Philosophy Today

published on April 20, 2021

Automation, Alteration

Is “philosophy after automation” a theme or a question? One might hesitate about this, because we may wonder whether or not it implies that philosophy could disappear after automation, or at least be subject to serious revision. Philosophy could be read as a historical movement towards self-determination [autodétermination] as well as the exposition of the limit of such a program of archi-autonomy. The Cartesian event (a prominent moment of the automation mutation) is essentially ambivalent, and man alone in the world is undoubtedly also the one who can but alter, in the long run, the sufficiency of the auto. This is what we can now begin to understand.