Is Sex With Robots Rape?

Philosophy

It is widely accepted that valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sexual activity. Since non-human animals, children, and individuals who are severely cognitively disabled, heavily intoxicated or unconscious, lack the cognitive capacity to give valid consent, this condition explains why it is impermissible to have sex with them. However, contrary to common intuitions, the same condition seems to render it impermissible to have sex with robots, for they too are incapable of consenting to sex due to insufficient cognitive capacitation. This paper explores whether the intuition that non-consensual sex with robots is permissible can be vindicated, whilst preserving valid consent as a general requirement for permissible sexual activity. I develop and evaluate four possible ways to argue that there is a morally significant difference between robots on the one hand, and insufficiently cognitively capacitated humans and non-human animals on the other hand, to substantiate and justify the intuition that it is permissible to have non-consensual sex with the former but not with the latter.

Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS62 Is Sex With Robots Rape? Romy eSkenS University of Oxford 2017 oxfoRd UehIRo PRIze In PRactIcal ethIcS WInneR: GRadUate cateGoRy abStRact It is widely accepted that valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sexual activity. Since non-human animals, children, and individuals who are severely cognitively disabled, heavily intoxicated or unconscious, lack the cognitive capacity to give valid consent, this condition explains why it is impermissible to have sex with them. however, contrary to common intuitions, the same condition seems to render it impermissible to have sex with robots, for they too are incapable of consenting to sex due to insufficient cognitive capacitation. this paper explores whether the intuition that non-consensual sex with robots is permissible can be vindicated, whilst preserving valid consent as a general requirement for permissible sexual activity. I develop and evaluate four possible ways to argue that there is a morally significant difference between robots on the one hand, and insufficiently cognitively capacitated humans and non-human animals on the other hand, to substantiate and justify the intuition that it is permissible to have non-consensual sex with the former but not with the latter. Volume 5, Issue 2 Is Sex With Robots Rape? 63 0. IntRodUctIon In ethical discourse, valid consent is usually taken to be a necessary condition for permissible sexual activity (archard 2007; cahill 2001; cowling et al. 2017; Soble et al. 2002). Since non-human animals, children, and individuals who are severely cognitively disabled, heavily intoxicated or unconscious, lack the cognitive capacity to give valid consent, this condition renders it impermissible to have sex with them. however, the claim that valid consent is necessary for permissible sexual activity seems to imply that it is also impermissible to have sex with robots, for they too are incapable of consenting because they lack the requisite cognitive capacities. I suspect that many people find this apparent implication counterintuitive, even though they would endorse the view that valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sex. hence, many people seem to hold conflicting intuitions about the permissibility of non -consensual sex between cases in which the non-consenting subject is a robot and cases in which they are a human or non-human animal. to show that these intuitions are in fact consistent, so that neither has to be abandoned, it must be demonstrated that there is a morally significant difference between the two types of cases, which explains why valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sexual activity if the non-consenting subject is a human or non-human animal but not when they are a robot. Solving this puzzle challenges us to refine our conception of the relation between consent and the permissibility of sexual activity, and to reflect on the ethics of robot-human interaction. this essay proceeds in the following way. In Section 1, I elaborate on the current and anticipated design of sex robots, as well as the sex robot industry, and provide a brief overview of the ethical debate on sex robots. In section 2, I clarify the notion of valid consent, and expand on its application in sexual ethics. In section 3, I explore and reject three possible ways to argue that there is a moral difference between robots on the one hand, and humans and non-human animals on the other hand, which renders it impermissible to have non-consensual sex with the latter but not with the former. In section 4, I argue that this moral difference is grounded in a discrepancy in moral status. Section 5 concludes. Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS64 1. Sex RobotS 1.1 Design, Demand, and Development Sex robots ('sexbots') currently make up the only category of robots capable of having sex. Sexbots are robots designed for the purpose of providing sex for humans. they are programmed to engage in sexual activity, as their governing software necessitates them to perform acts aimed at the sexual gratification of their users (levy 2009; Sparrow 2017). the sexbots currently available for sale look and behave moderately like humans, insofar as they have silicone skin and are realistically shaped, and are equipped with a rudimentary aI system that enables them to interact with their users through speech and affective communication (levy 2009; Sharkey et al. 2017; Sparrow 2017). the sexbot companies that are currently best known are truecompanion, which has launched multiple editions of the female sexbot Roxxxy, and Realdoll, which sells customizable models of both male and female sexbots.1 a number of surveys indicates that the market for sexbots has potential for significant expansion in the future. Szczuka and krämer, for example, found that 40,3 percent of the 229 heterosexual males who participated in their study could imagine buying a sexbot within the next five years (2017). likewise, Scheutz and arnold conducted a small-scale survey, indicating that two thirds of the male participants were open to the idea of using sexbots in the near future (2016).2 furthermore, li, Ju and Reeves found that participants in their study were subject to increased physical arousal when they touched the 'erotic zones' of a sexbot, which suggests that there generally is no physiological barrier to sexual relationships between humans and robots (2016). moreover, experts believe that it lies within the scope of near future technological possibilities to create sexbots that are far more sophisticated than those currently available. these sexbots will be autonomous and interactive, with flesh-like skin, affective computing, highly developed sensory perception, refined language skills, the capacity to learn, and multiple preprogrammed personalities. they will adapt to the 1. See www.truecompanion.com and www.realdoll.com (both accessed 28 June 2017). other sexbot companies that are currently competing on the market are android love dolls and Sex bot company. 2. In stark contrast to the male participants, Scheutz and arnold found that two thirds of the female participants declared themselves to be opposed to the idea of having sex with a sexbot. I can not elaborate on this gender difference here. however, see Scheutz and arnold (2016) for possible explanations of this result. Volume 5, Issue 2 Is Sex With Robots Rape? 65 sexual preferences of their user and base their sexual performance on an extensive amount of data, which will enable them to provide sexual gratification for their users (levy 2009; Richardson 2015; 2016; Sharkey et al. 2017; Sparrow 2017). these sexbots of the near future will also display sentient behaviour, such as the experience of sexual pleasure when internal sensors are triggered, without actually having qualitative experiences. moreover, their programming will cause them to demonstrate complex emotional behaviour, which will allow for the formation of intimate sexual and emotional relationships with their users. It is this characteristic that differentiates sexbots from sextoys. the creation of such sophisticated humanoid sexbots can be expected to increase the number of individuals that is open to the idea of having sex with a robot (levy 2009; Richardson 2015; 2016; Sharkey et al. 2017; Sparrow 2017).3 In this essay, I will be concerned solely with near future sexbots. hence, my conclusions might no longer hold if sexbots become increasingly advanced in the more distant future. 1.2 Ethical Considerations david levy has argued that there are strong reasons in favour of creating sophisticated sexbots (2009). to begin with, he suggests that sexbots could replace human sex workers, which has the potential to curtail persisting harmful practices in the sex industry, such as sex slavery and sexual abuse. furthermore, he maintains that the availability of sexbots could offer a solution for individuals who experience difficulty finding sexual partners, and provide intimate companionship for those who feel lonely or isolated.4 moreover, it might be possible for sexbots to function as satisfactory alternatives for individuals with sexual desires that are likely to cause harm 3. this anticipation is also supported by the results from a 2016 survey conducted by nesta. See nesta futurefest Survey, april 27, 2016, http://www.comresglobal.com/polls/nesta-futurefest-survey-2/ (accessed 23-07-2017). 4. for objections to this claim, see Giutu (2012) and Sullins (2012). Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS66 to humans if brought into practice, such as the desire to have sex with children or to engage in violent or degrading sex without another agent's consent.5 there are also legitimate worries about possible negative effects of the development of the sexbot industry. kathleen Richardson, who launched a campaign against Sex Robots in 2015, has stressed that the sexbot industry is mostly driven by heterosexual men who desire to buy robots that look realistically like women, but appear and behave in ways that exhibit harmful pornographic stereotypes of female attractiveness, personality and sexuality (2015; 2016). according to Richardson, this fact causes the design, sale and use of sexbots to express and reinforce persistent sexist and misogynist stereotypes about females, which she expects to have harmful consequences for women (2015; 2016; see also Scheutz and arnold 2016; Szczuka and krämer 2017).6 even if the design, sale and use of sexbots will have no such effect on women, it might be wrong for individuals to interact with sexbots in ways that would be harmful if the recipients had been actual women. Robert Sparrow has argued that behaviour that has no extrinsic harmful effects can be morally objectionable in virtue of representing harmful behaviour (2017). Indeed, he maintains that because sexbots are intended to represent women, sexist and misogynistic behaviour towards sexbots is morally objectionable in virtue of representing such behaviour towards women (Sparrow 2017). another way in which sexist or misogynist behaviour towards sexbots can be considered morally objectionable without having harmful effects on others concerns moral character. according to John danaher, for instance, such behaviour is expressive of the defective moral character of the sexbot user, and is to be condemned on that basis (2017; see also Sparrow 2017). there are thus good reasons to be cautious of the design, sale and use of sexbots, although these reasons are far from definite. however, since the subject of this essay is the permissibility of non-consensual sexual relationships with robots, I will set these issues aside for the remainder of this essay. nonetheless, it should be kept in 5. this claim is highly disputed both within and outside of the academic community. this is in part because there is insufficient empirical evidence to support or oppose the claim that the desire to have potentially harmful sex with actual people diminishes when substitutes, such as sexbots, sexdolls and virtual pornography, are used. It is unlikely that such evidence will become available soon, since research on the topic is suffering from a lack of funding and a scarcity of willing participants, largely due to the ethical complexities involved in such research, and the moral contentiousness of the research subject. nonetheless, for an overview of some of the arguments for and against the use of sexbots as substitute subjects for potentially harmful sexual practices, see Rutkin (2016). 6. See www.campaignagainstsexrobots.org/ (accessed 28 June 2017). for objections to Richardson's campaign against sexbots, see devlin (2015). Volume 5, Issue 2 Is Sex With Robots Rape? 67 mind that although it might not be impermissible to have sex with robots for the reason that it is non-consensual, it might be impermissible for other reasons. 2. ValId SexUal conSent 2.1 When Is Consent Valid? there is a general consensus in ethical discourse that valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sexual activity (see for instance archard 2007; cahill 2001; cowling et al. 2017; Soble et al. 2002). there are many ongoing debates that concern the concept of valid consent or its applications to moral and legal disputes. Since this essay concentrates on clear cases of sexual non-consent, I will not engage extensively with these issues here, and this section will involve only a brief discussion of the notion of valid consent and its relevance to sexual ethics. most philosophers engaged in the debate on valid consent identify three independent necessary conditions that are together sufficient for consent to be valid (kleinig 2010; mappes 2002; miller and Wertheimer 2010; Wertheimer 2003). the first condition demands that an agent's consent is informed, which requires them to have knowledge of the relevant facts about the act they are consenting to, and to comprehend what they are consenting to on the basis of these facts. Secondly, consent must be given voluntarily, in which case there is no unduly influence, such as coercion, from another agent, which is causally linked to the act of consenting. thirdly, the consenting agent must be decisionally-capacitated, which requires them to have a grasp of the value and consequences of the act, on the basis of which they assess the risks, harms and benefits involved in this act. once an agent who intends to consent to a certain act meets these conditions, they must express their consent to make it recognizable to others. this requires something more than a mental state or attitude of consent enjoyed by the consenting agent, since this would pave the way for mistaken postulations of consent. What is required for others to justifiably believe that an agent has consented is that this agent has performed their consent. they can do so either verbally or non-verbally. a nonverbal performance of consent can occur with the performance of certain actions that do not involve language, such as nodding or initiating a certain activity. an act of consent can be performed verbally either in writing, for instance in signing a contract, or in speech, in uttering "yes" or its equivalent (kleinig 2010; mappes 2002; miller and Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS68 Wertheimer 2010; Wertheimer 2003).7 however, the criteria for the successful performance of consent are extremely complex, varying with the relationships between the agents involved and the act to which an agent is consenting, and involving many other complicating factors on which there is ongoing academic disagreement. 2.2 Sexual Non-consent there are at least two categories of sexual non-consent. the first category concerns cases in which the agents involved in sexual activity are capable of expressing valid consent, but one or more has withheld their consent. these are paradigmatic cases of rape. the focus of this essay, however, is on a second category, which involves cases in which at least one agent's consent to sex is lacking because they are, either temporarily or permanently, cognitively incapacitated to give valid consent at all. agents who lack or are incapable of exercising the cognitive capacities to meet the conditions for valid consent include non-human animals, children, and individuals who are severely cognitively disabled, unconscious or heavily intoxicated (henceforth, 'cognitively incapacitated humans and non-human animals'). the capacities these agents lack or fail to exercise may be, amongst other things, the capacity for rational deliberation, moral understanding, future-orientedness, or conscious experience. the group of agents whose involvement in sexual activity is non-consensual because they are cognitively incapacitated to give valid consent includes sexbots as well. as became clear in the previous section, sexbots also lack the cognitive capacities necessary for valid consent, such as the capacities for moral understanding and conscious experience. Since valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sexual activity, it seems to follow from this that the valid consent condition does not only rule out permissible sex with humans and non-human animals, but also with sexbots. this implication will strike many as counterintuitive. one initial response could be that the implication can be avoided simply by programming sexbots to perform actions that indicate consent, or even refusal of consent. for example, they could be 7. one helpful way to conceive of verbal performative consent is to understand it in terms of J. l. austin's speech act theory (austin 1973). a speech act is an utterance that has not only semantic meaning ('locution') or causal effects ('perlocution'), but is itself an act, performed by the agent in uttering a certain phrase ('illocution'). thus, on this understanding, an agent can perform the act of consenting in uttering certain words. for such an interpretation of performative consent, see for example marta (1996) and cowart (2004). Volume 5, Issue 2 Is Sex With Robots Rape? 69 coded to utter phrases that under the right conditions would express sexual consent, or to sometimes struggle as an indication of withheld consent. however, such a response fails. Sexbots lack the cognitive capacities to satisfy the conditions for valid consent even when they are programmed to perform actions that would under the right circumstances constitute acts of consent. Performances of consent can be genuine acts of consent only if the cognitive conditions for valid consent have been met in the first place. Since sexbots are cognitively incapacitated to meet these conditions, their performances are failed acts of consent, devoid of any normative force. merely programming sexbots in a way that causes them to display a void performance of consent or non-consent is thus unsuccessful in showing that the valid consent condition does not render sexual relationships between humans and sexbots impermissible. Rather, if the conclusion that sex with robots is impermissible because it is non-consensual is to be avoided, without denying that valid consent is necessary for permissible sex with humans or animals, it must be demonstrated that there is a morally significant difference explaining why consent is a necessary condition for permissible sex if it involves humans or animals, but not if it involves robots. In the next section, I will discuss and reject three possible ways to do this. 3. non-conSenSUal Sex: RobotS VeRSUS hUmanS/anImalS 3.1 Artificiality one way to argue that there is such a morally significant difference is to stress that valid consent is required only from members of the human species, in virtue of their humanity. yet to ascribe such moral weight to the humanity of the parties involved is not only in itself questionable, on suspicion of unfounded speciesism, but also implies that all sexual activity with non-human animals is morally permissible. to avoid this implication, the argument can be modified so that the perceived moral difference between non-consensual sex with humans and non-human animals on the one hand, and non-consensual sex with robots on the other hand, is explained by the fact that the former are organic and the latter artificial. however, if the distinction between organic and artificial were morally relevant in this way, the incorporation of artificial body parts into a human body would diminish the moral weight of Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS70 this human being's interests. this would mean that the more artificial body parts a human being has in their body, the less their consent matters. this is clearly absurd. finally, if the appeal to the distinction between organic and artificial bodies is supposed to indicate a moral difference between living and lifeless entities, life as such is deemed morally relevant for consent. Such a view would be highly implausible, given that the demand for consent does not apply, nor should it, to all living entities, in virtue of being alive. however, if the claim is weakened as to assert that lifeless entities are essentially devoid of value, whereas some but not all living entities are valuable in a way that generates a moral incentive to seek their consent, the morally significant difference is no longer that between living and lifeless entities. 3.2 Harmlessness another possible line of argument could be that the morally significant difference between non-consensual sex with a human or non-human animal and non-consensual sex with a robot is that it harms the former but not the latter. I will understand the notion of harm in the comparative sense, since this understanding is most likely to capture the complex way in which non-consensual sex can cause harm to non-consenting subjects, and is widely employed in ethical discourse. on the comparative understanding of harm, an act x harms an agent S if S is worse off as a consequence of x. In other words, x harms S if S would have been better off if x had not been performed. non-consensual sex can cause harm to non-consenting subjects in many ways; physically, and particularly psychologically. for example, non-consensual sex is likely to involve the experience of pain in cases in which sex is forced on an individual who has refused to give consent, although this is not true for every instance of non-consensual sex. another way in which non-consensual sex is often harmful to the individual whose consent is lacking is is in objectifying her as a mere means to sexual gratification, rather than as an end in themselves (archard 2007; baber 2002; mappes 2002). there is, of course, much more to say about the way in which non-consensual sex is harmful to those who undergo it. nonetheless, it is already clear at this point that involvement in non-consensual sexual relationships does not cause harm to sexbots, since sexbots lack the capacity to experience pain and, as objects, are not harmfully objectified. more generally, it seems that it is impossible for sexbots to be Volume 5, Issue 2 Is Sex With Robots Rape? 71 harmed at all. for things can go better or worse for entities only if they have qualitative experiences and enjoy some degree of consciousness. Since sexbots are non-sentient entities that lack the capacity for conscious experience, they cannot be harmed. Still, however, it does not follow from the mere fact that an act of non-consensual sex is harmless that it is permissible. to see this, consider the following case: Case I A is a child who is unconscious at T1. B has non-consensual sex with A at T1, which B considers to be an act of love. There are no third parties involved or present who could report about the act, and there will be no other evidence of the sexual act, such as bodily traces. A will therefore never know that B had non-consensual sex with them at T1. In this case, a will experience neither physical nor psychological effects of b's act of non-consensual sex with them at t1. moreover, the act of non-consensual sex does not harmfully objectify a as a mere means to sexual gratification, since b considers it to be an act of love by which they value a as an end in themselves. consequently, there is no reason to suppose that a is made worse off by this act. If a is not made worse off by the sexual act, the act does not harm them. Still, b's act of non-consensual sex with a at t1 is seriously wrong. this shows that the mere fact that an act of non-consensual sex is harmless is insufficient to render it permissible. 3.3 Cognitive Deficiency one could also argue that non-consensual sex with robots is permissible but non-consensual sex with humans or non-human animals is not, for the reason that, compared to humans and non-human animals, robots are too far down the scale of cognitive capacitation. In other words, the cognitive gap between robots on the one hand, and humans and non-human animals on the other hand, is large enough to cause a discrepancy in the permissibility of non-consensual sex. the explanation of this discrepancy would then be grounded in the fact that humans and non-human animals are cognitively more developed than robots, and hence approach the threshold for valid consent more closely than robots. however, although cognitive capacities may come in degrees, valid consent is Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS72 binary rather than scalar: one has either given valid consent, or one has not, depending on whether or not the conditions for valid consent have been satisfied. to illustrate this with respect to valid sexual consent, consider the following case: Case II A has sex with B and C has sex with D. Both B and D are severely cognitively disabled and incapable of giving valid consent to these sexual acts. B is more heavily cognitively disabled than D, because B has more developed cognitive capacities than D. In this case, both sexual acts are non-consensual, since both b and d are cognitively capacitated to a degree that is insufficient to ground valid consent. however, on the account under consideration, the comparative permissibility of these acts would be affected by the fact that b finds themselves higher up the scale of cognitive capacitation than does d, since b more closely approaches the threshold for valid consent. this is an implausible view, since both acts of non-consensual sex seem equally wrong. this case thus illustrates that valid consent is binary, and that the degree to which an individual is cognitively capacitated does not matter for the permissibility of sexual activity when this degree is insufficient to ground valid consent. hence, there is no significant moral difference with respect to the permissibility of non-consensual sex between having the requisite capacities for valid consent to a certain insufficient degree and lacking these capacities completely. 4. moRal StatUS Still, one could argue that the morally significant difference between robots one the one hand, and cognitively incapacitated non-human animals and humans on the other hand, is that the latter possess the requisite cognitive capacities to an insufficient degree, whereas the former are devoid of these capacities altogether. In the case of robots, the cognitive capacities necessary for valid consent are not just rudimentary, distorted, or underdeveloped, as is true of cognitively incapacitated humans and non-human animals, but absent in the past, present and future. however, such an account does not function as an explanation of the discrepancy in the permissibility of non-consensual sex between cases in which the non-consenting subject is a Volume 5, Issue 2 Is Sex With Robots Rape? 73 robot and cases in which this subject is a human or non-human animal. the mere fact that robots are not on the scale of cognitive capacitation for consent at all, whereas humans and non-human animals are on this scale on a level too far down to meet the conditions for valid consent, does not single out a fact that is in itself morally significant. nonetheless, this fact does become morally significant if it is taken to be indicative of moral status. on certain established accounts of moral status, sentience is both a necessary and sufficient condition for moral status (kagan 2016; mcmahan 2002; Singer 1993). Sentience is usually defined as the capacity to have qualitative experiences, most importantly of pleasure and pain. Some philosophers argue that sapience is an additional ground for moral status (kagan 2016; mcmahan 2002). the notion of sapience refers to an entity's capacity to enjoy a degree of psychological continuity, which originates from certain sophisticated cognitive phenomena, such as selfawareness, future-orientedness and moral understanding (kagan 2016; mcmahan 2002). Since sexbots lack qualitative experiences, self-awareness, future-orientedness, and moral understanding, amongst other things, they are both non-sentient and non-sapient. Sexbots are therefore devoid of moral status. to say that sexbots lack moral status is to say that they do not matter morally for their own sake. If sexbots do not matter morally for their own sake, they are not the kind of entities that humans require consent from in order to do things to them, such as having sex with them. because humans do not require consent from sexbots, as entities that lack moral status, sexual relationships between humans and sexbots are not impermissible in virtue of being non-consensual. by contrast, insufficiently cognitively capacitated humans and non-human animals do have moral status, since they are sentient and, to varying degrees, also sapient. because they have moral status, they are entities we require consent from in order to do things to them, such as to engage in permissible sexual activity with them. hence, when insufficiently cognitively capacitated humans and non-human animals are, as a matter of fact, incapable of consenting, others must refrain from having sex with them. the morally significant difference between non-consensual sex with humans and non-human animals on the one hand, and robots on the other hand, thus seems to be that we require consent from entities that have moral status, such as humans and non-human animals, but not from entities that lack moral status. Since robots Journal of Practical Ethics ROMY ESKENS74 are devoid of moral status, humans do not require consent from sexbots in order to have permissible sex with them. this explains why valid consent is a necessary condition for permissible sex in the case of humans and non-human animals, but not in the case of robots. 5. conclUSIon my aim in this essay has been to provide a plausible argument to show that there is a morally significant difference between non-consensual sex with robots and non-consensual sex with humans and non-human animals, which substantiates and justifies the intuition that the latter is impermissible but the former is not. I argued that the relevant moral difference is that robots are devoid of moral status, whereas humans and non-human animals are not. admittedly, this solution holds only insofar as sexbots are non-sentient and non-sapient. the conclusion of this paper is therefore conditional on scientific and technological developments in computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, which determine the level of cognitive sophistication enjoyed by robots. Indeed, would sexbots acquire some degree of sentience or sapience in the more distant future, and start to matter morally for their own sake, their design, sale and use for the purpose of providing sex for humans might become seriously wrong. finally, it is worth emphasizing that even if it is not impermissible to have sex with near future sexbots for the reason that it is non-consensual, it might well be impermissible for other reasons. as indicated in section 2, there are legitimate worries about harmful effects that sexual relationships with sexbots might have on others, particularly on women, as well as the intrinsic moral wrongness of certain behaviour that the availability of sexbots might facilitate. however, more philosophical reflection is needed to settle these issues, and to establish under what conditions, if at all, it would be permissible for humans to have sex with sexbots. RefeRenceS archard, d. "the Wrong of Rape". 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Can The World Learn Wisdom?

Philosophy

The crisis of our times is that we have science without wisdom.  All our current global problems have arisen as a result.  Learning how to become wiser has become, not a luxury, but a necessity.  The key is to learn from the success of science.  We need to learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a wiser world.  This is an old idea that goes back to the French Enlightenment.  However, in developing the idea, the philosophes of the Enlightenment made serious blunders, and it is their botched version of the Enlightenment programme that was developed throughout the 19th century, and built into academia all over the world in the early 20th century with the creation of the social sciences.  As a matter of great urgency, we need to put right the intellectual/institutional blunders we have inherited from the 18th century.  We need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic task becomes, not just to acquire knowledge, but to help humanity learn how to make progress towards a wiser world.

Philosophy Now ● June/July 2015 philosophes had the profoundly important idea that it might be possible to learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an Enlightened world. And they did not just have the idea: they did everything they could to put it into practice. They fought dictatorial power, superstition, bad traditions and injustice, with weapons no more lethal than those of argument and wit. They gave their support to the virtues of tolerance, curiosity, openness to doubt, and readiness to learn from criticism and experience. Courageously and energetically they laboured to promote reason in personal and social life. And in doing so, in a sense they created the modern world, with all its glories and disasters. The philosophes of the Enlightenment had their hearts in the right place. But in intellectually developing the basic Enlightenment idea, unfortunately, they blundered. They botched the job. And it is this that we are suffering from today. If it is important to acquire knowledge of natural phenomena to better the lot of mankind, as Francis Bacon had insisted, then it must be even more important to acquire knowledge of social phenomena, or so the philosophes thought. And they thought that the way to learn how to do this would be to develop the social sciences alongside the natural sciences using similar methods. First, social knowledge must be acquired; then it can be applied to help solve social problems. So they set about creating and developing the social sciences: economics, psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, political science. This project was immensely influential, despite being damagingly defective. It was developed throughout the nineteenth century by men such as Saint-Simone, Comte, Marx, J.S. Mill and many others. Then, with the creation of departments of the social sciences in universities all over the world in the first part of the twentieth century, it was built into the institutional structure of academic inquiry. Academic inquiry today, devoted primarily to the pursuit of knowledge and technological knowhow, is the outcome of two past revolutions, then: the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which led to the development of modern natural science; and the later equally important but seriously defective Enlightenment revolution. This results in the urgent need to bring about a third revolution; to put right the structural defects we have inherited from the Enlightenment. Three Things To Get Right But what, it may be asked, is wrong with the traditional Enlightenment programme? Almost everything. In order to implement properly the basic Enlightenment idea of learning how to achieve social progress from scientific progress, it is essential to get the following three things right: 1. The progress-achieving methods of science need to be correctly identified. 2. These methods need to be correctly generalised so that they The crisis of our times is that we have science withoutwisdom. This is the crisis behind all the others. Popula-tion growth; the alarmingly lethal character of modern war and terrorism; vast differences in wealth and power around the globe; the AIDS epidemic; the annihilation of indigenous people, cultures and languages; the impending depletion of natural resources, including the destruction of tropical rain forests and other natural habitats, and the rapid mass extinction of species; pollution of sea, earth and air; and above all, the impending disasters of climate change – all of these relatively recent crises have been made possible by modern science and technology. Indeed, if by the 'cause' of an event we mean a prior change that led to that event occurring, then the advent of modern science and technology has caused all these crises. It is not that people became greedier or more wicked in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; nor is the 'new' economic system of capitalism responsible, as some historians and economists would have us believe. The crucial factor is the immense success of modern science and technology. This has led to modern medicine and hygene, to modern high-production agriculture and industry, to population growth, to worldwide travel (which spreads diseases such as AIDS), and to the destructive might of the technology of modern war and terrorism, conventional, chemical, biological, nuclear. This is to be expected. Science produces knowledge, which facilitates the development of technology, enormously increasing our power to act. It is to be expected that this power will often be used beneficially, as it has been – to cure disease, feed people, and in general enhance the quality of human life. However, in the absence of wisdom, it is also to be expected that such an abrupt, massive increase in power will be used to cause harm, whether unintentionally, as in the case (initially at least) of environmental damage, or intentionally, as in war and terrorism. Before the advent of modern science, our lack of wisdom did not matter too much, since we lacked the means to do too much damage to ourselves and the planet. But now, in possession of the unprecedented powers bequeathed to us by science, our lack of wisdom has become a menace. The crucial question is: How can we learn to become wiser? The answer is staring us in the face. And yet it is one that almost everyone overlooks. The Traditional Enlightenment Programme Modern science has met with astonishing success in improving our knowledge of the natural world. It is this very success that is the cause of our current problems. But instead of simply blaming science for our troubles, as some are inclined to do, we need, rather, to learn from the success of science. We need to learn from the manner in which science makes progress towards greater knowledge how we can make social progress towards greater wisdom. This is not a new idea. It goes back to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, especially the French Enlightenment. Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and the other Enlightenment Can TheWorld LearnWisdom? Nicholas Maxwell tells us why it needs to do so, and how it can. June/July 2015 ● Philosophy Now 15 may be fruitfully applied to any worthwhile problematic human endeavour, whatever its aims may be, and not just applicable to the one endeavour of acquiring knowledge. 3. The correctly generalised progress-achieving methods then need to be exploited correctly in the great endeavour of trying to make social progress towards an enlightened, wise world. Unfortunately, the philosophes of the Enlightenment got all three points wrong, and as a result their blunders, undetected and uncorrected, are built into academia as it exists today. The Errors of Standard Empiricism First, the philosophes failed to capture correctly the progressachieving methods of natural science. From D'Alembert in the eighteenth century to Popper in the twentieth, the view most widely held amongst both scientists and philosophers has been, and continues to be, that science proceeds by assessing theories impartially in the light of evidence. The assumption is that no thesis about the world is accepted permanently by science independently of evidence. But this standard empiricist view is untenable. If taken seriously, it would bring science to a standstill. For given any accepted scientific theory – Newton's theory of gravitational attraction, say – endlessly many rival theories can be concocted which agree with it about observed phenomena, but disagree arbitrarily about yet-unobserved phenomena. For instance, some rival theory of gravitation might predict elliptical orbits for planets in our solar system, but triangular orbits for unobservable star systems in distant galaxies. If empirical considerations alone determined which theories are accepted and which rejected, then science would be drowned in an ocean of such empirically successful rival theories. In practice, however, these rival theories are excluded because they are disastrously disunified. Two major considerations govern acceptance of theories in science: empirical success and unity. What does it mean to say that a physical theory is unified? It means that the content of the theory – what the theory asserts about the world – is the same for all the vast range of actual and possible phenomena to which the theory applies. For instance, if Newton's inverse square law for gravity applies in our star system, it must apply in all star systems. In contrast, a disunified theory asserts that one set of laws apply to one range of phenomena, a different set of laws for another range, and so on. The greater the number of different sets of laws, the greater the disunity of the theory. The laws of a theory may differ in different ways, some ways being more serious to the theory's unity than others. Thus, Newton's law of gravitation might change in time. In ten years time, gravity might abruptly become a repulsive force, or it might change in certain regions of space, or for objects at a certain distance from one another, or for objects of a specific mass and constitution. One disunified version might assert that Newton's inverse square law, which says that the gravitational attraction between masses is inversely proportional to the square of their distance from each other, holds for all objects everywhere, except for spheres made of gold with masses greater than 1,000 tons moving in space no more than 1,000 miles apart, when an inverse cube law of gravitation holds. In my book Is Science Neurotic? (Imperial College Press, 2004), I argue that eight different kinds of disunity can be distinguished. All, however, exemplify the same basic notion: that a theory is disunified precisely to the extent that it has different sets of laws applying in different circumstances. For perfect unity, what the theory in question asserts must be the same for all actual and possible phenomena to which the theory applies. (For more detailed accounts of this notion of unity, see Is Science Neurotic?, plus my The Comprehensibility of the Universe, OUP 1998, and 'Has Science Established that the Cosmos is Physically Comprehensible?', available at http://philpapers.org/rec/MAXHSE ) Given any accepted physical theory, more or less unified, there will always be endlessly many grossly disunified rivals even more empirically successful than the original, which may be concocted by accounting for new observations by tacking ad hoc qualifications onto the original theory. But none of these endlessly many empirically more successful ad hoc disunified rivals is ever seriously considered in scientific practice. They are all ignored because, although being more empirically successful, they hopelessly fail to satisfy the crucial requirement of unity. The Method of Scientific Progress Now comes the decisive step in the argument. In persistently accepting unified theories, and never even considering disunified rivals that are at least as empirically successful, science makes a big persistent assumption about the universe. Science assumes that the universe is such that all grossly disunified theories are false, i.e., that the universe has some kind of unified structure. This means that it is comprehensible, in the sense that physical explanations for phenomena exist to be discovered – only more or less unified theories being explanatory. But the metaphysical (and thus untestable) assumption that the universe is comprehensible is profoundly problematic. Science is obliged to assume, but does not know, that the universe is comprehensible. Much less does it know that the universe is comprehensible in this or that specific way. Moreover, a glance at the history of physics reveals that ideas about how the universe may be comprehensible have changed dramatically. In the seventeenth century the idea was that the universe consists of corpuscles – minute billiard balls – which interact only by physical contact. This gave way to the idea that the universe consists of point-particles surrounded by symmetrical fields of force. This in turn gave way to the idea that there is one unified self-interacting field varying smoothly throughout space and time. Nowadays we have the idea that everything is made up of minute quantum strings embedded in ten or eleven dimensions of space-time. Some kind of assumption about the nature of physical reality must be made, but, given the historical record, and given that any such assumption concerns the ultimate nature of the universe – that of which we are most ignorant – it is only reasonable to conclude that it is almost bound to be false. One way to overcome the fundamental dilemma inherent in the scientific enterprise of having to assume that the universe is comprehensible, is to construe science as making a hierarchy of assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability 16 Philosophy Now ● June/July 2015 of the universe, these assumptions asserting less and less as one goes up the hierarchy, thus becoming more and more likely to be true, and more and more such that their truth is required for science, or the pursuit of knowledge, to be possible at all. At the top of the hierarchy we have the assumption that the universe is such that we can acquire some knowledge of our local circumstances. If this assumption is false, we can gain no knowledge, whatever we assume. We are never, in any circumstances whatsoever, going to want to or need to reject this assumption, even though we have no reasons to suppose that it is true. As we descend the hierarchy, assumptions become increasingly substantial, and so increasingly likely to be false. One assumption is that the universe is comprehensible in some way or other. There is something – God, cosmic purpose, a cosmic programme, or a physical entity – present at all times in all phenomena, which in some sense determines how things are and what goes on, and in terms of which all phenomena can, in principle, be explained and understood. Next down the hierarchy is the assumption that the universe is physically comprehensible: the universe is such that some true, unified physical 'theory of everything' exists to be discovered, in terms of which all physical phenomena can, in principle, be explained. Next down, is an even more specific, substantial assumption, about the nature of the entities postulated by the 'theory of everything': that the physical world is made of corpuscles, point-particles, a unified field, quantum strings, or whatever form the building-blocks of everything eventually turns out to take. In this way a framework of relatively insubstantial, unproblematic, fixed assumptions and associated methods is created at the top of the hierarchy, below which increasingly substantial and problematic assumptions and associated methods can be changed and indeed improved as scientific knowledge improves. Put another way, a framework of relatively unspecific, unproblematic, fixed aims and methods is created below which much more specific and problematic aims and methods evolve as scientific knowledge evolves. There is positive feedback between improving knowledge and improving aims and methods, improving knowledge about how to improve knowledge. In this way, science adapts its own nature to what it discovers about the nature of the universe. This is the methodological key to the unprecedented success of science. It is therefore in terms of this hierarchical, aimoriented empiricist conception of science that we need to conceive of the progress-achieving methods of science. In failing to construe science in this way, the Enlightenment committed its first blunder. The 2nd and 3rd Blunders of the Enlightenment Having failed to identify the methods of science correctly, the philosophes naturally failed to generalise these methods correctly. Specifically, they failed to appreciate that the idea of representing the problematic aims and associated methods of science in the form of a hierarchy can be generalised and applied fruitfully to other worthwhile enterprises besides science. Many other enterprises with problematic aims would benefit from employing a hierarchical methodology generalised from that of science, thus making it possible to improve their own aims and methods as the enterprise proceeds. There is the hope that in this way, some of the astonishing success of science might be exported into other worthwhile endeavours with quite different aims. Third, and most disastrously of all, the philosophes completely failed to apply such generalised progress-achieving methods to the immense and profoundly problematic task of making social progress towards an enlightened, wise world. The aim of such an enterprise is notoriously problematic. For all sorts of reasons, what constitutes a good world, an enlightened, wise or civilised world, attainable and genuinely desirable, must be inherently and permanently problematic. So here above all, it is essential to employ a generalised version of the progress-achieving methods of science, designed specifically to facilitate progress when basic aims are problematic. How To Create A Wise Society In short, properly implementing the Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world would involve developing social inquiry primarily as social methodology, not primarily as social science. A basic task would be to get progress-achieving methods, generalized from those of science, into personal and social life, so that actions, policies and ways of life may be developed and assessed in life somewhat as theories are assessed in science. The task would be to get these methods, designed to improve problematic aims, into other institutions besides science – into government, industry, agriculture, commerce, the media, law, education, international relations. A basic task for academic inquiry would be to help humanity learn how to resolve its conflicts and problems of living in more just, cooperatively rational ways than at present. This task would be intellectually more fundamental than the scientific task of acquiring knowledge. Social inquiry would be intellectually more fundamental than physics. Academic thought would be pursued as a specialised, subordinate part of what is really important and fundamental: the thinking that goes on, individually, socially and institutionally, in the social world, guiding individual, social and institutional actions and life. The fundamental intellectual and humanitarian aim of inquiry would be to help humanity acquire wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realise, that is, apprehend and create, what is of value in life, for oneself and for others. Wisdom thus includes knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. Academia would seek to learn from, educate, and argue with the world beyond it, but it would not dictate. Ideally, academia would have sufficient power (but no more) to retain its independence from government, industry, the press, public opinion, and other centres of power and influence. If it pursues this course, academia would become a kind of people's civil service, doing openly for the public what actual civil services are supposed to do in secret for governments. Academia would seek to help humanity realize what is of value in life by intellectual, technological and educational means. One important consequence flows from the point that the basic aim of inquiry would be to help us discover what is of value, namely that our feelings and desires would have a vital June/July 2015 ● Philosophy Now 17 rational role to play within the intellectual domain of inquiry. If we are to discover for ourselves what is of value, then we must attend to our feelings and desires. But not everything that feels good is good, and not everything that we desire is desirable. Rationality requires that feelings and desires take fact, knowledge and logic into account, just as it requires that priorities for scientific research take feelings and desires into account. In insisting on this kind of interplay between feelings and desires on the one hand, and knowledge and understanding on the other, the conception of inquiry that we are considering resolves the conflict between Rationalism and Romanticism, and helps us to acquire what we need if we are to contribute to building civilization: mindful hearts and heartfelt minds. If the Enlightenment revolution had been carried through properly, the three steps indicated above being correctly implemented, the outcome would have been a kind of academic inquiry very different from what we have at present. We would possess what we so urgently need, and at present so dangerously and destructively lack: institutions of learning well-designed from the standpoint of helping us create a better, wiser world. © NICHOLAS MAXWELL 2015 Nicholas Maxwell, Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science at University College London, is the author of How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World: The Urgent Need for an Academic Revolution, published by Imprint Academic. For more, see www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom.


A coffee with Jacques RanciÃ¨re beneath the Acropolis

Philosophy

We met Jacques RanciÃ¨re on Saturday, May 27, 2017, at the School of Fine Arts shortly before his speech at the B-Fest 6 International Anti-Authoritarian Festival, organized by Babylonia Journal, with a central slogan âWe are ungovernableâ. RanciÃ¨re is among the most important European philosophers alive and his work does not need further introductions.
          In the cloudy morning of Sunday 28 May, we sat beneath the Acropolis to have a coffee with the philosopher. The transcript of our conversation reflects the vigor of thought and the passion of a truly democratic thinker.

A coffee with Jacques Rancière beneath the Acropolis Figure 1 2 3 Title: A coffee with Jacques Rancière beneath the Acropolis Cover Design: Adelfos Koufionas Babylonia Political journal Athens, January 2018 Website: www.babylonia.gr Facebook: Π ριο ι ὀ Βαβυ ωνἰα – Babylonia Journal E-mail: email@example.com 4 5 A coffee with Jacques Rancière beneath the Acropolis (A Conversation with J. Rancière and Yannis Ktenas, Alexandros Schismenos, Yavor Tarinski, Nikos Ioannou, Nikos Katsiaounis, Ioanna Maravelidi, from the editorial team of Babylonia, during B-Fest 6, 2017) Y.K. So, Mr. R I would like to ask you something. I was really interested in what you said last night 1 about the working class and its transformation we experience in our time. You spoke not about the vanishing, but about the displacement of labor. And I think that this is really interesting because, like other radical democratic thinkers, you do not support an ontological and essentialist approach to the proletariat, but rather you see the proletariat as the result of the relationships in the industry. It was not an ontological privilege, but rather the new forms of relationships inside the big factories that made the working class a potentially revolutionary subject. Furthermore, you told that, back in the days of your youth, the proletariat corresponded to a kind of empirical reality; you could literally point out to it. Nowadays, this condition has changed. What do you think about that? J.R. Yes, but at the same time my approach is a non-sociological approach. What I think, what I tried to say in the Nights, 2 is that notions like the proletariat, the working class, workers, working class 1 J. Rancière s dis ourse had take pla e the pre ious ight, Saturda 27/5/2017. 2 Reference to his book Proletarian nights (1981). 6 o e e ts do t designate real sociological groups . Instead they are the result of modes of symbolization of a form of being-in-common. So I always try to make a clear distinction between the proletariat as a sociological reality and the proletariat as the result of a kind of symbolical invention of the collective. My point is that, in the Marxist tradition, there was a kind of identification between the two, between the s oli al o stru tio a d the so iologi al realit . That s h I said that there was a time when you could designate the proletariat as the people coming out of the big factories, like Renault in France. In May 68 the rebellious students went to the gates of the Renault because it was where the proletariat was. This meant a kind of identification between the concept and the reality. This kind of identification is no longer possible. This does t ea that ork does not exist anymore, that material work has disappeared, that is not true, but this kind of identification is no longer possible. And this is, in a way, why there is this kind of emphasis on the idea of creating new forms of community, as a kind of substitute to that kind of existing reality of the working class community. A.S. We see a decline in the power of the nation-state. Political decisions are no longer made by small governments, like in Greece, whereas even in France or in the USA transnational interests dominate. Which form of struggle should we use? Because, in Greece, I think that o e of the poi ts that the left government proved is that you cannot change anything by these governmental procedures. So, how could people represent themselves in a direct way? J.R. I do t agree ith the idea that the atio -states are declining, because this separate power of international institutions, is at the same time in a close relationship with the nation-states themselves. When our governments say they are obliged to do something because of the European Union, the World Bank or the IMF, this is a manipulation in order to thwart the resistance in their own country. So, I think that we must not really trust the governments when they 7 sa e a t do a thi g , because they can do a lot of things. If you think of what has happened in Europe, there are many countries which i fa t do t o e the rules of the EU. So, I think that there is a danger in the idea that now the power is no more where we live, the power is in some isolated places, so that the movement should be in those places. It was what happened, for example, with the protests in Seattle or in Genova. It is the idea that now nothing can be done in the places here e are. I do t thi k this is true a d I thi k that it has a demoralizing effect. I think that when you struggle in a definite country, you still struggle against your government and against the fact that your government is part of a global government. My point is that politics is always local in a way. People rally in a definite place to deal with a specific conflictual matter. if you say that politics must become international, global, this is kind of the end of politics. Of course, you can make big protests when there is a meeting of this or that international organization, but I think it does really produce effects. What is important is not to fake a kind of international direct popular movement, but really strengthen local movements and possibly try to make some kind of alliance of all those movements. What was important in the recent movements, the occupy movement, the movements of the squares or the parks is that they emphasized the fact that people gather in specific places to address a specific situation against a specific enemy. I think that is important, in spite of all limitations: you have to start from the point that there is something happening here, that you have to react here, by creating some kind of specific time-space. A.S. Our experience in Greece was that the social movement rose when it found roots in specific localities, specific communities, for example communities fighting for ecological reasons against companies etc. But this rooting of the people on the ground, I think you are right, it is necessary for democracy. 8 Y.T. I would like to seize the opportunity, now that the dialogue has reached this point, on local struggles and social movements. We see that today, we can say, I would certainly say, that, traditional ideologies that set up a final goal like communism, anarchism, socialism seem to be unable today to mobilize popular support, like they were doing in the past. At the same time, certainly we see democracy being constantly recalled by people that do not set it as a final goal, but as a here and a now , as a way of intervening in their everyday lives. What is your opinion on this and do you think that one of the most crucial things today is try to reinvent what democracy means? To reframe it. To make it refer to certain roots. J.R. I think that perhaps now we must overstep the division between the ephemeral and the enduring, and at the same time also perhaps between the local or the specific and the general. Because there is this tradition, if you look back, there are some local, specific forms of problem, of struggles, that must be synthesized, of course mostly in the form of the party. So there is always this idea that there is the particular and the universal. Instead I think what is really important in the recent movements is that the universal is at stake in local problems and local movements. For instance what was significant in the occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul is the fact that a very local and apparently unimportant thing, about the destination of a place, could be precisely something immediately universal, dealing with the question to whom does space belong: What does it mean really to be in a public space? Either the space is meant for people, or it is meant for the building trade, hypermarkets and so on. What was at stake is the idea of availability of space for everyone and for indeterminate uses against the idea of always giving to space and time a particular destination. 9 Well, for me it was impressive and I think that now what has been important in the recent movements is precisely the emphasis on the form of the movement. The idea that the question of the universal is really at play in the very form of the movement. So, it is not the specific object of the struggle against a power that is either particular or universal. The point is whether you deal with it in a particular or universal way. Particular, meaning that I am interested in this or that kind of fight and universal, meaning that I think that in this particular thing there is a question concerning the way in which we live and that it has to be dealt with, not from the point of view of this or that identity but by trying to make it universal and dealing with it in a way that presupposes a capacity of everyone. What I find interesting in recent movements is that they also question identity politics that has become so important recently. Against the mission of the party, etc. etc. there was this rise of identity politics. But I think identity politics is also a kind of dead end. And what I found significant in the movements of the 2010s is the fact that people were in the street or in the parks, due to their own involvement, their own commitment to this or that struggle ( ecological, feminist, antiracist , antiauthoritarian or else) . But also the ere gathered this spe ifi o fli t that o er ed anybody at all so that the dynamic of the movement was not that of an addition of identities. A.S. Just to continue on that question, we see that these movements for a other pu li spa e that does t elo g to the State, does t belong to the private capital. But it is fragile. It is, as you say, when the people appear in this public space it transforms, it becomes something else: a cell of another community. But it is fragile. How could it be maintained, in your opinion? A public space outside the State, outside pri ate apital. A d hat s our opi io a out Nuit De out. Was it like that? Y.T. Because we saw it from a distance. 10 A.S. We saw it from a distance. One thing that was significant about Nuit Debout was that experiment with temporal change, the change of the diary. J.R. Yes, of course. Nuit Debout had a strong resonance for me because I had written on the proletarian nights of the past. What this relation to the night meant is that the movement was not simply a movement against the governmental measures, the governmental decision, but also a way of reframing the space and time of the beingin-common. It started from a struggle against a governmental reform of the Labor code but it e a e ore tha a so ial o fli t , a mere opposition of forces; it became an opposition between two worlds: a world where work defines a community and a world where it is only an individual affair. It is not incidental then that it resulted in a movement claiming to stand up during the night like the 19 th century proletarians who decided to break the normal way which consisted in working during the day and sleeping at night. Along with this idea was another idea which I found quite exciting of changing the calendar: the movement had started in March and it should go on in March so that after March 31 st , there should not come April 1 st , but March 32 nd , 33 rd etc. etc. Well, I think there is something important, which is part of all those movements of the squares, the idea precisely of a subversion of the normal use of space and time. Normally protesters march in the streets and shout slogans against the government. But the militants of the occupy movements break away with this use of space. Instead they used the public space to create the forms of spatialization and temporalization proper to an autonomous movement. But, at the same time, of course, it is true that it can become all formal in the bad sense of the word. When I went to look at what was happening at Nuit Debout, I saw that there were assemblies with no power of decision. The purpose of the assembly was that everybody was allowed to speak, so I remember for instance one night there was one person coming to speak about Marxism, saying why Marxism is important, and 11 the a other perso sa i g I a anti-speciesist and I will explain you what anti-speciesism means, then there was another person coming for the rights of the migrants. So, it is OK, because everybody can speak. But it is not really an assembly about a decision, about something to do, to do in common. That is why, slowly, there was a decrease of the movement. Of course, people were happy, there were many young people and they were happy to be allowed to speak. But, at the same time, it did not produce a real political assembly. A.S. Something like that happened also at the Syntagma square, where the assemblies decided to reorganize the square, they managed to do that, they managed to defend the square, but then they found out that their decisions reached only as far as that, the square. So it was more like an agora than a political assembly. N.I. Putti g the o e e ts aside, let s talk about another field, a field that traditionally is not thought to be political. In my village, a mountainous village on the Greek island of Lefkas there is a group of people that want to create a traditional product and they organize themselves, their production and their lives on a democratic and horizontal way, like a cooperative. When they try to find the materials for their production, they can find them globally, through the internet, from many different places in the world. When their product is made, they can find a market also globally, through the internet, in many places of the world. But their activity is monitored and controlled by a local, national financial agency and a local, national taxation system. So, how could such communities of a democratic production that are local, but also refer to the global field, expand, since the whole economic system in which they participate is above them? Perhaps we could see democracy nowadays as a combination of local democracy through our everyday experience and global democracy for things that go beyond this corporeal everyday experience, like the things that we 12 discussed before. Perhaps democracy nowadays is a combination of the local and the global, with the removal of the national. J.R. Well, I agree, but at the same time I think this tension between the local and the global is not necessary, because there are examples of local cooperative production that find forms of distribution through cooperatives of consumers , democratic groups or social spaces. There is not only the relation of subordination to the global market, but also attempts to create networks so that there is no opposition between the form of the production and the form of distribution and consumption. But what is also interesting in this is this kind of displacement of the idea of democracy, the idea that democracy is really at stake, not simply in what is called political assemblies, political groups, but in all forms of life. What I find interesting is the concept of the free social space, though of course free social space can mean a lot of different things. It is the idea that you do not have on the one hand the economy, the economical or the social and, on the other hand, the political, that precisely democracy is about making concrete decisions and those decisions can concern forms of material production, but also forms of intellectual activity and so on. Y.K. Like what you said last night, concerning a reunion of the spheres of social life. J.R. Yes. Y.K. Τhe should t be distinct, the economical, the political, the social, but democracy should go through all of them, something like that. J.R. Yes, something like that. Of course, we cannot imagine that we are destroying here and now the division of labor, but I think that, yes, we can see this in the recent movements and notably precisely in this kind of rooting of the movements in specific forms of action: at the same time, everybody attended from the local and from the specific to break 13 with the division of spheres. And this, in a way is the paradox of the present that perhaps starting from the specific there is a kind of opening, a kind of breaking and of disruption of the strict division of labor, the division of spheres. Y.T. I want to comment on this last thing that you said that democracy will require the integration of all spheres of human life. You made a similar point in Proletarian Nights, where you say that the real threat to the bureaucratic logic that wants to fragment our existence into separated, semi-independent spheres was the people that transcend their role as workers with their practices as thinkers, as poets and so on. Furthermore, you also spoke a little bit earlier about the nationstate that still plays its role and the bureaucracy that still exists. Although today bureaucracy is represented as something that is slowly dying along with the State as a result of the coming of the more chaotic, the more anarchic market, I think that actually the private sphere also resembles pretty much to the State today, it is heavily bureaucratized. So, should our critique emphasize more on ureau ra tha it is toda ? A tuall a o e e ts do t riti ize so much bureaucracy anymore and this fragmentation of human life. J.R. Well, we should really question the idea of neoliberalism, as being only the reign of the free market, individualism and so on. Because, what is alled eoli eralis does t ea at all that everybody do as they like, no. In fact, it entails a multiplicity of new regulations and norms. If you think, for instance, the European Treaty, it is not only to find what you can do just to unify the economic and social systems of various countries, no. There is a global prescription: you must destroy the public services, you must destroy those forms of redistribution o, f wealth in favor of the poor because it is against the liberal logic. I propose, rather than speaking of neoliberalism, to speak about absolute capitalism, meaning that the law of the market must be the law of every form of activity. This does not mean at all that everything becomes free, that everybody can do what they like, not at all. In fact, 14 capitalism has become a form of state, a bureaucratic form of organization and regulation of life. So, I think that it is very important to stress this point, because so many people are still fighting neoliberalism and they treat it only as the reign of individualism and free market. But, no, it is not free, it is not freedom. And it is not a question of opposing freedom to equality. It is one of the aspects on which I have always insisted. Y.K. I would like now to pose a question on a very hot topic of nowadays, the Internet. In some interviews you have expressed yourself in a positive manner about it and this has to do, I believe, with some egalitarian elements that exist in the way the knowledge is constructed in the Internet: we have equal access to information, etc. I would like to know what you think about the recent conversation regarding post-truth and fake news. J.R. The point is there has always been fake news. In the past, even some revolutions were born of fake news. So we should not consider fake news as a specificity of the Internet. It is true, of course, that the Internet allows fake news to grow very quickly, but, at the same time, the possibility of denouncing fake news grows at the same speed. The point with the Internet is that, first, it is true that we have this kind of access to knowledge, which is very important and probably the people of your generation do t realize hat it ea s. But, for ge eratio it is something quite important. In France there was a polemic, with intellectuals saying that the Internet means too much information, people cannot deal with it, it is very dangerous, etc. etc. It was in part the reaction from the academic world, because they were losing their authority. This democratization of the access to knowledge is very important. At the same time I think that the idea that the Internet is creating a kind of overall democracy is also a fancy. I am always really perplexed before this twofold aspect of the Internet. On the one hand, free access to information, but at the same time, 15 when you read comments on the Internet, you totally despair about the humankind. (Laughs) So, I think you cannot have a global view of the effect of the Internet, ut I do t thi k at all that the freedo of a ess ea s a ki d of state of post-truth or relativism, no. It does not create fake news by itself though it gives new instruments for their propagation. A.S. And we know, to continue on the topic of the Internet, we saw the movements in recent years using the communicational tools of the Internet, in Gezi Park, for example in Istanbul, to promote their views and to communicate with other communities in struggle. For example, it was impressive that duri g the Gezi riots Erdoga s regi e tried to block the Internet. In Athens, the Occupy Syntagma square came out from Internet communication. So, could we see imaginary communities, communities of communication being formed as a form of digital democracy, communicating struggles, communicating the peoples ie s, ot the State s? J.R. You k o , the peoples ie s, it ea s a lot of differe t thi gs. The problem is, and this is why I consider the form of the movement to be very important, that most of the tools, most of the forms of protest now can be used by quite different and opposite forces. For instance, you can think of Nuit Debout, on the one hand, and you can also think of all those forms of protest of the far-right, on the other hand. In France, for example, when there was a law about same sex marriage, there was a huge movement against it. They called it, in reference to the Arab Spring, the French Spring. 3 The French Spring was supposed to be a kind of movement similar to the Arab Spring, to the movements of the squares and they even made an attempt to put 3 In 2013, Holla de s go er e t has lau hed a law that permitted the marriage of people of the same sex. The anti-gay marriage protesters have named their movement Le Printemps Français. 16 tents and occupy the street. It did not succeed but it created a real confusion. And in the Internet you can see all sort of communication between all kinds of far-right movements, ideologists and journals. You discover in the Internet how many far-right groups exist. And it is true that the Internet also sometimes gets them to a certain power. In the French presidential election, the far-right, far-right movements, farright platforms, were acting, not only supporting Marine Le Pen and the far-right, but also supporting Fillon and the traditional and respectable right-wing. So, we could see that the Internet, the new forms of communication, were also helping these movements and making them exist as a force. So, it appears that forms of free diffusion do t ea by themselves the increase of democracy. Democracy is not communication. Y.T. Since you have mentioned the far-right, I think that a question that should also be a part of our discussion is that we see recently, in the last years, that the main challenger to the far-right seems to be the liberals. Like in America, in the U.S., Hillary Clinton assumed the role as the main contester against the far-right and in France it was the banker Macron against Le Pen. In England also, pro-EU protesters mostly at the center, were against the Brexiters that were considered to be more at the far-right. But this seems to be a dead end, because these liberals are advocates of the very system that has strengthen the far-right. 15 years ago Chirac won the elections against Le Pen senior, but now his daughter, Marine Le Pen, won double votes than her father. So, it is getting stronger, obviously this answer does not work. How do you think that we should challenge this great threat that is the far-right? J.R. My point is that the far-right in fact covers very different forms of organization and of public opinion. Of course, in Greece you really have a fascist party, which is partly infiltrating the police and the army. There is a kind of tradition of the far-right which began in the 1920s, the far-right that was organized as a sort of militia against communism, agai st the orkers o e e t, et . et . There is this kind of militant, 17 active and possibly militarized far-right. And there is also a form of farright opinion which mostly just remains a form of public opinion, meaning people who vote against the migrants, against the strangers, etc. etc. but are not organized to fight in the streets and to attack the migrants, for instance. So I think really there is a distinction. What I think is significant in countries like France is the fact that the far-right as a kind of military force is not so much strong, but there is a widespread opinion sa i g well, there are too many strangers, they cannot really be assimilated . It does not really enhance some kind of military fascist force, but it does create a phenomenon of opinion where people are happy to say that there are too many strangers, too many migrants, too many problems with migrants etc. But it is something that happens, I would say, in the electoral world and not against it. In France, for instance, the far-right is much more a kind of electoral thing. Y.K. Expressed through Le Pen, for example. J.R. Yes, expressed through Le Pen. But also, what I tried to do is show that there was a kind of strange play between the far-right and the official right and left-wing parties. Because, from the 1990s in France there has been this kind of discourse of the big parties sa i g, There is a real problem with migrants. Of course, we are anti-racist, anti-fascist etc. etc., but precisely for this reason we must not accept too many foreigners, too many migrants, because it might help the far-right . So, I think there is a kind of game being played between the top of the State and the public opinion. The governments and also the media produce a kind of soft xenophobic and anti-islamic opinion. I tried from the very beginning to say that there is some kind of new form of racism, a racism coming from the top. It is important to emphasize it because there is always the idea that racism comes from the bottom, comes from poor people that have lost their job and are against the migrants because they are afraid, because they are poor people without instruction, etc. etc. I opposed to that cliché the reality of a 18 new racism coming from the top of the State that I called soft racism or cold racism. It went through administrative measures limiting the access to the territory and through forms of discursive legitimization of those measures. It was also supported, notably in France, by a strong intellectual movement, which was supposed to be leftist, republican, that was against migrants because, as Moslems , they ignore the republican principles of secularism and threaten our secular state and our secular way of living So the point is to know what kind of fascism do we exactly fight. If we fight only the racism of the 1930s, perhaps we are falling off target. N.K. We are i a period he , let s sa , the utopias of the past, for example communism or liberalism are falling down. Communism was destroyed after the fall of the Soviet Union, and liberalism faces problems nowadays. After the collapse of the narratives of the past, like communism or liberalism that has been proven unable to maintain their foundations and maintain a way of life, traditional movements fell apart, as well. What could inspire a popular movement again? J.R. Well, I ot an adviser of popular movements but perhaps we are wrong when we think there was the big narrative and now there is no big narrative. My point also about the history of emancipation, of revolutionary ideas, is that what was called the big narrative was in fact a conjunction of several narrative lines. It is what I tried to show he deali g ith the orkers e a ipatio o e e ts which were inspired by a multiplicity of various experiences, trajectories and encounters. It is always the inegalitarian prejudice that thinks that people were just driven by a big narrative and a naïve faith that later collapsed, no. I think that always there is a multiplicity of experiences of equality, freedom or emancipation that still go on or have found new ways and new forms of expression. And this was proven in the occupy movements of the squares. There was a moment when everybody said that everything had collapsed but it was not true. I think equality, freedom, emancipation and even communism can still 19 inspire people. But this presupposes, from my point of view, that we give new strength and a new definition to what democracy means. What was important in the movements of the recent years was the idea of real democracy. Real democracy is opposed to the fake democracy practiced by our oligarchic states. But it also means, an effort to create forms of discussion and decision but also forms of life making it possible to give a new strength to equality, freedom and democracy, thinking them not anymore like in the Marxist tradition as a kind of superstructure or surface hiding the reality of domination. So, from the movements that have happened, everywhere, it is possible to create, at least at the level of thinking, a kind of different space. By saying there is not only on the one hand the dead utopias of the past and on the other hand just the resignation to what the bourgeois po er alled de o ra . This is why the idea of real democracy, real forms of acting freely and equally in common is quite important now. N.I. We here all have an involvement in the movement, your generation from the 0s, i e fro the 0s, Ale a dros fro the 90s, the rest fro the 2000s. A d e share the sa e e perie e, that the important thing is the logic of real democracy. Our effort is to instill this democratic element in social movements and our question is, should we continue to do this through our involvement in social movements or should we try to form some kind of political organization or instrument and what could be the dangers of it? We see e a ples like Varoufakis effort to ake a oalitio fro a o e with no roots in the movements or trying to represent something, without actually participating. J.R. The question is what does political instrument ea . Political instruments most of the time take on the form of the party, either the party to gain political seats in the Parliament, or the party as the avantgarde preparing the revolution for the next century. Well, the point today is trying to think a form of political organization as really creating a new form of people. Because a people is not the reality that parties 20 represe t , it is the realit that the reate. The pro le is whether we can create a new kind of people, a people of equals who have the possibility to put the capacity of anybody at work. On the one hand it rests o lo al a d spe ifi i itiati es su h as the de elop e t of the free social spaces, but it also supposes the unifying force of a common agenda, of a program, which is not a catalogue of electoral promises but an autonomous program of action inventing its own forms. This supposes that you can intervening in relation to what happens in the offi ial politi al sphere – which is the sphere of state power – but not inside its logic. This is why, for instance, I said that perhaps Nuit Debout should have resulted in a movement against the presidential election. Not result i to a part , i to a e left of the left party, but result in a kind of movement to contest the presidential elections. My idea – of course, one can say it is a kind of anarchist idea of an individual – was that one of the outcomes of the movement would have been really to intervene and block this process of primary elections, which is supposed to be the utmost implementation of democracy. While many people a ted to radi alize the o e e t by direct action and identify direct action with breaking shop windows and bank automats, it would have been more interesting to break the urns of the primary elections. I really think that it must be possible to have a kind of public action, addressing public issues, not as it is defended by the State, but in a different way and not in the perspective of the elections and of electoral program. Well, of course I know that something like this political form I am trying to outline has not occurred anywhere but it is really, for me, the only way to preserve an autonomous democratic power. I think that trying to create a so-defined autonomous political program is better than trying to transform the movement into a new left of the left electoral party, because these things have constantly proved what they could do and you know it in Greece better than in any other place. It is also better than trying to create a new avant-garde party or these kind of things. 21 Y.K. So, thank you very much. I know you are tired. Thank you very much for your presence at B-Fest 6 and for the conversation. It has been a great experience for all of us. 22 Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)