Philosophers and the machine: French philosophy of slavery from Espinas to Kojèv

Discussants:

• Arthur Bradley (University of Lancaster)

In the final volume of his long-running Homo Sacer project, The Use of Bodies (2015), Giorgio Agamben offers a controversial defence of Aristotle’s notorious theory of natural slavery. To be sure, Agamben’s own archaeology of slavery in this text is typically eclectic (suturing together the early Church Fathers, Marquis de Sade, Karl Marx, and Martin Heidegger amongst many other sources) but I want to propose in the following paper that this idiosyncratic reading of the slave also emerges out of and responds to a—now largely obscure—set of late-19th and early 20th century.

French philosophical debates about the precise relationship between slave labour, technology and the human being itself. In the work of such diverse intellectual figures as Alfred Espinas, Paul Louis, Pierre-Maxim Schuhl, Alexandre Koyré and, most prominently, Alexandre Kojève on something that gradually comes to be thematized under the signifier of the “machine,” I want to argue that we enter a historical archive which is not only a precursor for Agamben’s philosophy of slavery but part of the conceptual pre-history of modern French philosophy more widely.

What is the story of the encounter between French philosophy and the machine?

——

Where
On Zoom

When

• Thu, December 1: 6am to 7.30am (London)
• Thu, December 1: 6pm to 7.30pm (Sydney)

The Zoom link
To receive the Zoom link and announcements about this event, please register by signing up to the Critical Antiquities Network mailing list.

The Critical Antiquities Workshop is an initiative of the Critical Antiquities Network (CAN) at the University of Sydney. CAN, co-directed by Ben Brown and Tristan Bradshaw, connects scholars working at the intersection of ancient traditions and contemporary critical theory. 

Classics and Ancient History is part of the School of Humanities at the University of Sydney.

Social Media

• Follow the School of Humanities on Twitter
• Follow the School of Humanities on Facebook