In June 2018, Henry Kissinger published an

article in The Atlantic titled ÒHow the

Enlightenment Ends.Ó At first glance, the article
seems to suggest that the Enlightenment, the
ÒAge of Reason,Ó has been put to an end by
artificial intelligence. Machines that have the

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capacity for analysis and reasoning are
overtaking human cognitive capacity. Technology
that is rooted in Enlightenment thought is
superseding the philosophy that is its
fundamental principle. In view of this end of the
Enlightenment, Kissinger proposes that it is
necessary to look for a new philosophy: ÒThe
Enlightenment started with essentially
philosophical insights spread by a new
Yuk Hui technology. Our period is moving in the opposite
direction. It has generated a potentially
What Begins dominating technology in search of a guiding
philosophy.Ó1
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHowever, we must first of all ask: Why does
After the End of the increasing capacity of machines necessarily
mean the end of the Enlightenment? And why
the does it lead the former US Secretary of State, at
the end of his article, to call for the US to
prioritize artificial intelligence research as a
Enlightenment? matter of immediate national concern?
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf we begin with KissingerÕs title, ÒHow the
Enlightenment Ends,Ó we might ask how an
Òunfinished projectÓ (in the words of JŸrgen
Habermas) such as the Enlightenment can be
finished at all.2 Or has the China expert now
joined the anti-Enlightenment tradition of
Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried von Herder,
Edmund Burke, Thomas Carlyle, Hippolyte Taine,
Ernest Renan, Benedetto Croce, Friedrich
Meinecke, Oswald Spengler, sometimes
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

Nietzsche, and, more recently, Nick Land,

another China expert? What follows is my
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

response to KissingerÕs article; it can also be

read as a continuation of two essays I published
previously in e-flux journal, ÒOn the Unhappy
Consciousness of NeoreactionariesÓ and
ÒCosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics.Ó3

1. The ÒDecisive MistakesÓ of Òthe ÔWhiteÕ

PeoplesÓ
Happy progressivists have followed the
emanation of the Enlightenment to its end and
found that, in fact, the light leads to total
darkness. The end comes as a huge surprise: the
void. Are KissingerÕs words not witness to this
end as the abyss of humanity? But when the
Secretary of State asks computer scientists to
understand the history of philosophy, he does so
without specifying which history and which
philosophy. Kissinger describes the suffering
that ensues when the high point of Western
civilization has passed; Oswald Spengler called
this the ÒdeclineÓ or ÒdownfallÓ (Untergang) of
the West. Similarities between the ideas of

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01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST

Kissinger and Spengler are far from coincidental, and on paper, and the astonished homage
not least because the latter was the subject of of Indians and Japanese delighted them.6
the formerÕs honors thesis at Harvard. Titled
ÒThe Meaning of History: Reflections on As a result, continues Spengler, the Japanese
Spengler, Toynbee, and Kant,Ó the thesis focused became Òtechnicians of the first rank, and in
on determinism and freedom in history, following their [1904Ð5] war against Russia they revealed a

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from SpenglerÕs description of history as an technical superiority from which their teachers
organic process. As Kissinger wrote: ÒLife is were able to learn many lessons.Ó7 Japan
suffering, birth involves death. Transitoriness is exposed the dilemma of technological
the fate of existence. No civilization has yet been globalization: on one hand, the spread of
permanent, no longing completely fulfilled. This technology constructs a global axis of time
is necessity, the fatedness of history, the though which European modernity becomes the
dilemma of mortality.Ó4 The Enlightenment is no synchronizing metric of all civilizations; on the
exception; it is only a transition towards the other, the same spread frees modern science
destiny of the West. A new philosophy becomes and technology from being the exclusive asset of
necessary at the end of this transition. However, European modernity, rendering the West
it is difficult to identify what this philosophy vulnerable to global competition. As Hegel
might be due to the rapid transformation of pointed out in The Phenomenology of Spirit,
geopolitics in the twenty-first century, driven by Enlightenment faith replaces religious faith
several remarkable events such as 9/11, which without realizing itself to be also only a faith. In
revealed the vulnerability of the West, and the this way, Enlightenment thinking led us down a
rise of China, which is silently reconfiguring the long road to globalization, all the while being
world order through its development plans in defeated by its own negation. This would be a
places like Africa, Latin America, and the South perfect postcolonial critique of the West;
Pacific. however, the story is not so simple.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn his article, Kissinger is right when he says
that Enlightenment philosophy was spread Ð or 2. The Constitution of the Global Axis of
more precisely, universalized Ð by modern Time and its Apocalyptic End
technology. However, he fails to mention that the Kissinger is wrong Ð the Enlightenment has not
Enlightenment was not simply an intellectual ended. Indeed, technology that is used for
movement promoting reason and rationality, but surveillance can also facilitate freedom of
also a fundamentally political movement.5 speech, and vice versa. However, letÕs step
Navigational and military technology allowed outside of this anthropological and utilitarian
European powers to colonize the world, leading reading of technology and take modern
to what we now call globalization. We have been technology as constituting specific forms of
taught that the Enlightenment as a whole aimed knowledge and rationality.8 Modern technology Ð
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

to fully realize humanity and universal values by the support structure of Enlightenment
fighting superstition (not necessarily religion), philosophy Ð has become its own philosophy.
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

and that it was through science and technology Just as Marshall McLuhan stated that Òthe
that this battle was supposed to be won. In medium is the message,Ó so has the
addition to creating new nautical and universalizing force of technology become the
cartographic tools, the Enlightenment was also political project of the Enlightenment. As
itself a process of orientation that situated the technology assumes and even performs the role
West as the center of this transformation, the of Enlightenment thinking, the medium ceases to
source of its universalization. be the carrier of meaning and instead becomes
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊEven as modern technology spreads meaning itself Ð the knowledge through which
Enlightenment thought, its own process of self- progress is assured. After long celebrating
realization leads to self-negation: the dialectic of democracy as an unshakable universal Western
Enlightenment from a geopolitical point of view. value, Donald TrumpÕs victory seems to have
In his short 1931 book Man and Technics, Oswald dissolved its hegemony into comedy. Suddenly,
Spengler argued that the West was making a American democracy appears no different from
huge mistake by exporting its technology: bad populism. Especially when the leader of the
Republican Party publicly declares his
At the close of last century, the blind will- admiration for Kim Jong-unÕs dictatorship, it can
to-power began to make its decisive be tempting to agree with Kissinger that the
mistakes. Instead of keeping strictly to period of Enlightenment thinking, along with the
itself the technical knowledge that republicanism to which Kant aspired, has come
constituted their greatest asset, the to a close.
ÒwhiteÓ peoples complacently offered it to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut we cannot be satisfied with such a
all the world, in every Hochschule, verbally naive caricature of the Enlightenment. It is unfair

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01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST

to claim that writers such as Voltaire insisted AndrŽ Leroi-Gourhan and Gilbert Simondon
only on the superior value of the West without pointed out that groups with advanced industrial
paying attention to cultural differences; for technology were able to scale up their influence
instance, Voltaire also praised the greatness of over groups with preindustrial technology.13 For
ChinaÕs four-thousand-year-old culture, as well Simondon especially, the revolt of minority
as its emperor, who was an expert in astronomy.9 groups against technology in the name of culture

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It seems astonishing, but Johann Gottfried von misunderstands the role of technology, since he
Herder turned such interest into a weapon sees a rationality in technology that transcends
against Voltaire himself, accusing the the limits of cultural difference. More
Frenchman of a lack of sensitivity to cultural importantly, Simondon holds out hope that the
differences, of being too eager to apply the increasing perfection of technology will provide
classification and generalization of scientific new perspectives for resolving the problem of
methods to other cultures.10 However, it is true alienation and the antagonism between culture
that cultural differences had fewer political and technology. However, the issue is far more
implications for Voltaire than for Herder. complicated than SimondonÕs optimism admits.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe universal values proposed by the In the colonization and modernization process,
philosophes, as Kissinger rightly points out, technological differences also maintain and
could be spread worldwide only through modern reinforces power differences.
technology. At the same time, such technology ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut what if the situation is reversed today,
has ended or accomplished the Enlightenment when, as Spengler said, the West is, or at least
and is now going its own way, creating the need seems to be, surpassed by its students Ð a
for a new guiding philosophy. What could this situation that will only continue? Take China as
philosophy be? A transhumanist philosophy? An an example. Deng XiaopingÕs accelerationist
Eurasian conservative revolution? A Landian politics has given China a leading role in the new
accelerationism, or maybe a leftist version of the millennium; Shenzhen has become ChinaÕs
same, both hoping to overcome capitalism by Silicon Valley and one of the craziest urban
accelerating its contradictions until it self- experiments in the world today. It is through
destructs? Henri de Saint-Simon once believed technological acceleration and its accompanying
that speeding up industrialization and improving economic triumph that we now witness the
transportation networks would make socialism newest geopolitical arrangement to emerge since
possible, since resources and goods would be the Cold War: the East outstripping the West
more evenly distributed.11 In his essay ÒParis, through digital innovation and automation. It is
Capital of the Nineteenth Century,Ó Walter for this reason that Donald Trump has claimed
Benjamin pointed out that Saint-SimonÕs that China has been stealing jobs from the US:
followers Òhad anticipated the development of jobs that were outsourced to China for its cheap
the world-economy, but not the class- labor are now being taken over by machines.
struggle.Ó12 A well-constructed rail network may
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis technological acceleration is not a

actually reinforce inequality because it can rupture, but the continuation of the
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

distribute capitalist resources more efficiently. Enlightenment. KissingerÕs article ignores the
Acceleration in this sense is only a way to push fact that technology, which embodies rationality
Enlightenment universalism further. How can and epistemology, is the true universal. ThatÕs
accelerating technology lead to the end of why he interprets the contemporary situation as
capitalism if it only creates another process of the end of the Enlightenment, instead of its
deterritorialization? One may argue for an continuation in other forms. Are we then
absolute deterritorialization, but that would be counterposing the universal and the relative? Or
Hegel approaching Deleuze from behind and is this opposition itself the problem? It is beyond
giving him a monstrous child. Some claim that our scope here to deliver a treatise on the
technology has surpassed capitalism itself, but universal (though this remains an avoidable
this assumes that capitalism is a human-like task). The desire to essentialize and establish
creature who can be disrupted and rendered the universal as a ground leads us to identify it
obsolete by technology, like an old man who as a substantial being, rather than seeing it as a
doesnÕt know how to send emails anymore after dimension of existence. The relativists react by
switching from a PC to a Mac. rejecting the universal without being able to
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAs an aside, one must admit that integrate it into the particular. This oppositional
technological acceleration is historically thinking is at the core of both left and right
necessary for globalization, since non-Western populism. The same goes for the notion of
countries have been able to enter the Western- humanity. By substantializing the human as a
dominated geopolitical arena only by creating a universal that transcends all particularities of
cost-effective assemblage of modern culture and nature, we arrived at a humanism
technology, cheap labor, and cheap nature. Both that is tantamount to nihilism. To get out of this

01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST

impasse, we must first of all suspend the notion the fatal mistake of this vision of
of humanity that has been handed down to us. accelerationism Òwas to believe that, on the
And here we may want to invoke Carl SchmidtÕs horizon of the deterritorialization opened up by
critique in The Concept of the Political: ÒThe capital, there would be disclosed an originary
concept of humanity is an especially useful desire that could flow free of instituted
ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, structures of power.Ó16 One speculates on this

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and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a unknown end of absolute deterritorialization like
specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here gamblers staring at casino tokens. Accelerating
one is reminded of a somewhat modified disorientation does not create an exit from the
expression of ProudhonÕs: whoever invokes global time-axis. On the contrary, it merely
humanity wants to cheat.Ó14 disrupts momentarily the established orders and
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo reject the concept of humanity is to conventional modes of operation. In China, for
shatter the illusion created by a unifying example, expanding bandwidth and storage
discourse of the human, which belongs to a capacity for data flow have given rise to social
process of modernization qua synchronization. credit systems, which simply stabilize and
Modern technology synchronizes non-Western reterritorialize the flow of capital. A recent
histories to a global time-axis of Western survey conducted by the Free University of Berlin
modernity. As both opportunity and problem, the showed that 80 percent of Chinese respondents
synchronization process allows the world to approved or highly approved of these social
enjoy science and technology, but it also draws credit systems, with 19 percent neutral and only
the world into the global time-axis which, 1 percent opposed.17 The disruptive and
animated by humanism, is moving towards an apocalyptic qualities intrinsic to acceleration are
apocalyptic end, whether it be the technological by no means anti-humanist. In fact, they reveal
singularity, the Òintelligence explosion,Ó or the an extreme humanism fighting to save itself
emergence of Òsuperintelligence.Ó Martin through massive destruction Ð a twenty-first-
Heidegger already described this global time- century nihilism.
axis in 1967: ÒThe end of philosophy proves to be ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIs it even possible to escape the
the triumph of the manipulable arrangement of a synchronizing global time-axis of Western
scientific-technological world and of the social modernity, without proposing a deceleration, as
order proper to this world. The end of philosophy sociologists such as Hartmut Rosa do? Are we
means: the beginning of the world-civilization capable of undoing its hold in order to advance
based upon Western European thinking.Ó15 its achievements in other directions?
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOrientalists may respond with an uncanny ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWe need to return to the word
smile: what an exaggerated statement! But the ÒaccelerationÓ itself, since it is too easy to be
truth easily emerges when we observe the fooled by an unexamined relation between
technical apparatus surrounding us and the acceleration and speed. If we recall high school
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

gigantic force that is pushing us towards an physics, where a = v1-v2/t, acceleration is equal
apocalyptic end. What Heidegger calls the Òend to the change of velocity (from v1 to v2) divided
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

of philosophyÓ is nothing but the victory of the by time. V is velocity, not speed. Velocity is a
anthropological machine, the victory of a vector having both magnitude and direction,
humanism that aspires to reinvent Homo sapiens while speed is mere magnitude. Why not
as Homo deus through technological consider another form of acceleration that does
acceleration. Neoreactionaries and not push speed to its extreme, but rather
transhumanists celebrate artificial intelligence changes the direction of movement, giving
in the name of a posthumanist triumphalism, technology a new frame and orientation with
because superintelligence and technological regard to time and technological development?
singularity demonstrate the Òpossibility of By so doing, we can also imagine a bifurcation of
sublime humanity.Ó the future, which instead of moving towards the
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe so-called Dark Enlightenment is an apocalypse, diverges from it and multiplies. But
effort to push the Heideggerian Òend of what does it mean to give technology a new
philosophyÓ to the brink through a catastrophic frame? In order to do so, it is necessary to reflect
intelligence explosion. Like in the I Ching, where on how we might reappropriate modern
the Pi hexagram (bad luck) is followed by the Tai technology by systematically reflecting and
hexagram (good luck) in a turn from extreme bad working on the question of epistemologies and
to good, this explosion will force the West to epistemes in light of multiple cosmotechnics, or
reinvent itself Ð or so its advocates believe. In simply put, the technodiversity that is
their affirmation of a messianic acceleration historically traceable and still productive. This is
towards the abyss, they conceive of themselves a project I began with my book The Question
as anti-humanists. But what is behind this Concerning Technology in China: An Essay on
abyss? Robin Mackay has rightly pointed out that Cosmotechnics (2016), in which I use China as an

01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST

example to elaborate on different asked: ÒDid not Herder, when he arose to create a
conceptualizations of technology and the new epoch, proclaim both humanity and
possibility of conceiving such a technodiversity nationality?Ó18 Philosophers like Hans-Georg
in history and for the future. The proposal of Gadamer and Isaiah Berlin also saw in Herder
multiple cosmotechnics Ð which is not, of both a populism and pluralism, or as Charles
course, limited to China Ð calls for us to reopen Taylor put it, a populism and an Òexpressivism.Ó19

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the concept of ÒtechnicsÓ and reexamine the Herder is considered by some to be a genuine
conditions of technical evolution. cosmopolitan thinker who roots
cosmopolitanism in heterogeneity rather than
3. Technodiversity and the Bifurcations of homogeneity; he affirms differences not by
the Future claiming that each culture has a unique essence,
Technics is anthropologically universal in the but by arguing for the importance of locality and
process of hominization Ð the understanding of the equality of all cultures.
the human as a species because it is the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHumans are formed in distinct symbolic and
exteriorization of memory and the liberation of linguistic worlds. Their different forms of
human organs. With drawing and writing, human knowledge and their different relations to the
beings exteriorized their memories and world and to the earth are not measurable by
imaginations; by inventing flint, the ancients their advances in modern science and
liberated their fingers from many activities. We technology. The end of the Enlightenment has to
do not reject the notion that there is a universal begin by appropriating Herder after Gadamer,
dimension to technology, but it is only one of the Berlin, and Taylor, since theirs is only the first
dimensions. From a cosmotechnical standpoint, step. We will have to understand the
technics is fundamentally motivated and transformative power of heterogeneity instead of
constrained by particular geographical and retreating to a certain Volk and depending on
cosmological specificities. If we want to respond empathy or sensitivity to resolve tensions within
to the prospect of global self-extinction, we need increasingly isolated groupings. As a response to
to return to a carefully elaborated discourse on the ecological problems associated with the
locality and the places of the human in the Anthropocene, anthropologists such as Philippe
cosmos. In order to do so, we need first of all to Descola and others have reopened the question
reopen the question of technology, to conceive of of radical pluralism in a way that considers what
multiple cosmotechnics instead of merely two: a is called ÒmultinaturalismÓ instead of
premodern technics and a modern technics. To multiculturalism. Because naturalism, which
be sure, we must be careful with the word counterposes nature and culture, is very much a
ÒlocalityÓ and its politics. Nostalgic invocations product of modernity, it does not capture how
of tradition or culture can become problematic nonhumans are perceived in other parts of the
returns to nationalism, cultural essentialism, world. However, with modernization as a
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

and ethnofuturism, when not approached synchronization process, we encounter a tipping

dialectically. Here we are not considering small point that reopens concepts such as nature and
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

groups revolting against modern technologies in technics which have been inherited as universal
the name of culture or nature; rather, we are without being questioned. This call for pluralism
elaborating a general strategy to reappropriate is for us a reminder to consciously reappropriate
technology by first of all affirming the irreducible modern science and technology, to give it a new
multiplicity of technicity. While Simondon has direction at a time when its planetary spread
been an inspiration for the concept of opens up such a possibility.20
cosmotechnics, his own critique fails to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOn the other hand, we may understand
articulate technics beyond the tradition of KissingerÕs end-of-Enlightenment claim as
Western Enlightenment humanism he inherited. marking the full realization of a single global axis
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo propose a pluralism is a gesture which of time in which all historical times converge into
could be attributed to both reactionaries and the synchronizing metric of European modernity.
revolutionaries. Take the example of Herder, the It is the moment of disorientation Ð a loss of
fiercest opponent of Voltaire and the author of direction as well as of the Orient in relation to the
the book-length 1774 essay This Too a Philosophy Occident. The unhappy consciousness of fascism
of History for the Formation of Humanity, which and xenophobia arises from this inability to
argues that cultural experiences, values, and orient: as a response, it offers an easy identity
feelings are irreducibly diverse. Can one call politics and an aestheticized politics of
Herder a nationalist? Many do consider him Ð a technology.
Lutheran priest, student of Kant, and mentor to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMore broadly, such a disorientation can be
Goethe Ð to be a founding figure of German seen as a desirable and necessary
nationalism and the Volksgeist. However, this deterritorialization of contemporary capitalism,
view is not universally shared. Meineke once which facilitates accumulation beyond temporal

01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST

and spatial constraints. War is the technique of innovation, they would lose their competitive
disruption par excellence, vastly more effective edge: Putin already declared to a room full of
than Uber and Airbnb. In his 1933 The Hour of Russian school children on September, 1 2017
Decision: Germany and World-Historical that Òwhoever leads in AI will dominate the
Evolution, Spengler describes the war machine world.Ó24 But if technological acceleration and
as the only possible response to the geopolitical innovation are the common task of the sovereign

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crisis of the time: ÒEngland gained her wealth by and capital, human cynicism will only deepen as
battles and not by bookkeeping and speculation we feel increasingly helpless in the face of
É [Germany] had to carry on its wars with foreign technological systems that displace the human
money and in the service of that money, and it roles in so many processes. True philosophical
waged wars over miserable scraps of its own thinking can be the only response to this aporia.
country that one diminutive state took from ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI donÕt mean to suggest that modern science
another.Ó21 and technology are evil (not least because they
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe prospect of war as a solution was not were my first areas of study). Nor am I suggesting
pursued only in the West: the Kyoto school that non-European cultures and traditions have
philosophers also proposed total war as a means been destroyed by evil modern technologies
of overcoming modernity.22 Today, could global imposed by the West, and that therefore we
competition over the development of artificial should give up modern science and technology.
intelligence and space technology become the The question, rather, is how this historical
new condition of such a war? As Spengler wrote process can be rethought, and what futures are
in 1933, certain forces are dragging us still available for imagination and realization. If
backwards. It is worth noting the major we identify Enlightenment thought with modern
similarities between his epoch and ours, but we technology as an irreversible process guided by
also need to pay special attention to the universality and rationality, then the only
differences. Spengler wrote in The Hour of question that remains to be asked is: To be or not
Decision of a certain dogmatic thinking in non- to be? But if we affirm that multiple
Western civilizations that emerged with cosmotechnics exist, and that these may allow
modernity and was associated with a colonial us to transcend the limit of sheer rationality,
mentality: then we can find a way out of never-ending
modernity and the disasters that have
Immemorially old ÒFellaheenÓ peoples such accompanied it. It would be tragic to
as the Indian and Chinese can never again misunderstand rationality merely as strict and
play an independent part in the world of the rigid reasoning Ð unfortunately, it has been often
great powers. They can change their mistaken as such. The history of reason and its
masters, drive one out Ð as, for example, relation to nature and technology, from Leibniz to
the Englishman from India Ð but it is only to cybernetics and machine learning, has to be
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

succumb to another. They will never again constructed and interrogated differently than it
produce a form of political existence of has been.25
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

their own. For that they are too old, too ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊCertain reflections on culture may provide a
rigid, too used up.23 way to understand these different modes of
technological thinking. To rediscover multiple
This failure is largely due to the fact that the cosmotechnics is not to refuse artificial
question of technology has never been intelligence or machine learning, but to
sufficiently addressed, neither in the West nor reappropriate modern technology, to give other
elsewhere: technology remains a utility, and frames to the enframing (Gestell) at the core of
there is no way of seeing the kingdom of ends modern technology.26 If we want to surpass
beyond the limits of utility and efficiency. modernity, there is no way to simply reset it as if
Efficiency is a very important factor of it were a computer or a smartphone. We must
technological innovation, but it has to be instead escape its global time-axis, escape a
measured according to a long-term vision (trans)humanism that subordinates other beings
instead of short-term profits. The other thing to the terms of its own destiny, and propose a
that holds back the colonial mentality is a new agenda and imagination of technology that
cynicism that sees no way out. After all, who can open up new forms of social, political, and
escape the economic and geopolitical aesthetic life and new relations with nonhumans,
competition to master artificial intelligence the earth, and the cosmos. All of this remains to
when technological linearity is identified with the be thought, since it demands a Nietzschean
progress of humanity? We can be certain that revaluation of the question of technology, and
artificial intelligence will have a significant this is possible only when done collectively.
impact on our societies and economies. If China ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn this sense, we can take KissingerÕs
or Russia slowed their pace of technological statement not as a target of criticism, but as an

01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST

invitation to think beyond the end of the ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1
Henry Kissinger, ÒHow the
Enlightenment, as a challenge to undertake the Enlightenment Ends,Ó The
task of thinking through the plurality of its forms. Atlantic, June 2018
https://www.theatlantic.com/
Perhaps KissingerÕs own closing warning is the magazine/archive/2018/06/hen
most appropriate way to end this critique of him: ry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-t
he-end-of-human-history/5591
ÒIf we do not start this effort soon, before long 24/.
09/10
we shall discover that we started too late.Ó27 ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ× JŸrgen Habermas, ÒModernity:
An UnÞnished Project,Ó in
Contemporary Sociological
Theory, 3rd edition, eds. Craig J.
Calhoun et al. (Wiley-Blackwell,
2012), 444Ð50. Originally
published as ÒModernity versus
Postmodernity,Ó New German
Critique, no. 22 (Winter 1981):
3Ð14.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3
Yuk Hui, ÒOn the Unhappy
Consciousness of
Neoreactionaries,Ó e-flux
journal, no. 81 (April 2017)
https://www.e-flux.com/journ
al/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-
consciousness-of-neoreaction
aries/; Hui, ÒCosmotechnics as
Cosmopolitics,Ó e-flux journal,
no. 86 (November 2017)
https://www.e-flux.com/journ
al/86/161887/cosmotechnics-a
s-cosmopolitics/.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4
Quoted in Gregory D. Cleva,
Henry Kissinger and the
American Approach to Foreign
Policy (Bucknell University
Press, 1989), 38.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5
See Zeev Sternhell, The Anti-
Enlightenment Tradition, trans.
David Maisel (Yale University
Press, 2010), 2.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6
Oswald Spengler, Man and
Technics: A Contribution to a
Philosophy of Life (Greenwood
Press, 1967), 100Ð1.
What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7
Spengler, Man and Technics, 101.
e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8
As both Martin Heidegger and
Gilbert Simondon suggest Ð see
Heidegger, ÒThe Question
Concerning TechnologyÓ (1953),
in The Question Concerning
Technology and Other Essays,
trans. William Lovitt (Garland,
1977), 3Ð35; and Simondon,
ÒCulture et technique (1965),Ó in
Sur la technique (PUF, 2014),
315Ð30.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9
See Sternhell, Anti-
Enlightenment Tradition, 284.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10
See Isaiah Berlin, Vico and
Herder: Two Studies in the
History of Ideas (Viking Press,
1976), 155.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11
See Pierre Musso, ÒAux origines
du concept moderne: Corps et
rŽseau dans la philosophie de
Saint Simon,Ó Quaderni, no. 3
(Winter 1987Ð88): 11Ð29.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ12
Walter Benjamin, ÒParis, Capital
01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST
of Nineteenth Century,Ó New Left
Review, no. 48 (MarchÐApril
1968): 77Ð88, 82.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ13
Simondon, ÒCulture et
technique,Ó 318Ð19.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ14
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the
Political, trans. George Schwab
(Chicago University Press, 1996),
54.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ15
Martin Heidegger, ÒThe End of
Philosophy and the Task of
Thinking,Ó in On Time and Being,
trans. Joan Stambaugh (Harper
& Row, 1972), 59.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ16
Robin Mackay, ÒImmaterials,
Exhibition, Acceleration,Ó in 30
Years after Les ImmatŽriaux: Art,
Science and Theory, eds. Yuk Hui
and Andreas Broeckmann
(Meson Press, 2015), 217Ð46,
238.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ17
Office of News and Public
Affairs, Free University of Berlin,
ÒStudy: More than two thirds of
Chinese take a positive view of
social credit systems in their
country,Ó press release no. 198,
July 23, 2018 https://www.fu-
berlin.de/en/
presse/informationen/fup/201
8/fup_18_198-studie-sozialkr
editsystem-china/index.html.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ18
Quoted in Sternhell, Anti-
Enlightenment Tradition, 17.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ19
In May 1941, Hans-Georg
Gadamer gave a lecture on
Herder titled ÒVolk und
Geschichte im Denken HerdersÓ
(The People and History in
HerderÕs Thought) at the German
Institute in Paris. In the lecture
he claimed that Herder went
beyond Rousseauism and made
possible a liberation from the
cultural prejudices of the
encyclopŽdist philosophes. See
Sternhell, Anti-Enlightenment
Tradition, 119. Berlin, Vico and
Herder, 147. Charles Taylor, ÒThe
Importance of Herder,Ó in
Philosophical Arguments
(Harvard University Press, 1995),
79Ð99.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ20
Unfortunately, these
anthropologists of nature largely
ignore the question of
technology; see my critique of
this approach in Hui,
ÒCosmotechnics as
Cosmopolitics.Ó
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ21
Oswald Spengler, The Hour of
Decision: Germany and World-
Historical Evolution, trans.
Charles Francis Atkinson (Alfred
A. Knopf. 1934), 80.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ22
See Hui, The Question
Concerning Technology in China,
¤23 ÒNihilism And ModernityÓ
and ¤24 ÒOvercoming
Modernity.Ó
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ23
Spengler, The Hour of Decision,
65.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ24
James Vincent, "Putin says the
nation that leads in AI 'will be
the ruler of the world,'" The
Verge, September 4,

10/10
2017,https://www.theverge.co
m/2017/9/4/16251226/russia-a
i-putin-rule-the-world.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ25
This is the task of my
forthcoming book, Recursivity
and Contingency.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ26
In ÒThe Question Concerning
Technology,Ó Heidegger
proposed to understand the
essence of modern technology
as ÒGestell,Ó translated into
English as Òenframing,Ó meaning
that every being is considered to
be a standing reserve or
resource.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ27
Kissinger, ÒHow the
Enlightenment Ends.Ó

What Begins After the End of the Enlightenment?

e-flux journal #96 Ñ january 2019 Ê Yuk Hui

01.17.19 / 16:58:40 EST