Taught online via Zoom
Sundays, July 16, 23, 30, August 6
3 - 5 pm ET
$145 Patreon Members / $165 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot attend live

This course is a philosophical exploration of the ironic relation between technology and humanity. As Martin Heidegger puts it, technology is both our destiny and our greatest danger. We lack the comparably formidable protection of the claws and muscles of our animal brethren, while we are also hampered by a distinctive awareness of our inevitable death. Nevertheless, we have the power to conform our environment to our needs and whims, which promises flourishing and longevity that no set of claws and muscles can possibly deliver.

The ability to shape a world for ourselves (technology) is our saving power. The human soul is an odd mix of mortal vulnerability and the promise of self-made immortality. Thus, there is no pre-technological version of humanity. Our history is inextricably linked to our technological development. Wherever we go, our technology will be there. That destiny, however, has the appearance of a self-inflicted demise, or at least that is the suspicion held by many of us living in this era of atomic warfare, environmental crises, and the digital upheaval of culture. Our technological nature both saves and threatens.

The thinkers we will discuss in this course (including Aeschylus, Plato, David Chalmers, Andy Clark, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Keji Nishitani, and Carl Jung) will help us articulate this central irony of human nature: the greatness of humanity depends crucially on our capacity to form our environment to fit our needs (technology), though that very exercise threatens to undermine the rudiments of our existence.

The goal of the course is not to reach some final resolution to the riddle of our technological being, but to deepen our awareness of the problem by understanding how it has been dealt with by a diverse group of thinkers throughout the history of philosophy. We will see, however, that articulation does take us some way toward a kind of resolution.

Week 1: Prometheus and Atlantis: Mythical Intimations of Human Origins and the Technological Apocalypses
Sources

• Plato: Timaeus and Critias

• Aeschylus: Prometheus Unbound

• Chalmers and Clark: “The Extended Mind”

• Clark: Being There

Week 2: Transhumanism and the Superman – Death Instinct or Life Instinct?
Sources

• Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Genealogy of Morals, and the Will to Power

• Nishitani, “Nihility and Sunyata”

• Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Recollections

Week 3: Human Obsolescence, Artificial Intelligence, and the End of the World
Sources

• Anders, “Promethean Shame”

• Ellul, The Technological Society

• Marx, Capital

• Haugland, Having Thought

Week 4: The Greatest Danger and the Saving Power: Mediating Between Presumption and Despair
Sources

• Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”

• Vallee and Harris, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret

• Lear, Radical Hope

Jim Madden has been professor of philosophy for over twenty years and has received awards for his teaching. He is the author of Mind, Matter, and Nature (Catholic University Press of America, 2013) and Thinking about Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Technological Nihilism (Cascade – forthcoming) along with numerous other articles on the philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion. He is also a world champion in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and a fitness enthusiast. You may find out more about his work at www.jdmadden.com/.