Vol 34, No 6 (2024)

The article is an introduction to a block of papers devoted to understanding the conditions of possibility and validity of claims for a cosy existence in a situation brought to life by the so-called digital revolution. This situation is characterized by radical changes both technologically and socially: politics, economics, culture, as well as everyday life and nature itself, undergoing digitalization, are turning into objects whose mode of existence calls into question the relevance of traditional forms of treatment of concepts such as property, alienation, responsibility, justice, humanity, etc. Digitalization also forces us to reconsider the attitude towards fundamental oppositions (nature/culture, mental/physical, living/dead, serious/playful, rational/affective, real/phantasmatic, etc.), structuring our experience and setting the coordinates of its sanity and cognition. It is possible that the feeling of the general uncosiness of life in the world after algorithms is only a temporary, partial and purely evaluative phenomenon; but it is also likely that today’s preoccupation with cosiness (the possibility of finding a digital home) may serve as an impetus for rethinking the status of utopia as a form of critical thinking about modernity.

The article discusses the utopia of a cosy life as a response to the challenges of modernity, primarily technology and digitalization. The history of the utopia of cosiness are traced from the project of “family happiness,” or “good” life in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Julia, or the New Heloise. The author shows why this project cannot be considered as utopia in the full sense of the word. Sentimentalism is being replaced by romanticism, which is not characterized by utopian thinking, since the ideal of romance is a specific inner state that cannot be described as part of the world. Romanticism sees the world of the future in the optics of science fiction, and reality — as a dystopia. The author interprets Karl Marx’s theory of alienation as a dystopia, since it is formulated in terms of affects.

Furthermore, Rachel Jaeggy’s modern theory of alienation is considered, in which political and economic issues are present as little as the romantic ideal of realizing the human essence. Jaeggy’s concept combines elements of critical theory with analytical social psychology. Its main idea is the total appropriation of the world, which the author of the article calls generous. She assumes that alienation is the absence of relationships where they should be, so its elimination comes down to building relationships with practically anything. Jaeggy leaves aside the question of what internal mechanisms should move a person to generous appropriation. The author shows that Jaeggy’s theory is neo-sentimentalist and has much in common with Rousseau’s “good” life. However, Jaeggy’s theory borrowed belief in progress from romanticism. It turns out to be a constitutive element of generous appropriation. Progress takes on the function of bare necessity, or Marx’s “non-human” force. It stands above capitalism and any other social relations. As a result, a person is relieved of responsibility for anything that goes beyond his private life. But this conclusion comes across an important feature of progress: it brings happiness to some people, using others as a resource. The utopia of a comfortable life turns out to be a call to ignore this circumstance.

The article presents two independently written narratives, problematizing the question of the status of utopia and the nature of utopian thinking in German critical theory and, more broadly, the dialectical philosophical tradition from different perspectives. In his part of the paper, Anton Syutkin discusses the transformation of utopian thinking in the context of the development of Marxist and post-Marxist materialist dialectics. The author demonstrates that in the first half of the 20th century the dominant idea proposed the possibility of carrying out a planned revolutionary leap into the utopian kingdom of freedom. This view is shared by the opposing projects of materialist dialectics of Friedrich Engels and György Lukács. However, in the second half of the century a fundamental change in mood occurs after the revolutionary transformation of reality breaks down into terror. Theodor Adorno’s critical theory insists on the impossibility of presenting utopia as a positive program. This allows him to save Marxist thought from collapsing into a repressive totality but leads to the paralysis of the utopian imagination. As an alternative to these ways of thinking utopia, which compromised themselves in the 20th century, the author proposes an appeal to the legacy of Ernst Bloch and its re-actualization with the help of modern materialist dialectics of Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou.

Artyom Serebryakov in turn focuses on the debate over utopia between Bloch and Adorno. The author gives a preliminary analysis of the concept of utopia, showing that its employment inevitably leads to the problem of representation of the utopian and the correlation with the good and its images. It is this question that turns out to be a stumbling block for Bloch and Adorno. While the former is an apologist for the work of the utopian imagination, for the pursuit of daydreams about the bettermost, Adorno, on the contrary, considers the representation of the utopian to be unacceptable in order to save it from reification. Despite such a restriction, the Adornian position cannot be reduced to melancholic aestheticism, since for Adorno the work of utopian thinking is expressed in the form of specific demands that are political in nature and appeal to the necessity for a radical restructuring of society and its institutions. The question of how utopian thinking, which makes judgments about the principles of the possible transformation of reality, and the utopian imagination, which produces images of a better life, should be related is fundamental to determining what challenges philosophy should set itself and how it should respond to its own failures.

The descriptions of villas in the letters of Pliny the Younger display a kind of utopia. It is based on the ideal of an ennobled and pleasant life, in which sublime, literary pursuits occupy a key place. The realization of this ideal requires inspiring natural surroundings and a certain degree of cosiness, but not the usual luxuries of gilding, ivory, and expensive statues common to the Romans of Pliny’s circle. Pliny’s description of his villas is not an account of status, of social influence, whether in political or literary circles: his way of life in the villas suggests a temporary removal from both the burdens and dividends of public duties, a concentration on pursuits alternating with leisure; there is no question, however, of escapism.

The life ideal behind the way Pliny describes his villas corresponds with his temper and outlook as they appear in the letters that have nothing to do with country pastime. As in the description of the villas Pliny does not boast of anything, does not argue with anyone, so in the whole collection of letters he appears as a benevolent, tolerant, reasonable, caring person with strong opinions. Although the utopia of Pliny’s villas is not a project of collective reorganization, it is an elaborate ideal to follow. Pliny’s humanism surprisingly anticipates the humanism of the Modern times.

The article considers new ways of interaction, non-typical interfaces and controllers based on the deconstruction of classical game design systems of control and on the deconstruction of the gamer’s body. Already in the middle of 1960s Marshall McLuhan, anticipating the critique of technologies and virtual capitalism that unfolded later in cyberpunk novels, noticed that our bodies and central nervous system belonged to big corporations. The organisation of sensibility via interfaces and controllers, different apparatuses, and technical devices ceased to be a dream of futurologists and science fiction writers. The design of apparatuses forms normative schemes, and as a result, big companies such as Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo spend hundreds of millions of dollars to assess ergonomics and effective ways of interaction. They create a technically grasped gamer corporeality, which can be easily reproduced and replicated. However, normative corporeality is ironically and easily, mockingly and ruthlessly played out and reinvented in the projects of indie game developers, artists, and engineer-enthusiasts.

The foundation of the following article is the analysis of 166 project-winners at the biggest annual festival of alternative controllers alt.ctrl.GDC and the analysis of works by Cologne artists Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe (//////////fur//// art group), who used pain as the main gameplay resource. A variety of scrutinized projects form a non-conventional experience, using analogue manipulators, physical impact on the gamer’s body, and including unusual game elements (such as a cow’s udder, synthesizer, cold weapon, etc.). On the one hand, the article describes the current phase of human evolution, which supposes technological forms of violence and disciplinary organization of the body; on the other hand, it considers their deconstruction in the works of artists, engineers, and designers, who create non-typical controllers and interfaces, developing and enlarging the perception experience of gamers and users of contemporary technologies.

The article is devoted to the question of what happens to the status of a human being in the modern period of artificial intelligence technology (hereinafter — AI) dominance. Anthropocentrism is treated as an insufficient conceptual means for the identification of the real position of a human, because it leads to the fixation of simple instrumentality behind AI systems. Such a distribution of roles between humans and technology does not correspond to the real complexity of the functioning and interaction of humans and AI at the present stage. AI, by virtue of its construction, has a certain degree of autonomy, opacity and unpredictability, which allows us to generally talk about it as an agent. However, if we allow the expansion of the field of morality as a result of its reorientation from the subject of action to the object and its moral state’s significant changes, then artificial agents can be regarded as moral agents (based on Luciano Floridi’s Information ethics project).

However, these agents are designed and trained by humans based on data that is produced, collected, and marked up by humans again. The reality of technology production in its social aspect is so complex that, as a result, it is not possible to take into account the separate contribution of all agents (human and non-human) to its functioning. Therefore, the concept of a sociotechnical multi-agent system is used to designate this situation. It is characterized by different levels of agency: causal, moral and moral with the possibility of responsibility. The human in the sociotechnical system is a source of moral agency and responsibility due to the fact that they are its essential properties. The further direction of the research is connected with the question of how the problem of eliminating the responsibility gap in the realm of the sociotechnical system should be solved.

Without disputing the need to criticize the strategy of “surveillance capitalists,” the author questions the inevitability of turning to the image of war as an expression of the utmost existential seriousness, that is, concentration that mobilizes all the abilities of the subject to achieve truly significant goals. Based on the criticism expressed by Walter Benjamin against Jünger, it is shown that perhaps just the opposite — not concentration, but rather distraction could serve as the most reasonable form of existence in the situation of radical “uncosiness” generated by capitalist digitalization.

The article examines Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s concept of the “closed commercial state” and his views on war and borders. The author analyzes Fichte’s use of the term “natural borders” and its role in legitimizing state consolidation through warfare. The paper explores Fichte’s argument that philosophers have historically “sighed over wars” and his assertion that war is inevitable in the current state of affairs. Fichte proposes that to abolish war, its root cause must be eliminated by allowing each state to obtain its natural borders. The author delves into Fichte’s notion of the “closed commercial state” and how it relates to the idea of natural borders. Fichte envisions this state as self-sufficient and detached from others, with clearly defined boundaries. The concept of “internal borders” is also discussed as a means to surpass and replace natural borders.

The paper examines Fichte’s justification for a “final war” that would end all future wars by establishing natural borders. The author critiques the logic of this argument, noting that it could potentially lead to a global conflict. Fichte’s attempt to make this final war as peaceful as possible is analyzed, including his idea of an “occupation march” rather than a bloody conflict. The author argues that this conception relies on negating the existence of the “other” state. Finally, the article discusses Fichte’s view on commercial warfare and its relation to territorial conflicts. The author concludes by reflecting on how Fichte’s project of a closed state ultimately turns inward, negating the very concept of borders as interfaces with others.

While analytical philosophy remains the main format of academic philosophizing in Great Britain and the USA, wining ground on the European continent and in the Third World countries, its comprehension as a cultural phenomenon falls far behind the scale of its spread even at the level of identification. The article examines solution to this problem suggested by Hans-Johann Glock — one of the most eminent historians of analytic philosophy, who sets the parameters for discussing the subject within the framework of contemporary metaphilosophy. The author highlights Glock’s step-type repudiation of accepted identifications of analytic philosophy (from the geographical to ideological ones) and his offer of his own, i.e. via “family resemblances” and “family ties” within it, and criticizes it as both consensual and contradictory from the methodological point of view.

In return, the author of the article offers an alternative interpretation of the same phenomenon as a very traditional investigative-cum-controversial practice, very distant from being “revolutionary,” i.e. contrary to the non-rational belief of its numerous apologists stubbornly marketing it as a modern philosophical school dating from Bertrand Russell, George Edward Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (sometimes also from Gottlob Frege). The practice under discussion cannot be typologically separated from the centuries-old intercultural scholasticism (the term being used by the author without any pejorative accent) in whose history the activity of the aforementioned persons can be seen as truly seminal but by no means ground-breaking. Attention is paid also to such effects which are conditioned by appropriation analytic philosophy by one of the Russian publishers working unalterably with the same translators.