must be intelligible to the one who performs them such that they can be transmitted, proliferated, recontextualized and reinvented a new by different certain sort of different

sort of practices and by different local. The algorithm becomes obscene only when reconstructible procedure is replaced by the priestly silence and uh silence of the interface. So this is why daycart's rules for direction of mind you know make sense for us in this

seminar. Even though it remained unfinished and was not published in his lifetime, the rules belongs to the 1620s and circulated only in restricted manuscript from before its posthumans publication in Dutch translation in 1680 uh in 1684 and in Latin in 1701.

The discourse on method by contrast gives the public a compact almost previously brief presentation of the method.

If we read only the discourse, we risk thinking of method as a short list of rules that can be applied across the board. Right?

If we read the rules alongside it, especially through dika, then we see that the method is an education of the mind.

It's more practice than theory. It forms subject capable of science and this formation is not reducible to epistemological hygiene.

This point also prevents a second mistakes that is identifying cartisian method with matheis mathesis universalis actually is careful. Mathesis universalist is or universal science or universal matheis um it's crucial but it's not simply identical with method as such

right and it's not by any means an all devouring science that swallows metaphysics physics morals ethics and politics into mere mathematics because mathesis universalis is a culture of order and measure in subtle ways as a balance sheet between

noise and order. such that I said when when I said it balanced precisely because you know every sort of from a computational perspective every sort of good things that we have history you know uh long range emotions uh beliefs

are essentially coming from this balance sheet between noise and order. And that's exactly what Dear wants to achieve to to show that things of which we are made of and things which we can create always are neither noise or pure order.

But a a perfect balance which of course has you know at this point we can actually give a computational measure of such things.

A training in the kinds of relations that allow the mind to move from precision move with precision.

It is a secondderee formation within the broader cartisian scientific habitus. For our purposes in this first session, this is important precisely because we don't want to turn the enlightenment into the imperialization of mathematics.

We just want to understand mathematics as one of the disciplines through which thought learns how not to be governed by simple appearances. And you know what simple appearances are in Plato?

These are called iconus icons. Certain sort of rudimentary sensory semblances. Idolan more you know aggressive semblances.

Idolence from which the word idol comes from and the most dangerous form of images which Plato called fantasmata.

fantasms precisely because they have a high dose of optical distortion like ideals that beckons you to wasteland to the desert like mirages in the desert. Right?

So this is this is mathematics give at least from a platonic perspective. Um, mathematics gives a safe guard. Uh, uh, um, uh, safety rails or safety switches about dealing with these massive amounts of uh, you know, flawed of images that we are dealing with,

right? But of course, precisely because Plato is extremely suspicious of images, he does not uh you know give too much attention to the idea of imagination itself as a constructive faculty.

It is only Aristotle in the actually who who gives imagination its proper uh you know um status as a faculty of the mind without which mind would be unable uh to do this or that.

Daycart as I have said it in my uh Daycart seminar is a tad Platonist and no Platonist precisely because he's also anti-Asilian to a great degree.

This also comes I would say but this is completely irrelevant to our talk coming from that he is actually a radical at the at the bottom is a radical Christian who wants to to rest Christianity from the clutches of administrative

authoritarian bureaucratic highest scholasticism uh church or cathedral all. So Daycart also is famously uh just hates imagination.

But Daycart actually does not hates imagination because he's suspicious of images. He hates imagination because imagination has a cost.

You know precisely because imagination has something to do with the body as opposed to the mind.

his famous example of, you know, when it would be absolutely labarious and nasty to imagine a 1,000sided figure.

Yeah, this is day cards. Do you know why? Precisely because it's costly. Can any of you imagine a 1,00 exactly a 1,000sided figure?

No, you can't. But his this is his platonism shows that well you know this is why that we have a concept for a 1,00 sided figure and we can mathematically with complete exactitude do this job without even breaking a sweat.

Right? So the phrase subject of science should therefore be heard in a demanding way.

It does not mean a subject who owns science, commands it from outside or merely receives objective data.

It means a subject formed by operations. A subject whose powers have been trained by the labor of a subtle order.

attention, distinction and problem analysis. The subject is not born. It is rather manufactured. And because it is produced or manufactured or constructed to put it accurately, it can also be deformed, translated, transmitted, sinisterly captured, narrowed parochialized militarized, commercialized,

or made even utterly survile. So you see he's he understands that moving toward that sort of direction what it means for the future subject.

It can be captured. It can be surveiled but also it can be transformed and deformed.

So the enlightenment question is therefore not simply what is actually knowledge. It's rather what kind of subject must be formed so that knowledge does not become another image in the cave platonic cave as a shadow on the walls of the human

cage. Now next section Plato the cave as a first theory of image capture. And you know when we are talking about image capture we are talking also not only about the human subject but also the image capture of enlightenment

itself. So to understand why daycart uh is decisive, we have to go a little bit backward. The cartisian operation is unintelligible. If you want if we detach it from the older philosophical struggle over images, you know, our sort of Plato and then

Platonist and then the underground movements uh in um in Oxford and um Paris's school against the European uh what you might call to be uh rise of the high church of scholasticism.

Plato gives us the decisive beginning because Plato not not just because Plato gives us a doctrine we should simply repeat but actually in a twisted sort of way because he formalizes a problem in a way that has never stopped haunting philosophy ever.

in the divided line and the cave. You know when you read republic so it's cave allegory and the divided line analogy.

These two are completely you know um really entangled with one another. The allegory uh of the cave is about you know kind of the visualization of the human condition or the human subject.

The divided line is even more sinister. It's an analogy, a diagram, a very perfect compact compressed computational diagram about what actually is going on in the cave itself.

In the divine line and the cave, Plato is not merely saying uh that the sense that the senses deceive us.

There's a simple uh kind of like watered down version of this which so many people always repeat and it's of course utterly misleading.

Plato is asking how different orders of appearances acquire authority over the soul. Right? And in that sense, the cave is not a primitive cinema or a theater as so many people might think.

It is in fact a a precise political technology of cognition. The prisoners do not see simply uh see shadows precisely because they inhabit an institution in which shadows have been stabilized as reality. Their bodies are fixed a fixed to chains as he says

their orientation is fixed. Their field of attention is fixed. Their social wall confirms the authority of and of what appears as reality.

The images are not simply false. Actually, in this scenario, they are in fact organized.

They are repeated, ranked, narrated, socially enforced. The cave is thus not the opposite of reason.

It is the prehistory of every order that wants to control reason by controlling the image environment in which reason evolves.

The cave hence is not darkness. is a lighting design for complete obedience. The divided line hence gives us a more refined vocabulary for the ascend from image to intelligibility. It moves from images and shadows to sensible things, from sensible things to mathematical

mathematical objects and finally to dialectical int intellection. And dialectical intellection is on a different sort of footing which is the whole idea of the enlightenment.

Again, the crude version of these sort of accounts of uh the cave and the divided line uh say that Plato hates images and wants a pure realm of forms because of it.

But the more plausible and a stronger version is that Plato is trying to distinguish types of appearance and types of cognition.

Not all images have the same status. Enlightenment. Illumination is to shed light on images so we can determine their ranks.

Not all images have the same status and not all can be, you know, the the foundation of our practice.

And not all appearances deceive in the same way. Some are more sinister and some less.

In fact, not all abstractions liberate. Mathematics might free thought from immediate sensibility, but it still depends on hypothesis and diagrams.

Dialectic must go even further not by despising diagrams but by asking after the PR principles that makes any diagram any science any order of intelligibility possible.

So dialectics is essentially going back to the foundations. This is quite actually very a little bit topsy not in philosophical sense but in a mythological sense you know that Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is coming. I hope that he doesn't screw this up. Most probably he

will. This is the idea of the Odyssey uh trip, the journey, the voyage. What is this voyage is?

The voyage is starts with katabasis. So he's on the surface and then he descends into the underworld to understands the foundations, the conditions of possibility of what we do when we do things or we think things.

And then he has to by any sorts of go and matis and conning of history has to come back to the surface which is the anabasis and only then the circle of humanity is being closed and a new species will

arrive which is the enlightenment subject. This is the first sense in which enlightenment is not uh anti- mythological.

It is anti- idolatrous in a very precise sense. It opposes the freezing of an image into unquestionable authority.

a myth, a scientific model, a sovereign, a market, a statistical dashboard, a racial taxonomy, a naturalized gender hierarchy, a metaphysical picture of the human. All of these can become cave images or fantasmata when their conditions of production disappear behind their authority.

The problem is not image as such as Plato would say. The problem is image without critique, image without genealogy and image without reduction and ultimately image without the possibility of reconstruction.

So this also allows us to avoid the lazy opposition between rationality and imagination. The cave allegory is an education of imagination by power.

Philosophy doesn't abolish imagination. It retains it so that the image can become finally a dynamic diagram and the diagram can become a problem and then the furthermore the problem can become construction and moreover construction can be held answerable to

what it reveals and what it conceals. SE enlightenment thus begins when the image is no longer permitted to be the final court of appeal for thought and practice.

Section three you alasmi and the procedural inheritance of philosophy. So between Plato and Daycart stands another transformation the codification of rational movement.

Uklit in elements gives geometry a form in which reason can travel through definitions, postulates, common notions, data, propositions, demonstrations, so on so forth.

These are not proofs though. Uclid did not invent the idea of proof. Muslim did it. Sorry.

This is not only a mathematical achievement. It actually happens to be also a philosophical event with capital E precisely because it shows that thought can bind itself to explicit operations and it can make its movements precisely because have become made

explicit. It can be made reconstructible and that it can refuse the charisma of intuition by submitting insight to a public order of the agora which is that of the demonstration.

Then Alasmi enters the scene. Of course, not as this superb exotic non-European precursor, but as someone who uh you know can be counted as a decisive transformation in the history of procedure itself.

The word algorithm is tied to the light latin latinization sorry of his name through the medieval uh algorithmic or algorithm tradition. The formula is sometimes associated with that tradition. Dixit algorithmic does a spake.

The algorithm, the procedure should not be turned into a, you know, kind of like cheesy AI slogan. At this point it significance solely lies in a territory which is a stranger and older because it reminds us that what is now

treated as technical noun once named a transmission of methods right procedures and operation ations across languages, religious worlds, mathematical traditions, and civilizational fantasies of ownership.

In the algebraic text, the key operations are completion or restoration and and balancing and confrontation across an equation. You know an equation what is exactly an equation is equation is a sign of ultimately you know of of course the question is

that what does it take for something to be equal to something else right but the more fundamental question which we hardly actually ever talk about is what is this thing that we call identity Everyone in content of philosophy hates

after the lose the idea of the identity or identity. But there is a very profound sort of thing behind this.

You see, if two things and two sides of an equations hold together as being equal to one another, that's a sign of identity.

Identity is not essential in the essentialist sense. Identity is attained by construction. Right? I have my identity precisely because you have your identity.

Precisely because we are interacting at very a specific moments across certain sort of translation, certain sort of equations and so on so forth.

This is also one of the main ideas behindype theory. The idea that well you know if we learn the concept of identity of a mathematical object then we can construct it a new. If we understand the identity of a world then we can

construct it a new. So a problem is transformed so that it's unknown u so that it's unknown can be approached through a sequence of legitimate manipulations.

What is hidden is not guessed is brought into relation with what is known. What is distorted is restored.

What is excessive is balanced. The equation becomes a battlefield. Where the unknown is not conquered by force but obliged to show its relations to what is known.

once said that unknown that has no relation to what is already known has no case epistemological case right this procedural inheritance lets us hear daycart differently then when Daycart speaks of method order clar parity, division enumeration reconstruction.

He's not inventing modern rationalism. X neilo is reactivating a long history in which philosophy, mathematics, and procedure have been always entangled.

But he does so under a new pressure which is that of the escolastic order that can no longer account for sciences.

It claims to organize stabilize and form the pressure of new mathematics, new optics, new machines, new travels, new wars, new institutions and new forms of intellectual danger the world has never seen before.

There is a dramatic invention here in inversion here. What appears in the you know in our seminar as a methodical claim is historically speaking a form of pure insurgency which that's actually what Decart is trying to do to instigates an insurgency

to Define, divide order enumerate balance reconstruct is to deny that authority may simply arrive cloed as tradition, revelation, sensory immediacy or institutional prestige. method is the etiquette of a mind preparing for a final historical mutiny.

Section four and then after that we we are going to have a break. Rational mechanics the gap as algebraic interface and not pathology.

Now we can broaden the point through uh this thing. There is this uh computer scientist um his name uh is emmeritus professor at Samford his name is Juan Pratt and uh he wrote a series of uh essays I think I don't know uh late 70s uh in

the 80s and early 90s is with regard to daycart. Yeah. Because everyone once just talks say that well you know daycart is just mind body problem dualism and that sort of you know utterly uh cheap sort of ways to think about Decart

and one Pratt started to uh talk about actually what he's talking about what what Decart is talking about from the sort of information that Now we have philosophical but also from the perspective of you know mechanics uh computation

a statistical mechanics so on so forth. Um and he wrote particularly one really interesting essay uh which is called rational mechanics and natural mathematics.

is Van and Pratt. P R A T. So I just want here to use Pratt carefully.

He's of course he's not being introduced as a historian of Daycart u or uh a magical solver of all 17th century problem that Daycart left behind.

I think it's helpful here um as a speculative formal analog a way of seeing that so-called cartisian gap between mind and body need not be treated immediately as a fundamental pathology can be treated as a problem of interaction.

Yeah. The gap therefore is not necessarily a wound in thought, a trauma. It may be a place where thought first becomes honest about the differences between planes, the conditions of transition and the cost of do and so relations.

This is where the connection to Alarasmi becomes more than genealological decoration. In fact, algebra doesn't abolish the unknown. As I said, but rather it stages it to the foreground.

It gives the unknown a position inside an equation. restores missing terms, cancels false asymmetries, and brings opposed sides into a relation in which something can be solved without pretending that differences have all vanished.

is therefore isn't a metaphor for reconciliation in the sentimental sense. These are fundamental operations for forcing broken or asymmetric terms across different localities um into a space where their relation becomes tractable.

So we can create the reconstruction traces of our own history as subjects. They do not deny the gap. They organi operationalize it. In fact, you see this is the whole point. Enlightenment is about oper oper operationalizing of of what is already has made the local

subject. They say let the unknown stand but not as a mystery with theological privileges.

But now let it stand where it can be actually transformed. Seen from this very angle, the cartisian mind body problem can be reread as an algebraic problem before it becomes a metaphysical scandal at the hand of some idiots.

Mind and body are not simply two unfortunate substances that Decart left in an awkward room together.

And let's see which one comes out of the room after murdering the other. Right?

There are two domains whose interaction has not yet been given the right formal grammar.

There are two domains whose interaction uh sorry uh that I read the the usual complaints which we often hears about daycart's mind body uh problem says daycart's splits split u split the world and could not put it back together right it split

the world into mind and body and then it couldn't back together. Bunch of [ __ ] [ __ ] But of course, this complaint is often too quick in its judgment.

Sometimes the first philosophical achievement is to split correctly. Remember what Plato told us. Cut at the joints as opposed to splintering the bones.

Because a bad unity is only confusion with a crown on its head. A scholastic cognition had many unities, but many of them were merely unexamined of sense, authority, theology image icons idols and inherited naturalism and of course essentialism.

Decart's gap is therefore also an act of intellectual hygiene. We we should basically sometimes you know abide by the laws of intellectual hygiene. Not always though it breaks a false continuity so that a real relation can become finally thinkable.

So v one prra of vasure is precisely that the between the between between mind and body may be more primitive than the within.

The standard objection cartisian dualism assumes that interaction between fundamentally dissimilar planes must be harder than interaction inside one plane.

Pratt turns these assumptions around in his reconstruction. Events of the body interact with states of the mind.

A physical event impresses its occurrence on a mental state dually. Now dual is not dualism.

When we are talking about duality, we are talking about interaction. Dualism is when you inflate, you know, uh, two terms, one of them is underdefined to another term and then that would be dualism of some sort, right? Or both

terms underdefined. But duality is actually a name for interaction, right? Inter interaction confrontation between actions or practices.

So a physical event impresses it occurrence on a mental state. Dually a mental state infers the prior occurrence of the event. Impression runs with time inference.

swims against it. Time flows forward and logic backward. Between them is not a mystical spark and in fact not the pineal gland as a metaphysical hardware not God's emergency service and in fact not pre-established harmony mon uh monest evacuation

between them is an intraction matrix a space in which physical appearance and logical uptake become dual aspects of a single and singular rational structure.

So this is why Pratt's language is so useful for our purposes. Body body interaction and mind interaction can be derived as secondary from the prim primary relation between bodily events and mental states in often simplified cases. Residuation allows one to infer temporal precedence

among events and permitted transitions among the states by asking what all entities on the opposite side record or allow.

Two events do not simply whisper to one another in a sealed physical corridor in a black box. Two essays do not simply commune in a private mental chapel.

Each relation is tested through the opposite plane. This is a strange and powerful thoughts.

You know the within is re reconstructed through the in between. The interface is not an embarrassment added after the real work is done. The interface is where the real work finally begins.

Now we can hear the algebraic resonance more strongly. Alaba means confrontation or balancing across a relation. Pratt's interaction matrix is in a different register a table of confrontations.

Events and states face one another. Occurrence and interference and inference answer one another. Body and mind are not fused, but neither are they merely stranded from one another. The problem becomes one of lawful transformation across differences.

The cartisian gap widened through Alharasmi and refracted through PR becomes a site of rational mechanics.

and mechanics not of dead pushes alone but of impression, inference, duality and recon reconstructible interaction.

Here the sakes of enlightenment now sharpen. The hijacked enlightenment loves two equally bad solutions.

One is reductive monism. Everything is ultimately body, matter, mechanism, data biology economy computation this, that. The other is a mystical supplement of it.

Whenever relation becomes difficult, insert surreptitiously the word soul, spirit miracle transcendence transcendent, providence, or the sovereign exception.

Decar's problem read through Alarazmi and Pratt refuses both in fact simultaneously it demands neither reduction to one side nor a called traffic between two sides but an intelligible account of how terms interact across real concrete differences. The gap

becomes a demand for an operator. It's not a hole to be filled with piety or plastered over by scienticism or logicism.

This also gives us a more precise sense of rational computational mechanics. Computation is here is not automatic automatic circulation by a black box.

It's the organization of acts traces transformation and dual relations. is a discipline that lets a problem be reconstructed from its very own operations. When a physical event impresses itself on a state and a state mental state and a mental estate uh of

mind infers an event, we have an elementary schema of what reason does actually in the world.

It receives marks but it also questions them backwards. questioning back right which I mentioned earlier on is affected by events but it's also reconstructs their condition it's never merely passive reception and never merely sovereign command reason lives in

the double movement between being impressed upon and inferring what must have actually occurred So from this point of view the kito also changes.

It is not a narcissistic fortress as people usually uh you know tell Decart well you know he's just like in the business of uh narcissistic solypism of reason. It is an event state relation under maximum pressure.

The act of doubting impresses itself as the event that cannot be erased without performing it again. While the thinking estate infers the occurrence of the act that sustains it. Kito is not simply I am. It is the minimal algebra

of self relation under doubt. A tiny rational mechanics protocol in which event a state inference and persistence fold into one another.

Decart does not find a royal subject behind the world. He finds a relation that cannot be cancelled without reinscribing itself.

The subject begins not as a substance in repose but rather as interaction that survives its own attempt at selfabolition.

This is a point at which the first session must prepare the second. Elizabeth of Bohemia will not allow this rational mechanics to remain a beautiful diagram.

She will demand to know how the interface works when the body is not formal endpoint but a living suffering acting body. Espinosa will then alter the architecture by denying that mind and body require a bridge between two substances at all. Espinosa's imminence

is not interesting because it saves us from a stupid cartisian mistake. It is interesting because it radicalizes a problem Decart made utterly visible. How can difference be without superstition and relation without utter collapse?

So let's have a rest and come back and then we will have question and answers.

Uh, how many minutes do we have at this point? Does anyone know? Oh, sorry. I forgot.

My apologies. One second. I can't I can't hear anything. Um, okay. Yes, you were saying as a result there.

Uh, how many minutes we have? Does anyone know how much time we have? I suppose about an hour at most.

I can't hear anything. It was supposed to go to 9:30, but you came on later. So maybe for some reason, I don't know. I think that there is some sort of problem here at my end. Um, let me see. One second. One second.

My apologies. Uh, my earbuds were in my pocket. That's why I couldn't hear you.

So, how much uh time do we have? about an hour. About one hour. Okay. So, I can actually, you know, uh fast forward uh to talk a little bit about Elizabeth and then then we open the question and

answers, right? Uh I think that would be that would be good. Uh, of course I will read the rest of this um uh next session and then of course the Espinosa session. Um, so let me start uh you know so why

Elizabeth Bohemia? Well, you know the body returns as a problem of intraction. Princess Elizabeth enters here as a supplement and of course uh no longer a polite genderly corrected addendum from the outside to the problem of enlightenment.

Elizabeth enters as a test of the whole operation. In the May June 1643 correspondence, she presses day cards on the relation between mind and body by asking how can an immaterial thinking thing determine a body to move.

Good question. Sound The question, however, is rather devastating for Daycart because it refuses to let Cartisian reduction remain satisfied with abstract distinction and because it demands an operative account of relation, a concrete operative account of relation or interaction in the Pratt sense.

It says in effect if you have separated the terms show the algebra by which they answer to one another. Really on paper show me the goddamn algebra here.

This is why Elizabeth belongs precisely u in this seminar after all as me and after the speculative detour through Pratt her question is not just why did you split mind and body it's actually quite sharper having split them what makes the

relation intelligible at the end between mind and body. Right? What is the rule of correspondence here?

What is the operator? What restores and balances the terms without fraud? She asked Daycart to perform alaba.

on his own goddamn metaphysics. Restore the missing relation. Balance the two sides. Do not smuggle at this point the bridge in true metaphor and then call it enlightenment philosophy.

The temptation is to treat Elizabeth as merely refuting Daycart and some people have done that. I think it's kind of a cheat move because these two were really uh you know interlocutors the best interlocutors of their own time.

On the other hand, I think she forces cartisianism to become responsible for its own dualities, not dualism, dualities.

If thought has distinguished mind and body, if it has separated the act of thinking from the extent the thing, if it has use reduction to clarify what had been confi confused, then it must also explain how these clarify terms bear

upon lived experience, action, illness, effect sex decision gender fatigue pain, hunger, and the conduct of life.

So what Elizabeth asks is that what happens to method when the problem is no longer merely to know an object but to live as an embodied rational being a human subject.

Her intervention prevents the cartisian subject from oifying into a sovereign abstraction. It demonstrates that the formation of the subject of science cannot mean the evacuation of embodiment.

It means that embodiment becomes a problem to be thought without surrendering to the first image of the body we have.

Ouch. That's a really, you know, precisely the first body of the image that we have of ourselves is just a meat bag.

Right? The body is not simply an obstacle to reason, nor a mute machine waiting for mental command from high above.

It is a site at which causal, effective, practical, and epistemic relations ultimately converge. The body is not the ruin of the method in this sense. It's the demand that method become adequate to a more difficult problem yet etched in the history of

enlightenment. Elizabeth's question also exposes the inadequacy of any enlightenment confuses abstraction with emancipation. Sure abstraction is powerful only when it can return to the body without panic, disgust or or metaphysical improvisation.

Otherwise, the abstract subject becomes one more polished idol, an image of reason that cannot survive fever depression appetite injury dependency, fatigue, or great grief.

A philosophy that cannot pass through the body is not too pure for politics is unfortunately extremely underdeveloped.

This is also where Pratt's speculative formalism and Elizabeth's philosophical pressure diverge rather productively I must say.

Pratt gives us a formal imagination of interaction, events and states. Events being of the body and the states being of the mind.

Uh impression and inference, time and logic between plain relation as primary. Elizabeth gives us the exist ex existential and practical cost of the same demand.

For she asks not only whether a relation can be modeled, but whether it can account for the lived unity of a person who thinks, suffers, governs herself and is acted upon by the world.

So she doesn't let the matrix become another cave image. but rather she asks and questions us what the matrix can do when the body is ill. When the passions disturb our judgments, when the conduct of life cannot wait for

metaphysical tittiness, her question prepares a transition to esposa without making espinosa, you know, a cheap afterthought solution.

So daycart gives us reduction method and experimental chamber of the mid meditator. Alarazmi gives us the procedural drama of restoring and balancing terms across a relation or worlds. In fact, if we want to be a little bit more ambitious at this point,

Pratt lets us glimpse how interaction itself might be treated as primary rather than as an afterthought.

Elizabeth then asks whether this entire apparatus can survive contact with a living body. Espinosa will radicalize this question ultimately.

What if mind and body are not two substances requiring miraculous coordination but two expressions under different attributes and a one imminent unholy order.

What if emancipation begins not by escaping nature but by understanding our place within its conditions of possibility. Thank you so much.

So questions. Oh. Uh, Neve and uh who was that? Yes. Uh, Zachary. Zachary. Nev.

Uh, I think Zachary, then Neve. Uh, then Arnab then Ario. My apologies. I cannot see these fonts anymore.

So, uh, please go on. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I'm super interested in this question of difference and relation that appears to regenerate at different scales. You have alcoa which is the balancing on either side of the equation. You have the

dialogic exchange of Elizabeth and Deart. You have the body and soul, but then you also have kind of this persistent theme in the lecture of cultural dislocation as the instigation to enlightenment. And Alismi of course is not just Islamic you know he's a

Persian guy from what's now like Usbekistsan and Baghdad writing about you know very old Arab kinship and Islamic kinship uh regulation and that's what he's trying to solve right um so there's this way in which that the engagement with cultural particularity

and the particularities of cultural difference in the case of this rational subject precipitates the reaching for the something else like he says, "Well, why don't I use Vadic formulas uh which are derived from Hindu ritual contexts to solve Arab inheritance

problems?" Neither of them are his culturally speaking, right? But he is able to build this bridge and it's not just a bunch of stuff to him.

So my question is really like to what extent is this, let's say, failure of enlightenment to go far enough? I understand like we don't want to just put the Islamic civilization on a pedestal and act like they had all the

answers. they were quite imperializing and and so on. But to what extent is, you know, what we see now where the idolatry of the alien, the idolatry of the the outside in many ways is just kind of an image

that's been draped over people just don't want to read along or they just don't want to engage with cultural difference as something in which universality can be discovered through reduction to particulars and deep engagement with particulars. And you

know to what extent like is the socially embedded nature of intelligence not intelligence embedded within the community but intelligence embedded within this kind of dislocated capacity for dialogue that you get with for example Arabic functioning as you know a

medium of communication right I mean it is and it's kind of one that is stabilized through divine authority but it's quite important that this is happening dialogically and I just wonder if that changes what we mean when we say

intelligence is socially embedded rather then that means it's community dependent and boxed in. It rather means that it precipitates it's a particular reaction to the condition of dislocation. There are many possible reactions as we know but I I wonder

yes uh well I don't have uh the best answer for you but I have uh the best work uh in mind to answer some of your questions. It's so I uh at the beginning I mentioned so toile wrote uh you know song

which is essentially the prequel to Robins and Cros desert island tales and it was translated to Latin as um philosophers autodidactus autodidactic philosopher her.

Then Nafi came and wrote this magnificent book. Unbelievable. It's considered to be the first philosophical sci-fi ever written. In fact, the first sci-fi ever written.

It's called meaning that treaties of uh on the people of the prophet and the the problem of this book is quite severe.

So you know you have the Robinson uh you don't get Friday unfortunately in this story and Robinson you know uh just like create a community uh of trees everything around himself and then he just starts to boat around

in the this um you know tiny hungaloration of islands and he finally meets the first person and you know he he always thinks from his own mind.

He speculates. So why is that for example stars moved in this direction? Why is that for example this is this?

Why is it this that and then he he thinks that it's just very particular to his own kind meaning Robinson Crosa mentality a desert island child and then he he sees another person on another desert island uh in the

you know in this configuration and then the second person actually had the same sort of thoughts but with different beliefs and then they become friends, they become buddies and they start to boat together now to discover more and then they come across different sort

of islands and everyone understands something very profound about cosmos and about what human might be except that they cannot actually exactly say what this is.

Right? And then finally uh the end scene when they finally understand who they are, well basically they're aliens.

You know, for some stupid reason, they have ended up on a terrestrial sublunary slum called Earth.

And then when they understand this unfortunately an event happens which is the day of resurrection.

So at this point they have nothing to do uh other than just you know waiting for the day of their own judgments.

Um I think it's quite you know universalism is dangerous precisely because of this not because of the dangers of colonialism because that's universalism with uniformity.

Universalism is dangerous precisely because once we actually understand what we have always been doing, God might transpire.

And this is not that you're talking about. This is another what was it? Okay.

Thank you. Absolutely. Uh is Ne uh here? Yeah. Yeah. Can you Yes. Yes. Yes.

Hear me? Okay. Of course. You're getting a little bit caught up, but but it's fine. It's fine.

It's fine. Go on. Okay. Good. Love you. Um yeah. How you doing? Um great great seminar. Thanks so much. Um, so yeah, I'll miss a little bit in between, so forgive me if my my question is kind of

um, you know, maybe has been answered or been asked. Um, but, uh, what I'm kind of curious about, um, is going back to the the question of universalism, um, of reason um, not having a home. Um, it doesn't need to belong, you say. Uh,

but ideally it should cover all places, you know, um, as as a universalism. Um and I think you you know you did address the the the aspect of um universalism not being about um uniformity. Um but of course the kind of criticism you know

will be that it's a you know flattening of space in order for their you know for reason to to in you know instate itself.

Um so I did a you know a really interesting seminar series with Matt hair as I'm sure you know um on kabayas and of course I know Matt Matt.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So um the grumpy man the grumpy man of mathematics. Oh really is? Oh I don't know. Anyway, he was talking about Daycart uh Day Decart's uh you know analytic and uh one of the things that was really

interesting about that was that uh you know Daycart had this theory of no total simul you know no all at oneness of course when he's talking about you know um representation you know we are in time and in human representation um and

and I guess actually you know this is talking about daycart as the sort of revol you know the revolution of the theory of representation um also But then of course its validity, its justification as a claim. Um and I'm

just kind of wondering about um is you know this being sort of relative to the omnipresasant being who who you know is necessarily all at once. And I guess some of this will be coming into play in relation to um you know some of the the

disputes with Newton um that dayart has you know where the the whole question of um action at a distance um and yeah.

Okay. Finally, just to say, you know, I'm just wondering about the I don't know if I picked up rightly that we were talking about the self- inferiority problem of the enlightenment itself. um introducing representation as a technique of mind uh mind body you know

split um where you speak about it in a kind of in a s in an alien sense uh you know of the human um that this also there is a kind of purging of the divine you know and the the the religious u

omniresence um yeah does that does that make sense yes uh I'm going to give you an answer uh you know um because it's the question is extremely multi-layered and please please please uh ne um tell me if I'm just utterly uh you know

going off the track at this point. Yes, of course. You know, let's talk about this question of the alien, right?

Who are the aliens? Right? It's essentially um the problem comes to this that um everything comes ultimately uh to the method and techniques, right?

um for us to expand our world, our world cognitively but also physically probably. And enlightenment, European enlightenment tried to take this extremely literally by expanding its word uh world geographically which you know amounted to colonialism as we know it. It's a technical mastery,

right? But then uh we can we can think about this in a different way in a sense that we say well you know um how about we think about this cognitively that to think a different world requires new

techniques otherwise you cannot do it right And if you do that, most probably we have done that already, you will achieve some sort of effect of uh alieness, not alienation alienness.

You you feel as if the world no longer belongs to you. Earth is not your home anymore.

There is this great uh story that uh Cordwer Smith you know the sci-fi author who also was a highranking CIA officer Paul Linbar uh wrote u you know manual for the psychological warfare uh but also he's re also rumored to be a

one of the most famous psychological patients ever recorded. His name or uh pseudonym is Kirk Allen.

So Kirk Allen uh goes to this psychiatrist and the psychiatrist says you know this guy this patient is so resistance resistant to to all sort of question I ask he doesn't want to say that anything is wrong with him

after three sessions uh upon pressing him more interrogations. He finally uh the patient named Kirk Allen which is called Wer Smith probably gives up and he said well you know screw this I don't belong here my boss sent me to this session with you

precisely because the last time that I miss my deadline after 10 times S he told me that why is that you are missing your deadlines because you never missed your deadlines back in the day. He said well you know

I am so sorry I will promise you to spend more time on planet earth.

Do you understand the meaning of that? So this is the idea of the human. We just don't want to spend time on some [ __ ] homeland and earth the order of of himat homeland this that that in fact it is becoming quite clear

that every person who says that well you know I want to spend more time. My homeland happens to be a goddamn fascist at this point.

So I would say yes, all of this connects with one another in terms of method, in terms of alieness.

But our alieness is not alieness in a kind of cheesy green alien man. It's just because we are alien in a sense that we can always true enlightenment, you know, uh reinvent of the very methods through which we came across the conditions of

possibilities of our subjectthood and so was geography. So as history, so as this, so as that, that by all definitions, I think it makes us alien.

Um, ne. Yes. Sorry. Yeah. Yes. So So yeah. uh you know so I think that there is there is a huge amount of stuff going on behind this idea of enlightenment and subjects um you know political subject revolutionary

subject global subject local subject so on so forth I would say that well you know if we are talking about subject if we are talking about revolution if we are talking about this and that none of this make it less alien. In

fact, if we look at it from a god's eye view, hypothetical, you know, Archimedian uh point of view, there is something very peculiar about first the human subject and also the task that or the tasks which uh the human

subject often subscribes to. Um this is I think what the enlightenment already is is a certain sort of protocols.

We don't know whether they were deterministic meaning that they were inevitably going to unfold or it was just like you know uh us doing it or you know the the religious dogma dma not in a uh in a bad way.

uh you know that that sentence that God God told me to well God told me to it might be as well you can say that aliens told me to right that there is something very specific with human conduct

in a sense of how it proliferates his cognition practice practices. Sometimes by way of military devices, sometimes by you know religion, sometimes by this, sometimes by that.

But there is a beauty in it. There is a beauty in it, but also a fundamental sinisterness.

a sinisterness that I think that we should take it extremely seriously precisely because it shows that humans have the capacity to do extreme feats of enlightenment and revolution and also uh regression to the human cave of themselves.

One of the greatest figures that has talked about this is uh you know the the Muslim scholar uh who got martyed, executed and uh he had this idea well basically what is light if not the light upon the human that

humans always in a very strange sort of ritualistic sort of way. Once they want light to be, you know, projected upon them, not out of narcissistic syndromes, precisely because to understand who they are and what they can do ultimately.

And humans can do a lot of [ __ ] Yeah. What you seem to be saying is that uh um enlightenment um rationality like is a is a commitment to a trajectory of reconciling with um um a kind of um you

know well with the the the the the mobility that you know techniques provide. Um but reconciling it's a reconciliation reconciliation with the matrix that where they have come from ultimately and this reconciliation of the matrix you might say that well all matrixes are

natural but uh you might say that well you know what if the matrix was actually of alien origin yeah I am not going to talk about science If I here is a I'm talking about in a very rational sort of way that yes

that there is a certain sort of tendency for humans to reconciles reconcile precisely through questioning back going into the foundations to reconcile with where they came from.

And then humans become extremely depressed if they find out that they only came from planet Earth. That would be a bad news for humans.

Yeah. Um just one last thing I would just say is um um I'm getting trying to get my head around the you know the the principle of identity that you introduce in speaking about equations and for me very often you know uh maybe it's the

kind of critique of enlightenment you know um as a kind of a dogma you know that um that sees that attached to kind of belonging you know and uh belonging to to place and you know um entrenched identity.

You're mobilizing um yeah, you're mobilizing identity though within a mo within a technique uh that is about mobility. Um and uh and and and and precisely not about you know trying to root and to to to belong in relation to that or through

it. Yes. that that that brings uh the the one of the first things that you said you know home the question of well the question of home makes always makes sense for so many people who had been kind of you know forced out of their

homes right uh I'm not going to name names but we know what we are talking about at this point people who have been you lost their homes, went to Europe, then exterminated in mass and you know seizing another home,

thinking it's their home. Well, the question of home is not really interesting. Reason doesn't have a home.

Humans don't have a home. If we if we really question back to what exactly what we are, you know, this is a question of enlightenment to strip back the facade of our homeliness.

And I think that if you think AI is an strange news for humans, I think that we can survive a few more centuries without the problems of climate change.

We will see some other sort of things that are utterly unbelievable. with regard to the origins of possible humans.

Thanks so much Raza. Thank you. Absolutely. Uh thank you Raza for the great seminar the the first class. It was amazing actually. And the way you traced the the the journey of uh the dialogue of of worlds, the the

meeting of worlds, the journey of the um the subject and the the phenomena of enlight the phenomenon of the the enlightenment. So uh yes what what my question was about uh I was thinking of the final step where uh

Elizabeth was was talking about the interface of the in between the mind and the body. I was thinking of uh the concept of mediation and where does that stand in case of the cartesian uh divide if no I mean mediation is absolutely

the duality fundamental precisely because the whole idea of enlightenment In one single sentence is the abolition of the myth of epistemological ontological computational or transcendent immediacy.

Yeah. So everything always begins with mediation. But the whole point is that well you know it's not as if Decar wants to say well you know imminence is a stupid idea. No or uh immediacy is is a sher of a

philosophical concept. But rather that when we try to think about such ideas and uh in practice and in in thought in cognition theoretical practical, we have to always um think that we arrive at certain sort of ideas of immediacy or

imminence. uh which are not actually equivocal um by way of certain sort of mediations.

But what are the procedures or principles of such mediations that can be you know they they can be you know uh transferred um translated across continents across loces of cognitions and practice and so on so forth. So I think this is this is

the revolutionary core of the enlightenment precisely because in that sense daycarts wants to say well you know these are the principles rights uh and we are always dealing with mediations we don't have an immediate access to immediacy so to speak

if that is the case absolutely absolutely yeah How how how are we going to proliferate?

Yeah. Proliferate these methods of a of of questioning back a sweeping back to what connects us all. Well, if it connects that's that's that's what make cartisian uh thought a little bit too dangerous for human mind precisely because if you

do that and uh you take it with complete elegance and not distortion. You know if all of us across different desert islands claw back to the origins we will see that oh my god where we have come from

and it's not just Darwinian principle absolutely yes because Resa I was also thinking a second point about that mediation can also be uh is the core of the Kartian philosophy but it can be very dangerous also because we mediate through the limits of

our knowledge and our fears our imaginaryies. So absolutely we we in in in that respect when we mediate we are sitting.

Yes. Yes. No no no we we absolutely you are right. We mediate or meditate at the edge of our bodies.

Our bodies are always limited. Absolutely. Exactly. We are finite beings and that that limitation uh when we mediate through our the limits of our bodies, our being and also our uh imaginaries, our fears, then then mutations occur, dangerous

mutations that leads to the kind of uh from from massacres to genocide to wars All of it and misunderstandings.

Absolutely. Misunderstanding. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I mean Dayart ultimately wants to create a philosophy in the contemporary sense u to appropriate William Whimsats a philosophy for limited beings distined for being unlimited.

Yeah, that's that job of enlightenment. It's beautiful actually and it's it's Prometheian also. It is utterly it's it's it's in fact far above Prometheianism precisely because because you ascend into the dark with rainbows son's unicorns right thank you thank you

absolutely Uh, next is it Alo? My apologies. I cannot see the names at this point. I am so sorry.

My my sight is so bad that it's just unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. That was amazing. I guess my question is about this conception of enlightenment as the critique of false images and specifically the inquiry into the

conditions under which these false images take on their authority. uh in relation to meditation 4 because there we you know error it is this kind of mirage projected over nothingness and you know you you said that it kind of

beckons you into the wasteland or the desert but because Daycart doesn't ascribe any kind of formal cause behind these these illusions I just wonder how we can account for that authority, the kind of compelling force that leads us to grasp these

illusions because at certain moments I feel like Daycart's kind of saying that the subject of science is maybe constitutively blind to the ideological causes of illusion. But then I wonder where that leaves a kind of genealogical inquiry into the causes

of illusions if they're consistently blind to those. I don't know if that makes sense.

No, no, it makes sense. It's a difficult question though. Um I think Leart's primary uh objective uh is to you know kind of combat and put a brutality move in mortal combat sense on on high church of high

schoolism. He's not really interested in what exactly might happen afterwards. That's his weakness. Achilles Hill, as I said, um he's a fundamental fundamental Christian.

No doubt about it. You see the fact that enlightenment even in the European sense has been instigated by some of the most religious people on earth.

Daycart and Espinosa says something about what enlightenment was supposed to be, right? Esposa, you know, every time that he walks, you know, other Jews like shoot [ __ ] at him and say him uh tell him bad names

and so on so forth. I mean, is there any more Jewish person than Spinoza? Really I just want to know is there any more Christian person who can come forward than Daycart?

No, absolutely not. I think they primary uh mission objective was just really to purge false religions.

But you see, purging false religion is not an easy task precisely because the moment that you think that you have purged it, idolatry shows its face.

Hence, Plato's suspicion of images. Images always take hold upon cognition. And once images take hold, power takes hold and so as authorization.

I think this has happened. How it's going to move forward is quite going to be very a speculative.

I don't think that to be honest with you enlightenment after this sort of dynasty of degradations uh can survive. Um we are essentially moving toward the age of darkness and unfortunately this age of darkness is not isotilian scholasticism because that was exciting.

Yeah. No, this is it most probably. Uh yeah, of course there will be always underground movements as during the highest scholastic era.

Certain sort of people work against that sort of tendencies. Uh but I think that humans always tend to essentialize themselves and by essentializing themselves they connect themselves with an essentialize God.

An essentialize then you essentialize God. then you essentialize method essentialize techniques and so on so forth and after that uh when the entire system is deployed I don't think there is a way out of this trap I think we have created a trap for

ourselves and getting out of this trap I would say is uh if not extremely difficult but would be extremely costly.

But if project enlightenment is about always the future as Decart and Espinosa, you know, envisioned it, then maybe we should actually pay the cost right now.

And let our children go free. Whoever or whatever they may be a pessimistic. Sorry that I gave you a very pessimistic Um, one more. I mean, do you see do you see Kant with with his ideas with with

transcendental illusion as kind of trying to I mean as effectively ending the enlightenment by structurally like ensuring that reason is subordinated to these kinds of false images that Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. And and of course it's not

just Kant, it's just also Nick land. There there is there is a there is a fundamental problem here precisely because uh certain sort of philosophers at some points in time notice that the hijacked enlightenment uh is going to be uh a ruin a ruin for

the entire planet. Right. And then they started to rise against it. Nisha is a great example. Does a spake zarra instead of does a spake algorithm.

Nisha knew exactly what might happen. Um so yes uh it's not that my idea of resurrecting enlightenment is a good idea. I'm just saying that well you know it's worth worthwhile to resurrect it one last time see what might happen.

But otherwise um within a computer program different scenarios of enlightenment that we have simulated across the globe have always failed unfortunately.

Yeah, but we should always understand why a program fails. I'm an engineer, right? By training.

Why a program fails and how it can be corrected. Just because a program fails doesn't mean a hypothesis is not real.

So, next one. My apologies. I cannot see your name. Yeah. So, I think it's me.

Mihi. Yeah. Thank you for the great seminar. I was really struck by the idea of the cave as a political technology. And I have like two short interrelated questions on the on the side of the subject formation. I was thinking of how

can we transform that individual subject formation or how can we attune it to a social formation or to a collective formation because I think that that would be the actual end goal of it all.

not to produce individual subjects but to actually transform the collective uh all of the collective sphere and also on this same topic I was also thinking if there are any socopolitical counterparts of this authentic enlightenment revolution you spoke about like do you see the I don't

know example historical examples like do you see the Paris commune as being one or the Soviet revolution or was there an actual instantiation of this enlightenment protocols.

Thank you. Uh so you see the subject always appears as as an individual but the conditions of constitution of a subject is collective. Friends, a subject is not an individual is through and through a collective precisely because the subject

abstractly, concretely and determinately shows what it has come from, where it has come from. Right?

uh that that's that's something that we always need to remember that you know when we are talking about a subject individual subject even decart subject it's not the condition of possibility of a secular subject but a collective subject right

subjectivity always already is intersubjectivity ity so to speak right uh and with regard to the examples well you know I don't think that we can say that well you know oh well can we have an example of this can we have example

of that no if we really look into the history of humankind mind in history park excellence.

I think the whole better idea the better question is that you know would be that resa do you think that for example the move from the bullshik revolution to Islamic revolution captures this subjectivity.

So we have to we have to talk about processes right rather than an an exact historical example at a very specific time because that never actually exhaust the possibilities of the subject or the possibilities of what we are

actually talking about. When we are talking about the processes, I would say well you know sure most probably uh there would be exemplars of this but they haven't come but more gravely every sort of exemplars of the sort of processes that we have

ever had turned into [ __ ] Yeah, I mean there is this uh I will try to translate this at some point. There is this uh piece by Murad Faradur is a is a leftist philosopher in Iran very smart uh philosopher and translator

and he wrote this thing that well you know is Islamic Republic is just the bass child of Bolshevik revolution right cannibalizing ing his own children day in day out.

Look, after all this stuff that has happened, I think it's completely a very sound thesis, massacres, war, ga, so on and so forth.

So um David, you haven't talked. Um, can you hear me? Yes. Uh, I don't know if I was next in line, but I'll take the the chance. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Oh. Oh, sorry. Uh, Mika, I think what I think we have two Mikas. Sorry, Mika.

Please uh apologize if I uh bumped you down. I already went, so he can go.

Yes. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mika. Um, I wanted to ask you, um, maybe this has nothing to do, so if it's too far-fetched, please tell me, but I going back to images and the critique of images

by Plato and the card. Um I was I I connected it with the concept of images in Bon and I was just like uh trying to think how would a project like that of Berson which also influences the

attempt at inverting platinism and like vindicating simulacra against like the real thing etc like h how would that um project from Bon to the le would fit or be against this genealogy of enlightenment which is premised upon the critic of images. I don't know if

that's intelligible. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. I I think it absolutely fits into the genealogy.

You know, the only thing that doesn't fit is when you smuggle a high dose of vitalism into the formula where basically this become escalasticism, right? Articilianism, right?

But the the reversion even even the veneration of simulacra as a critical uh foil against you know um Plato's suspicion it's all fine when it becomes a little pathological I have noticed is when you know you just bring in a lot of

vitalistic presuppositions into the fold at that point. Yes, it of course becomes Arisilianism. And uh I have I had this uh magnificent students um who who told me that Resa you know is a travesty for you to insult Aristotle.

I said okay okay sorry. Um and I said but but you know precisely because Aristotle contributed so much to science philosophy essentially became a handmaidaden of sciences themselves.

And you know sciences ultimately are going to go up create a singularity event where basically you know you cannot catch uh science with philosophy and at that very moment you know philosophy shows its limits.

the the I think that the real genuine mistake of Aristotle and Scholasticism particularly the higher scholasticism was that you know they they really genuinely thought that philosophy can achieve the status of science but of course it cannot achieve it. These are

two different categories. Plato always thought that no let's just think about philosophy as opposed to science.

Let's think about time. Let's think about metaphysics. Let's think about forms. Let's think about Parminidis, the old man of Adabra, such that we can actually put our heads wrapping around certain sort of problems that most probably even a future science

cannot wrap its mind around. You see this is this is a this is I think the twist. So Aristotle really genuinely one of the greatest philosophers of all time but precisely because he accelerated the philosophy or the philosophical thesis towards

science. Well, you know, at some point simply science becomes better than philosophy uh in certain sort of claims, right?

And at that point, you can't actually say, well, you know, oh well, you know, philosophy is not a handmaidaiden of science. No, in that sense, a scholastic sense, philosophy becomes a handmaiden of science because science uh can tell you much

better stories about natural events, about causal interactions and so on so forth than philosophy can ever do. What philosoph does, he thinks philosophy is the disciple or the discipline of time itself, right?

in a sense that there would be dozen so metaphysical problems but these are not exactly metaphysical problems. These are metaphysical problems precisely because we haven't had time to think about them thoroughly.

And he says well you know in in Parmines in Philibus and so on so forth that well you know um if we can actually just talk about these sort of problems maybe we can arrive at the gates uh of Atlantis

new world. I think that is very quite true. So uh it's just that these two philosophers have fundamentally different approaches to the relation between science and philosophy.

One wants to make philosophy akin to science. And of course if you really push philosophy toward that direction, philosophy ultimately fails because philosophy is not really a science and then hence you get really a bad enlightenment that we have today.

We say that what you know Dawkins and who's that um um the guy who got cancelled me too you know uh the the astrobiologist uh astrophysicist um the guy who was public figure in America Tyson with the what was it? What was his

name? Ras Tyson. Yes. And you know there was this thing that Dawkins and him had a uh you know bro moment and then and then literally there huge audience out there and then someone said well can I go to philosophy

department and Tyson says about it. No, this is the worst. This is the worst that can happen to any human being to go to a philosophy or learn philosophy because science breaks philosophy.

And then uh Dawkins being a goddamn jerk as always says yes yes that's very true very true and then uh then they start having a internal conversation and well basically uh Tyson says that well you know when if

I want to die I want to die on planet earth you know uh and I don't wants to be incinerated.

Who gives a [ __ ] I want my body to be buried in the, you know, in the soil so my energy goes back to the planet Earth.

Oh, damn. these stupid scientists. But you see that they are really the end game of the genealogy of our sotilianism essentially.

Yeah. A proper platonic philosopher. Even goddamn Alen Badu would never say something this on TV.

Ma, yeah, maybe it can be quick. Um, I just don't know if I understand the spinos and eminence as related to deart's I'm not going to call it a project. I just I'm lack of words, but like the

algorith is it like summary of his kind of like method in creation of a subject is the imminence. I don't know the relationship between the two. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

So uh well you have to wait for next session. So in a very small uh formulike sort of way if I may say so you see uh Decart wants a fundamental methodological approach.

Espinosa wants to essentially change the substrate of thought itself, right? To what? To to nature. To nature. God as nature.

Right. Okay. All right. Okay. That's all. I have simple questions. Yeah. But they can converge. But they can converge. Both. Both of them. They can converge.

Yeah. That's why I think that it's almost as if he can like summarize the entirety of um what's his name um Deart um in all his permutations as the eminence because it is just nature in the end but maybe it's too

reductionist. Um I don't think that Decart is actually a naturist person. Yeah. Decart is a is is an engineer of reduction itself.

Yeah. In a sense that he wants to really go back see according to Uklit.

Yeah. You know think about every sort of uklid diagrams you can reduce reduce the entire diagram to bunch of definitions data demonstrations so on so forth laws and these are not laws exactly.

These are uh you know um ways of manipulating a diagram, a logical diagram. Sure.

Um this is Decard's problem. Uh Espinosa's uh problem is that well, you know, let's just scam God at this point and call it nature, right?

and and the way that ultimately of course that so many people think that spinota is anti-cartisian sort of figure but I don't think so precisely because they really converge in the same problem and that's problem is the most important one which is that

of the enlightenment I guess I'll wait for the next one. Thank you. Love you, Evan.

Um, hi again. So, sorry. Yes. Love you. Don't worry. Okay. I had a little bit too much going on, but I just want to like simplify to one thing.

So seems like the enlightenment was about this you know the response maybe to an illogical dogmatic um religious religious uh way of thinking uh against like it was using the reason of course right um it wasn't though it wasn't enlightenment

was a response to a certain sort of Bad naturalism initiated by a scholastic church.

A bad reading of Aristotle unfortunately. Okay, I take that too. Um so like essentially a religion is also a bad reading of nature in my opinion. Um like you said the resurrection of the enlightenment again but I want to ask like in which terms

because like now is a violence era which is going also unreasonably uh bad which is I think a unhealthy reading of science is causing that or like Obviously a misuse of power like inequality but essentially it's like an there are possibilities that we

could do but we are not doing them but we could. So like so in which terms enlightenment would come again resurrect again as like what would or which tools would its um frontiers to to answer that question? I think that

we should ask ourselves, you know, what exactly happened to enlightenment to become this author authorian figure at this point, right? You know, you cannot uh assault on an authoritative system if you do not understand what its uh genealogy is or where it has come

from or how it has been assembled. you know, in so far as um now we are actually beginning to I would say lightly understand why we have arrived in this shetty world of ours.

Right? But otherwise unless we cannot answer these sort of questions that how this enlightenment becomes this And this enlightenment was hijacked by a s by certain sort of economic social political systems uh so effectively I don't think that we

can actually answer the question you know if we cannot actually say for example told how and why uh some sort of strands of enlightenment contributed to the rise of uh libertarian or no libertarian capitalism.

We cannot we cannot we cannot disassemble the system itself. Please go on. Uh, sorry for the noise. Um, I was going to say, can't we just not just, but can't weineer like engineering backwards towards like when did this establishment

started because like what could we even do? Sure. We can we under ideal conditions we would be able to uh disassemble or de-ineer as you say uh a system toward its conditions of possibility. So we can learn it and new.

But precisely because we are dominated by a very specific system of engineering of cognition practice and technique that is a little bit becoming tricky. You know how are you going how are you going to disassemble uh the system of enlightenment if the

system of enlightenment has been hijacked by you know certain sort of strains of highly advanced forms of social capitalism. Yeah. You can't you can't Yeah. No. True. And more and more people are not buying it like obviously.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Love you. So um no. Hi. Um well thanks Tza and also some really great questions. um in fun. Um I kind of want to ask about basically time. You mentioned it earlier and I don't know if this is coherent but the

way that I think about the uh the mind and the body meeting is time.

And that's also I don't know if that's accurate now that I say it. Um but time seems to be something that's missing. I don't know in the way that Dart has been describing and actually the intervention that Elizabeth brings is like yeah what

happens in this encounter? How can it how can these things encount encounter each other? Um, and I feel like time is an answer to that. I think my question is, does that make sense? Is that coherent?

Is utterly coherent? And I exactly know what you are trying to say uh with regard to question of time, but I want you to expand a little bit on this for the rest of the students.

Sure. Um when we t we talked about how the project that Dart is kind of engaging in is a certain amount of self- introspection that he also mentions in his uh in his uh reflections that he didn't start his

um actual method for a style. He I think he said he was 23 when he came up with it, but then he said, "Yes, yes, I have to kind of wait and spend time experiencing things, living." And he

talks about how the circumstances of the war that brought him about and he kind of chose chose how he uses time in a very active way. Um, and we were talking about earlier about how uh the things that we're trying to find out

in his methods using his methods are where we came from which is a the dimension of time in the past and what we've been thinking about how this future that we are looking at looks rather bleak that's also a

dimension of time I Guess what I could be asking is how do we if if we want to think about what to do in the future, how do we engineer the time we have, how do we use it like

Deart chose to use his to get to work through the method that he came up for himself.

I guess is Yeah. So you see for anyone who has read the poem on nature by Parminis, the old man of Adobra, upon which Plato writes a dialogue none other than the rest.

It is when when we read parmenites the platonic dialogue it's finally revealed that Socrates was the most vulgar philosopher of our time essentially so precisely because it's like a late dialogue precisely because Socrates uh at this point uh has you know exhausted his

currency in philosophy and then the old man comes. Parminiuses utterly crushes Socrates in the dialogues fundamentally.

And who is parminidities is often being called the prophet of time. But what sort of time? He's not Heracleitian uh prophet. He doesn't believe in becoming. He believes in a certain sort of block universe or block time um idea where basically

time can actually move backward and outward into the future. So what is actually uh you might ask the the ways of this reintroduction of perminites in Plato's dialogues might mean or precisely because when we are talking about techniques

when we are talking about methods we are talking about things. Some of it has been, you know, borrowed from the future and some of it borrowed from the past.

Isn't it the case that every technique that we know is essentially a hybrid time sorcery?

past and the future collided in a very exact moment compressed and then the rest of humanity takes as its fundamental duty to uncompress the technique itself.

you know, deception, the invention of a lever, the invention of a cork screw. All of these are something quite you know strange because sure a corkus screw has been made by the combination of a lever and a corkus screw so to speak.

Right? So you can create uh you know um darkdian uh way of getting water uh from deep um soil.

Yeah. But what is really important here for us to think about is that techniques in a very strange sort of way have something from the past and something from the future.

And the moment that these two ideas or indexes of time converge upon a very singular object, a technique is reinvented.

Hence, aliens are [ __ ] real. You know something that comes from the future, something comes from the past and then there is a convergence and this convergence computationally allows us to move forward right on this technique and then oh [ __ ]

then we notice that oh we have always been in a CCRU sort of way but I don't want to mention CC Are you at this point? We have always been the puppets unfortunately of certain sort of technical appraisers

of our own making and that's when time shows because time is fundamentally as asymmetrical.

Boltzman understood this that that there is when we are thinking about time we are always thinking about nowhere techniques that we are making are made out of nowhere principles From nowhere we conquer the planets and Allah abbar.

Can I say something? Sure. The time comes from the body. I guess time's not see there are two times as I said one the times of the body and times of the mind. Times of the mind is the view

from know when the times of the body is view from nowhere and then they clash ultimately.

I think I would oppose that times of the body is from somewhere but times of the mind can be nowhere only. Would you be able to tell me that uh what's what your body is in a time way or in uh some

any sort of human body? Any sort of human body? Any sort of human body.

Would you be able to tell me that is it actually coming from an explicit somewhere? No, it's coming from nowhere. Precisely because you have this body in so far as you have been inserted within the communities of other bodies.

But it's like natural thing. It's a natural thing that body is from somewhere. I guess it it is it is from somewhere. But what we don't we haven't we haven't from an intelligence perspective uh intelligence signal processing we

haven't you know uh detected what the source might be. You know, some people call it gods, some people call it aliens, some people call it uh, you know, alien sex, this and that. But that's that's actually the problem here.

I'm just going from the duality of the card because I think that's that's the best assumption of his like it's the wrong one essentially. I'm totally agreeing with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. She said it right.

Like it's interesting to try to separate body and mind. I mean it's it's methologically necessary. It's not an ontological problem. You see it's me logically necessary to separate two problems from one another according to Alarazmi.

So Decart is actually doing an algebra problem such that you can actually shed light on the identity of both body and the mind because otherwise it would be just like you know some sort of uh what you might

call to be uh chunk of indistinguished problem. But he uh sorry my battery is low so I have to No worries no worries no worries.

Uh so the by separating didn't the created more problem essentially of course of course if you want to solve a problem you have to create first and foremost more problems that are necessary. Yes, sure. Like he made it also easy to uh

investigate but also to create more problem more more problem more problems within within philosophy within science within every sort of way of thought. I think it's better to have more problems such that if you come up with a certain

sort of methods you can cail and constrain certain sort of problems to poor foundational problems and that's exactly what Decart does. Yeah. First you have to proliferate the problems.

Yeah. You know, you have to create a first problematic fallout and then bring it back to a very uh microscopic tiny sets of problems that you you perhaps think might be fundamental to the to to the issue at hand. Of course,

that's that's a method. Uh if you can't proliferate the problems and if you think that the only pro at hand is the one that you just saw, you're most probably falling for the fantasm, the delusion of mind.

A lot. M yeah totally. Okay, my dear friends, our run time is running out. I love you all.

I will see you next week and uh yeah, all good. Thank you so much, Rissa, and to everyone. Love you.

Thank you. Love to all of you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. I know that I said okay, no questions asked. Uh, but I'm kind of uh my mouth is dry.

Before I move on, maybe you should ask two questions. Three questions actually. Who wants to ask the first sacrificial victim?

Uh Abdul Rahman. Uh yes. uh particularly how can how can we uh implement uh uh this by uh as you said it's not radical enough taking taking what's what's there but removing the west out of it uh not dismissing it on the whole

uh premise but taking what's of value and removing it how can we do that without with with the current let's uh uh uh stigmatism of it.

I think uh by uh restoring uh but you are asking me to essentially spoil the entire seminar here by restoring point by point uh what has caused western enlightenment or enlightenment project to be a stigmatized to begin with. Right?

one would be essentially it's it's fundamental uh you know darkenian Richard Dawkins uh idea that well you know enlightenment has nothing to do with religion or modernity does not have anything to do with religion right to be modern

means that to be non-religious secular completely if not atheist right so there are different sort of points but uh yes uh there would be a procedure uh to to reinvent alarazmi to to restore the relays that have been

destroyed and made enlightenment to be a stigmatized in such fashion. But of course I will talk about this as we move forward throughout the sessions.

Uh can I add one more thing? Sure. uh uh how because there a lot of us let's say in in the Middle East or the the southern nations I wouldn't say the global south but a lot of the southern nations have this victim

mentality and the selfdefeism when it comes to a lot of things oh they're better than us because there are they're always planning for us how how do you even try to to begin even to change that to well that is unfortunately our task to

do with our own people Right. And you see the same thing in Iran where Iran so basically uh I won't don't want to get so political here. U yes there is absolutely a kind of a self-inferiority uh problem. But then this is why you

have to read your own history, right? The amount the sheer amount of contributions that has come from the Middle East particularly I don't want to glorify the Middle East for all of its problems. It's just astonishing.

I mean there is no for example let me I mean uh recently I watched YouTube um uh of this lecture by Per Martin Loof.

Per Martin Loof is is one of the most astonishing computer scientists and logicians. is also credited for you know uh through his uh invention of type theory um founded you know uh univalent foundations of mathematics and what would be type theory and and there is

this lecture which basically he says well you know u I think that some some people ask him about the word judgment in philosophy in western philosophy well you know he goes on and on about this that there is no world

judgment in any sort of western or even Greek cannons. There is literally no word judgment.

It comes from the word h right precisely because Arabs when they uh translated Aristotle because Aristotle is infamously in certain sort of um you know um important points extremely uh talking in scarce words.

So Arabs had to reinterpret and then of course the reinterpretation is also a radical translation where basically uh uh they came with the idea of judgment which becomes most profound idea both in philosophy and in logic.

Yes. So rediscovery of our own history would be nice as a as a stepping stone for the for addressing this self- inferiority.

Thank you. Absolutely. Mika. Um, yes. I was just wondering if you're seeing that this um discipline created by Decart is um stayed true to or abstracted in the current things that we see so much with AI. Are we or are we going in different

routes through we are going to go to a completely different route. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. It seems like it's like been it's been taken over and it's it's just been shifted into like interests and um more human drives and these sorts of things.

Absolutely. Um rather than like a pure practice like like Decart might or if you're saying that Deart is a pure practice. I don't know.

I mean both uh both uh you know um again without spoiling the end game um I think that there is something quite a specific about even with this parochial AI that we have u which is I think uh you know quite

interesting quite dangerous um yes it has uh certain sort of principles even not from daycart but also Alarasm means uh actually uh but but we we can do something better with those old principles than just this sort of [ __ ] AI.

Yeah, I guess I want to skip to number three to hear what you have to say. So, but yeah, it's interest. Yeah, that's my only question.

Love you. Thank you so much. Uh my apologies. I cannot I have my eyesight has become even worse. Paulo. So anyone who has in in order they can talk.

I can't see fonts anymore. So like I um I recorded here and maybe like coming back to the first comment in regards to this kind of geographic insecurity.

Um yes there was this like um um lack of belonging from metaphysics let's say from certain territoriality and I wonder what is the space or the place of metaphysics in this enlightenment project and also um what um I don't know what are the controversies

or the beyond thoughts in regards to metaphysical shutdown and how um yes yes yes yes uh no I get it well I mean of course I will talk about this as we move forward um this a giant question

and I think that you should also bring this question again to me uh on the on third se on the third session so I can give you a better one but for now I can give give you uh one uh simple

snapshot of what you are talking about. So as I mentioned uh all the seminar was built upon that text that I uh presented at Delft um and it was supposed to be uh Ray Brazier me and Katarina Dutil Novice uh

she's a Brazilian um you know logician and philosopher of science and there was this uh Lebanon Chinese guy um who asks me that well Greza what do you think about metaphysics? I said well you know first maybe uh Katarina should take

it that question right. Um I must say I was extremely unimpressed by the answer and that it showed me that there is absolutely when you say that the the question of insecurity here also can apply to the idea of metaphysics

precisely because there was not a fully a full history you know a deep history of metaphysical thought in parts of Latin America um people has started to move philosophers started to move toward in fact anti- metaphysical stances right

and Katarina said well you know I don't believe in metaphysics for me the world is just a soup I mean that's just like the most unimpressive answer I've ever heard from a scholar that I really appreciate No, I said that well you know um any

person who says that you know I don't believe in metaphysics has some sort of subterfuge camouflage metaphysical presuppositions understood this very correctly that we can't just say that I don't like metaphysics like carnap or the all metaphysical problems are

pseudo problems, right? No. In fact, we can show that within every sort of this image of purity from metaphysical problems lie extremely sinister metaphysical presuppositions.

Um, okay. I'm going to wait for the third session. Sure. Sure. When I I actually talk about this. In fact, this session also I talk a little bit about this this problem.

I mean like I think strongly relates to like what the system of beliefs are and how in encounter with like western philosophy.

Um yes like yes like how to say like an event of like this metaphysical shout shutdown of this uh belief system and also how then it relates as well to the practice that we are doing here when we engage with

philosophy and maybe one of the reasons though Paula one of the reasons that metaphysics has been so killed effectively uh is precisely because uh religion has been you know exised from the project of enlightenment right.

Um yeah, I mean like I also um with my um affirmation I try also to pose a system of beliefs that is not like idealized meaning like it's own not only belonging to like a specific uh religious belief let's say but um just

to maybe cultural beliefs or like just to very like um material real pragmatical forms of of beliefs. Um, sure. Uh, but but even you know I would say that I don't think that we are of course are going to talk about this. I

don't think that we should talk about religion always in terms of ideology. Uh this I have been talked uh in past seminars what we call universal religions are not merely ideologies. Um they are essentially set sets of techniques practices community

building, material practices, a effects so on so forth. Yes. So when you when you um completely uh you know get rid of religion, you are also kind of get rid of uh what you might call to be some of

these techniques which are absolutely necessary. Yeah. Um I mean like I also come from like assumption in the let's say art practice as well. So like think also in the system of like labor and like work and how like um let's say

this is this practice is so linked to this um immaterial beliefs and system. Yes.

As well. Yes. So that's what I wanted to appeal is still like a system of values and beliefs uh maybe that we cannot so concretely name um but that also experience this sense of like detachment from in a let's say like idealized way

of some sort of like enlightenment project. I I am very curious about the third seminar because I just have this kind of controversy inside these topics that I Yeah, I am very curious about that. Yeah, I mean um yes, I mean there is a tendency

within the enlightenment um that you know enlightenment is is not you know it's not about this I would say from a philosophical perspective it's not about that well you know in so far as you cannot label a practice

or a technique of mind and body uh this doesn't exist or it's just like some sort of s pseudoprais or superstition or something like that. Um I think what enlightenment always asks is that can we think more about what we

are doing when we are thinking and can we think more about you know uh or explicate more our thoughts.

Um it is essentially what you might call to be really uh the very edge of that spear into a dark ascent into the dark. Yeah.

This is what enlightenment already is. Uh it is it is kind of driven by a a process of self-discovery that lands you to become alien to begin with.

Right. Can I say something about that? Yes, absolutely. Eva, my apologies, sorry. Yeah. Um, is enlightenment really that or it's just like filtering a bunch of ideas and like like making some things more explicit or like opening some ways

for like western men let's say um to be refined in a way because like when you like reload or reduce enlightenment to the core values it's always like logicianism. feels like like the core values are like separated actually cut

out like brutally from religion but religion was like not a religion at all. It was like a bunch of stuff like pagan stuff like Celtic stuff and um like Mesopotamian stuff and bunch of stuff already established come together to to

just to be not just to be I'm not like making it like giving no shade or something but like it's filtered down for some people to choke it like almost like thousand years ago or like build something up easily. I feel like

enlightenment is about like communicating easily because people were already doing good before enlightenment like I feel like when we like when I will say patriarchy directly like when patriarchy is like filtering down stuff uh it always comes with this um going to

the core of like something and making it like let's say sellable like maybe it's not the right word but like Um it's like when the law is like law, right? Love. Um no, it's like you know orders and love and stuff. Um

so like it requires to be violence uh violence to be filtered like it allows you to do some stuff.

Let's say western love according to Roman love and Roman comes after Greek and Mesopotamian mixture you know like no no no I don't know yes what are I I don't think yeah no no I think that you're right but

I don't think that enlightenment is all about uh you know easy communication I think that enlightenment I mean you know You know that Neutron was an oultist. Do you know that?

Yeah. But he didn't achieve anything. He tried for his whole life. Like people were already he discovered gravity.

Who got killed in the witch trial? Sorry. They were already doing the thing he tried to do like they were healing people. They were like Jordana Bruno. Jordana Bruno transcendental.

I don't know who he is but yeah sure. You know, it's quite a strange that many of the uh progenitors of the enlightenment were into some sort of weird practices which I like.

But they didn't quite nailed it because like if they did they didn't they didn't they didn't they didn't but but but hopefully a new enlightenment can do that you know. Uh it's a little bit sci-fi though. uh you know yes you're

you're completely correct but uh you know uh that's a that's part of the genealogy I would say u critical genealogy of the enlighten enlightenment in a sense that people I would say that dayart and esposa absolutely uh can be

absolved from the accusation of logicism or they just wanted to make communication Easy precisely because they invented fundamental ideas through which in fact we can discover new domains of practices with nature.

I don't think so nature like people were already they weren't writing but like I read your um session one readings and like some of them and there was a very interesting subject there this Italian woman in the enlightenment uh I shouldn't recall her

name right now uh but she was uh like writing against this uh male um uh power of like they were like putting woman into like non-human status and it was actually not new like it was going since like Greek ancient Greek actually.

Um I say I say I say I say yeah but like yeah I mean sorry no no no no no I I will I will I will I will I will uh definitely I will uh I will I will try to answer these some

of these I don't think that I can personally answer uh but by the way I think that we are we we wanted have two or three questions if Nia U and Zachary uh Neva and Zachary um just wait and

then we go uh the the rest of the lecture. So um my apologies my apologies um because we are really uh we need to go through this. Uh so um then um the next section would be