ChatGPT, or the Eschatology of Machines
Yuk Hui
Caption: The Turing Machine at Bletchley Park. Douglas Hoyt/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Figure text: "was it for me to kill the heir-apparent?" Lubrication Manifold for 'one oiling to all bearin…In the 1960s, Hans Blumenberg argued against Löwith’s thesis of secularization, as well as Carl Schmitt’s claim that “all
significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.”[^2] Blumenberg contende…
Karl Löwith
philosopher · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Karl Löwith appears as a foundational voice in debates about secularization and the relationship between theology and modernity, which anchors discussions about how technological thinking inherits religious frameworks. In Yuk Hui's essay on machine eschatology, Löwith's secularization thesis—that modern concepts like progress are displaced theological categories—becomes crucial for understanding how AI and cybernetics inherit eschatological impulses (the drive toward teleology and ultimate purpose). Hans Blumenberg's mid-century critique of Löwith's framework allows the course readings to problematize whether technology really does secularize theology or instead generates genuinely new conceptual structures, a tension that runs through contemporary debates about AI's mythic dimensions.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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