Simone Weil Center publishes Russian essay on geo-politics, transhumanism
Subject: Simone Weil Center publishes Russian essay on geo-politics, transhumanism
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020
From: Paul Grenier <psgrenier@gmail.com>
The Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy is starting a soft launch of its new publications platform, Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue. Our focus at Landmarks will be publishing original essays, interviews and translations that bring a philosophical perspective to global politics.
First up is Svetlana Lourie’s The Road to Transhumanism: How Man Became a Project.
URL: simoneweilcenter.org/publications/2020/8/17/the-road-to-transhumanism-how-man-became-a-project
We would be very glad to see this linked to in the Russia List, if, as we hope, it proves of interest.
Paul Grenier
President
The Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy
——-
The Road to Transhumanism: How Man Became a Project
By Svetlana Lourie
[First published in Russian by Russkaya Idea (July 6, 2020), the following essay by Svetlana Lourié addresses, among other topics, geopolitics, color revolutions, technology, and the question of civilization and its foundations. Lourié sharply critiques Chinese (and Russian) policies as they relate to artificial intelligence and allied new technologies. Her views on the current American disorders transcend the usual discourse centering narrowly on ‘national interests’. She sees the survival of an identifiable American civilization as something of independent value, even as she acknowledges that the United States’ competitive stance vis-a-vis Russia appears to be hardwired within the international system.
Lourié is by no means uncritical toward the current American president. Yet she also holds that, for some significant portion of the American public, Donald Trump represents what they believe is their best chance at preserving their traditional understanding of what it means to be a person, what it means to be an American. In sociological terms, this strikes us as sound. Whether or not, behind that symbolic representation, there also stands anything of substance is subject to debate. Let us hope that here, as in other fateful questions raised by Lourié, alternative futures remain a possibility. – the Editors] ….