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 in the readings primarily as a theorist of secularization—the thesis that modern concepts are displaced theological ones. Yuk Hui and Hans Blumenberg engage with Löwith's secularization framework to argue about how modernity relates to religion and metaphysics, with Blumenberg specifically contesting Löwith's position alongside Carl Schmitt's parallel claims about the state. For a course on AI and machine eschatology, Löwith's genealogy of modern thought as secularized theology becomes crucial for understanding how computational systems inherit and reshape metaphysical assumptions about progress, teleology, and ends.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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