David Bates

University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric, Faculty Member

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Galen Strawson

The University of Texas at Austin

Devin Singh

Dartmouth College

Steven Pinker

Harvard University

Mirko Canevaro

University of Edinburgh

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Élisabeth Roudinesco

École Normale Supérieure

Remo Caponi

University of Cologne

Vincent Blok

Wageningen University

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

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Books by David Bates

Plasticity and Pathology: On the Formation of the Neural Subject

by Nima Bassiri and David Bates

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States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political

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Enlightenment Aberrations: Error and Revolution in France

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Papers by David Bates

La technologie et la culture de la raison, avant les ordinateurs numériques

Prendre Soin de l'informatique et des générations, 2021

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Unstable Brains and Ordered Societies: On the Conceptual Origins of Plasticity, ca. 1900

Distributed Perception: Resonances and Axiologies, 2021

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The political theology of entropy: A Katechon for the cybernetic age

History of the Human Sciences, 2020

The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we thin... more The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we think about decision, control, and will at a time when technologies of automation are transforming every dimension of human life, from military combat to mental attention, from financial systems to the intimate lives of individuals? This article looks back to a moment in the 20th century when the concept of the political as an independent logic was developed, in a time when the boundaries and operations of the classic state were in question. At the same moment, a whole new technological era was opened up with the emergence of intelligent machines and computers in the postwar cybernetic age. Technology, and cybernetics in particular, loomed large in Carl Schmitt's articulation of the concept of the political, while the problem of radical open decision was at the heart of influential cybernetic approaches to politics. Linking these was the idea of entropic decay. Schmitt's invocation of the theological concept of the Katechon, who restrains chaos in the time before Christ's return, in fact exemplifies the new understandings of order in a cybernetic age facing new challenges of technology in a globalized condition.

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Automatisation et Erreur

In: Bernard Stiegler, ed., La verité du numérique: Recherche et enseignement supérieur à l'ère de... more

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Rousseau's Cybernetic Political Body

From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political. The discovery of the political in... more From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political.

The discovery of the political in the early Enlightenment threatened to overwhelm any intellectual effort to secure the protection of individuals against established political forms of authority. Locke's appeal to " heaven " to sort out these conflicts or Montesquieu's invocation of the ephemeral principle of order only betray a deep anxiety in this period. It is an anxiety generated by the clash between our acknowledged historicity and the intuitive feeling that there are deep injustices at the heart of modern economic, social, and political relations. Tracing the development and articulation of a political logic in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's republican theory, we see how he brilliantly resolves this problem with a model of an artificial organic body.

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Locke's natural history of the political

From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political

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Systems of Sovereignty in Montesquieu

From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political

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Rousseau and Schmitt: Sovereigns and Dictators

in: Thinking with Rousseau: From Machiavelli to Schmitt, ed. Helena Rosenblatt and Paul Schweiger... more

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Translation: Bernard Stiegler, "The Digital, Education, and Cosmopolitanism"

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Insight in the Age of Automation

Genealogies of Genius, Edited Joyce E. Chaplin and Darrin M. McMahon (Palgrave, 2016).

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Automaticity, Plasticity, and the Deviant Origins of Artificial Intelligence

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Catastrophe and Human Order: From Political Theology to Political Physiology

In The Time of Catastrophe: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Age of Catastrophe, ed. Christoph... more

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Unity, Plasticity, Catastrophe: Order and Pathology in the Cybernetic Era

Catastrophes: A History and Theory of an Operative Concept, 2014

Catastrophe is usually seen as something that befalls the organized, adaptive system from the out... more Catastrophe is usually seen as something that befalls the organized, adaptive system from the outside, threatening its future existence. While some cyberneticians explicitly pathologized catastrophe, the French mathematician René Thom in the 1970s redefined catastrophe as a sudden unexpected turn that is generated from within the complex system. While "catastrophe theory" had a limited impact, unlike the broader notions of chaos theory and complexity theory that are now more familiar, I use this idea to turn back to the earlier twentieth century, to locate the ways in which catastrophic events were understood to be essential to the functioning of a complex unity. I trace in Kurt Goldstein's The Organism (1934) the idea of "weak catastophe" and its relation to Georges Canguilhem's ideas of pathology and norm in order to demonstrate that in fact, cybernetic-era theorists of the automatic machine were interested in developing what we might call a "pathology of the machine" that was influenced by organismic ideas of internal catastrophe.

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Penser l'automaticité au seuil du numérique

Digital Studies: Organologie des savoirs et technologies de la connaissance, 2014

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Cartesian Robotics

Representations, Nov 2013

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

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Enemies and Friends: Arendt on the Imperial Republic at War

History of European Ideas, 2010

Hannah Arendt's existential, republican concept of politics spurned Carl Schmitt's idea that enmi... more Hannah Arendt's existential, republican concept of politics spurned Carl Schmitt's idea that enmity constituted the essence of the political. Famously, she isolated the political sphere from social conflict, sovereign regimes, and the realm of military violence. While some critics are now interested in applying Arendt's more abstract political ideas to international affairs, it has not been acknowledged that her original reconceptualization of politics was in fact driven by her analysis of global war, and in particular, the startling new challenges raised by nuclear warfare. Arendt's early, unpublished manuscript on the nature of politics contains important reflections on the nature of war and empire. Surprisingly, these reflections tentatively explore the relationship between war and political freedom. A close reading of this work on war can help explain both her later, more radical non-violent concept of political action, and the difficulties she faced integrating her existential republicanism within the global context of conflict in the Cold War.

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Super Epistemology

The Super Enlightenment: Daring to Know, 2009

The Individual and the cosmos in Renaissance philosophy, translated by Mario Domandi (Philadelphi... more

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Plasticity and Pathology: On the Formation of the Neural Subject

by Nima Bassiri and David Bates

Download

States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political

Download

Enlightenment Aberrations: Error and Revolution in France

Download

La technologie et la culture de la raison, avant les ordinateurs numériques

Prendre Soin de l'informatique et des générations, 2021

Download

Unstable Brains and Ordered Societies: On the Conceptual Origins of Plasticity, ca. 1900

Distributed Perception: Resonances and Axiologies, 2021

Download

The political theology of entropy: A Katechon for the cybernetic age

History of the Human Sciences, 2020

Download

Automatisation et Erreur

In: Bernard Stiegler, ed., La verité du numérique: Recherche et enseignement supérieur à l'ère de... more

Download

Rousseau's Cybernetic Political Body

Download

Locke's natural history of the political

From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political

Download

Systems of Sovereignty in Montesquieu

From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political

Download

Rousseau and Schmitt: Sovereigns and Dictators

in: Thinking with Rousseau: From Machiavelli to Schmitt, ed. Helena Rosenblatt and Paul Schweiger... more

Download

Translation: Bernard Stiegler, "The Digital, Education, and Cosmopolitanism"

Download

Insight in the Age of Automation

Genealogies of Genius, Edited Joyce E. Chaplin and Darrin M. McMahon (Palgrave, 2016).

Download

Automaticity, Plasticity, and the Deviant Origins of Artificial Intelligence

Download

Catastrophe and Human Order: From Political Theology to Political Physiology

In The Time of Catastrophe: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Age of Catastrophe, ed. Christoph... more

Download

Unity, Plasticity, Catastrophe: Order and Pathology in the Cybernetic Era

Catastrophes: A History and Theory of an Operative Concept, 2014

Download

Penser l'automaticité au seuil du numérique

Digital Studies: Organologie des savoirs et technologies de la connaissance, 2014

Download

Cartesian Robotics

Representations, Nov 2013

Download

Enemies and Friends: Arendt on the Imperial Republic at War

History of European Ideas, 2010

Download

Super Epistemology

The Super Enlightenment: Daring to Know, 2009

The Individual and the cosmos in Renaissance philosophy, translated by Mario Domandi (Philadelphi... more

Download

Creating Insight: Gestalt Theory and the Early Computer

Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Theory of Artificial Life, 2007

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Political Theology and the Nazi State: Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Institution

Modern Intellectual History, Nov 2006

The fundamental importance of theology in the work of Carl Schmitt has been the subject of much r... more The fundamental importance of theology in the work of Carl Schmitt has been the subject of much recent literature on this controversial figure. However, there has been little consensus on the precise nature of Schmitt's own political theology-that is, on what links there are between his religious or metaphysical concepts and his ideas concerning the nature of political organization and action. This is especially the case with his works of the Nazi era, which are now being studied with the same kind of critical attention given to his more influential Weimar works. In this essay I focus on the important turn Schmitt made in the early years of the Third Reich, from "decisionism" to what he called "institutional thinking," in order to reveal the theological basis for his understanding of the new regime. I will then argue that Schmitt's institutional approach had in fact always been central to his earlier, better-known writings on law and the state. Schmitt's concept of the institution, which had roots in French legal theory, grounded a political theology that was in the end less a metaphysical approach to the state than one that drew on the concrete example of the legal institutional order of the Catholic Church.

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