From: Jacques Du Pasquier (jacques@dtext.com)
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 05:14:41 MDT
French "Le Figaro" has an interesting interview with Peter Sloterdijk
about the biotech and its implications (seen positively !). Sloterdijk
seems to be an interesting transhumanistish German philosopher, and I
don't recall seing his name mentionned on the list. It is slightly
"wordy" (meaning that he doesn't hesitate to create concepts : not the
anglo-saxon philosopher type), but sharp nonetheless.
And of course as this is forbidden land, he has ample space to go.
Maybe other people, and in particular German extropians, Hubert or
others, will want to comment and tell us some more about his ideas and
their impact in Germany.
I don't have time to translate it or make a summary, and from a quick
googling it seems that there aren't many English language pages about
him. Here's just one bit (with a quick and dirty translation) to give
you an idea :
-- FIGARO: You don't seem much worried by "our lack of knowledge and our half-knowledge in all things" [a footnote says this is quoted from a text by Sloterdijk], by this somnambulic progression, without a frame, of technoscientific innovation... SLOTERDIJK: No, what I'm worried about, is the way care for oneself with the support of medical techniques is systematically presented as devilish by a discourse of which the secret origin is nostalgia for a classical reason, omnipotent, and not yet a victim of the undesirable effects of its own action. This discours is not even in tune with the new situation of philosophy since the end of WWII. The "frame" that you complain is absent evokes to me the figure of the "sheperd", as Plato formalizes it in his dialogue "Le politique". But biotechnolgical research has no sheperd. The domestication of man becomes the thing of everyone and no one. There isn't anymore, like in the Plato utopia, a class of "stock breeders". Regrettable as it may be for those who regret his disparition, the sheperd has fallen as a result of the "supersubject's" fall. Just like the supersubject, master of his thoughts and his actions, and so potentially capable of controling everything, the sheperd turned out to be a pure ghost. -- (Note: Interesting, but I wonder if free breeding is viable in a world of directed evolution. I'm all for the freedom of self-development, only "framed" by the respect of others. But if breeding is not controlled, then I don't see how we avoid regression by the natural selection of the most prolific, agressive and respectless. (Wisdom is in the culture, not in the genes.) In other words, the bloody logic of evolution could be even more bloody -- and quickly fatal through general war -- when ponctual random mutations are replaced by individual fantasy.) http://www.lefigaro.fr/dos_18/20020807.FIG_D0340.html Jacques
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