Wolfgang Schirmacher

Wolfgang Schirmacher (born 1944) is an editor and educator in the field of philosophy. He has edited many journals and written books [cite web |url=http://www.egs.edu/faculty/wolfgangschirmacher.html |accessdate=2006-12-08 |title=Wolfgang Schirmacher Bibliography |publisher=European Graduate School ] , as well as developed curriculum in philosophical disciplines at major universities.

Biography

Schirmacher has taught philosophy at the University of Hamburg, is a former Core Faculty Member of the Media Studies Graduate Program, New School for Social Research, and Director of International Relations, Philosophy and Technology Studies Center, Polytechnic University of New York. He is the editor the philosophy journals "Schopenhauer-Studien" and "New York Studies in Media Philosophy". He is also an internationally active philosopher of technology with emphasis on media, gene technology, and neuroscience, as well as president of the International Schopenhauer Association, and chair of the Artificial Life Group. [cite web |url=http://www.egs.edu/faculty/schirmacher.html |accessdate=2006-12-08 |title=Wolfgang Schirmacher |publisher=European Graduate School ]

In Schirmacher's curriculum at the European Graduate School, he gives equal emphasis to theory and practice. Faculty members reflect this cross-disciplinary approach, as they are considered philosophers in their fields as filmmakers, academics, artists and media professionals.

Philosophy

Inspired by a diverse collection of post-Kantian, post-Hegelianphilosophers such as Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Bataille, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida, and Lyotard,Schirmacher announces the conviction of Modern Technology for first-degreemurder of the body. As his mentors do, Schirmacher considers the body asour place of resistance, and its growing influence coincides with thegrowing threat technological progress seems to make to the bodily sphere.

Homo generator

What Schirmacher calls “homo generator” is a realization of the hope andthe angst of the philosophers after Hegel: “a Dasein beyond metaphysics, ahuman being which needs no Being, no certainty, no truth.” Moderntechnology is its ambiguous birthplace. Rather than considering homogenerator a narrative of progress, technological triumph over nature, ormovement to a higher form of living, he describes homo generator as havingto face with courage his or her own mortality (complemented by natality) inthe climate of ecocide. Homo generator begins to fulfill the artificialexistence of humanity, and takes the form of the media artist, as generatorof human reality and his/her responsibility for tomorrow's artificialworld. Unlike other descriptions of humanity, homo generator addresses ourability to produce new forms of life and determine the biological, as wellas the spiritual, future of the earth. Homo generator is in a position totailor-make evolution, both in gene technology and in media technology.

A phenomenologist at heart, Schirmacher states that homo generator's bodypolitics claims aesthetic perception as the basis of comprehension andinteraction. “Homo generator is a concrete beginning, unique but notoriginal, self care without egoism.” He brings attention to our postmoderntechnology that has abandoned the question of control. The body politics ofhomo generator states that we are jokes in the universe that will die onlywith our deaths. “We are the artificial beings among all others, our bodiesare artifacts by nature.”

Post-metaphysical ethics

In a paper presented at the International Congress for Phenomenology,
Frankfurt, in 1985, and printed in Analecta Husserliana XXII, 1987, titled“The Faces of Compassion: Toward a Post-Metaphysical Ethics,” Schirmacherasks what shape morality will take in the search for an effective ethicsfor the technological age. He cites Arthur Schopenhauer’s and AlbertSchweitzer’s ethics of practical compassion, renewed as a "Humanism of theOther" by what Emmanuel Levinas claims is the "hopeless compassion with allbeings" which proves to be moral in the ecological and human crisis.Schirmacher asks in what way compassion shows itself in our life-world andhow we can perceive the decisive characteristics of compassion withoutprior value judgment. “In being the artificial ones we are the open,undetermined ones. Intuitive knowledge knows nothing, and compassion knowsno law.” He indicates that “justified individuality,” which practicescompassion, is missing in Schopenhauer's model of ethics of compassion, andclaims that compassion as a way of living will become tangible for us onlywhen “it has been bent back into an active sensitization…Sensitizing meansto develop all senses (the few trained, the numerous untrained [senses] ) ina creative process and to do it without fear, without order, withoutforeknowledge.” He refers to compassion as an intuitive language: faint,yet impossible to ignore.

In a paper presented at the XVIIth World Congress of Philosophy in Montreal
1983, and printed in Social Science Information 23, 3 (1984), titled “TheEnd of Metaphysics – What Does This Mean?” Schirmacher addressesHeidegger’s reduction of the problem of modernity to the notion of the endof metaphysics. He claims that we are the literal proof of this end, ordeath, seen in the process of the extinction of the human species. It hasbecome clear, he says, that we are far from being what we imagined we werein our metaphysics. He refers to the modern period as the last phase ofWestern metaphysics, which is today dominant throughout the world in itsfinal form of scientific and technical rationality, and post-modernism asthe expression of the expected break with metaphysics at its definitiveend, after which there will be no new beginning. The end of metaphysicsmeans that the life-long project of the human species has become, in itshistorical development, a suicidal enterprise. If we proceed along the wayof metaphysics no human beings or objects will survive, leaving onlyartifacts. Schirmacher claims that a radical change is required for thehuman species to survive, and if we want to prevent our destruction, wemust “learn a "bodily" language which precedes the division into subjectand object, and admit the individual to a successful enterprise which needsno planning.”

Schirmacher continues his discussion of the postmodern world by statingthat being has become cloning, and that the meaning of cloning has littleto do with the scientific-technological act. Humanity protects itsvirtuality, its principally undefined status, by cloning with media themany ways in which a human being exists. He looks to Lyotard’s Just Gamingto support his position that the postmodern decision is about becoming aplayer rather than a spectator in the activity of cloning humans in orderto allow for a good life. In the spirit of the new name of humanity: homo-generator, with “openness as our existential taste and co-evolutionarypower as our design,” what we clone is exactly this attitude of opengenerating and never a mere copy of anything.

Schirmacher claims that humans are alone and fully responsible forartificial life, which is our only life. By cloning freely with media anddesigning a life-world in between natality and mortality, we fail to payattention to the artificial life we generate. His advice is that we mustbecome more experienced in perceiving our imperceptible actions of truehumanity. The art of living: enjoying life without knowing why, livinghappily without expectations and acting without believing in the principlesof our action, is rooted in judgment and prudence instead of concepts.Cloning humans with media works to distract our attention from this ethicalart of living. In media we simulate humanity to the point of notrecognizing ourselves anymore, and this life-consuming activity helps us tostay clear of authentic humanity. In ethical life humanity fulfills itself,of which we are vaguely aware and which we need to forget at once.Schirmacher writes that to work toward this forgetting is media's strongestclaim.

elected bibliography

(editor with Sven Nebelung): German Essays On Psychology. The GermanLibrary 62. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London,November 2000, 330 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-1237-8.

(editor): German 20th Century Philosophy: The Frankfurt School. The GermanLibrary 78. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London,February 2000, 324 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0966-0.

(editor): German Socialist Philosophy: Feuerbach, Marx, Engels. The GermanLibrary 40. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London,December 1996, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0748-X.

(editor): German Essays On Science In The 20th Century. The German Library82. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, October1996, 314 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0746-3.

(editor): German Essays On Science In The 19th Century. The German Library36. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London,September 1996, 330 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0744-7.

(editor): Ethik und Vernunft: Schopenhauer in unserer Zeit. Schopenhauer-Studien 5. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1995, 387 pages, Paperback, ISBN 3-85165-023-9.

(editor): Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer: Philosophical Writings. TheGerman Library 27. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York,London, July 1994, 300 pages, Paperback, ISBN 0-8264-0729-3.

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche Und Die Kunst. Schopenhauer-Studien 4. PassagenVerlag. Vienna, 1992, 400 pages.

(Editor with Jacques Poulain), Arno Münster (Translation). Penser aprèsHeidegger. La Philosophie en commun. L'Harmattan. Paris, 1992, 360 pages,Paperback (Broché), ISBN 2-7384-1064-2.

Ereignis Technik. Passagen Philosophie 33. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1990,245 pages, Paperback, ISBN 3-900767-36-X.

Schopenhauer In Der Postmoderne. Schopenhauer-Studien 3. Passagen Verlag.Vienna, 1989, 400 pages.

(editor): Zeitkritik Nach Heidegger. Reihe Philosophie 9. Die blaue Eule.Essen, 1988, 240 pages.

Schopenhauer Aktualität: Ein Philosoph wird neu gelesen. Schopenhauer-Studien 1/2. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1988, 400 pages.

Schopenhauer. Insel-Almanach 1985. Insel. Frankfurt, 1985, 249 pages,Paperback, ISBN 3-458-14188-X.

Schopenhauer Und Nietzsche. Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 1984. W.Kramer.Frankfurt, 1984, 326 pages.

Zeit Der Ernte: Studien zum Stand der Schopenhauer-Forschung. Frommann-Holzboog. Stuttgart, 1983, 447 pages.

Technik und Gelassenheit. Zeitkritik nach Heidegger. Fermenta philosophica.Alber Freiburg. München, 1983, 274 pages. Hiroshi Kojima (PartialTranslation). Niigata University Press. Niigata, 1986.Ereignis Technik: Heidegger und die Frage nach der Technik. Dissertation.Hamburg, 1980, 310 pages.

References

External links

*http://www.egs.edu/Art_Life/wolfgang/wspage1.html : Access to publications and texts online
*http://www.egs.edu/faculty/wolfgangschirmacher.html : Faculty profile for EGS and bibliography.
*http://www.radioalchymy.com/bobology/articles/cloning.htm: “Cloning Humans with Media” by Schirmacher.
*http://www.o-o.lt/agon/med_aes.html : “Media Aesthetics in Europe” by Schirmacher.
*http://srce.aaen.edu.yu/bilten29.html#6 : Article on the European Graduate School (Schirmacher: Founder and Dean).
*http://langlab.uta.edu/scottweb/cybergermania/cybergermania.htm : “Germania in Cyberspace,” brief biography.