In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Paul Grenier about his article “Konstantin Krylov’s Ethical Theory and What It Reveals about the Propensity for Conflict between Russia and the West,” from Telos 201 (Winter 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss Russian conservative thinkers, including Konstantin Krylov, Vadim Tsymburski, and Vladimir Solovyov, and their attitudes toward the West; how Krylov differentiates between different civilizational types as well as how he differentiates between liberalism and Russian civilization; how Krylov frames his critique of liberalism and of Russian civilization; how his view of liberalism compares with other definitions; how else we can interpret the weaknesses of liberalism, aside from Krylov’s view of a good and bad version; the relationship between liberalism and tradition; and what Krylov’s thought tells us about the development of Russian perspectives on its relationship to the West today. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 201 are available for purchase in our online store.
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Telos 202 (Spring 2023): Narratives of Belonging is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats. Online subscribers have access to the full issue at the Telos Online website. The following is an excerpt from the issue’s introduction by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch, who are the issue’s guest editors. Introduction: Narratives of Belonging—The Interrelation between Ontological-Epistemological Observations and Narrative MethodologyHartmut Behr and Felix Rösch 1. Introduction
In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Miles Yu about his article “Escape from Civilization’s Predicaments,” from Telos 201 (Winter 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss the main problems with using the idea of civilization as a way of understanding today’s geopolitical conflicts; the meaning of ideology and its effect on politics; why it is more important to think of ideology than of civilization as a way of understanding politics; how the inability of Americans to see the importance of ideology in the world has affected U.S. foreign policy; what kind of foreign policy would emerge out of the focus on ideology; why Marxism as an ideology has maintained its appeal both for countries such as China and for U.S. intellectuals; and what strategies the United States has in this ideological conflict. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 201 are available for purchase in our online store. It happened on May 11, 1997. After a defeat, a victory, and three draws, Deep Blue, programmed by IBM, would eventually win the sixth and decisive game of the historic chess match against Garry Kasparov. The Russian chess player, incredulous and upset, did not take the defeat well. In fact, given the machine’s behavior during the game, he protested: some of its moves seemed to indicate human intervention. Today, more than twenty-five years later, the most amazing thing is that Kasparov thought it possible to continue to beat a computer that was already capable of analyzing one hundred million moves per second at that time. Nevertheless, it is ironic that his defeat was later speculated to be due to the fact that Kasparov had interpreted a move resulting from a software bug as strategic. According to Nate Silver, who tells the anecdote in The Signal and the Noise, it was that move, enigmatic in its aims, that fatally distracted the chess player. The controversy surrounding Artificial Intelligence is back. However, it is no longer just due to its ability to calculate that the machine, in the era of “big data” and “deep learning,” threatens to surpass human intelligence. Take the case of OpenAI. With Dall-E and ChatGPT, the uses of Artificial Intelligence invade the domains of creation and knowledge. In the former case, a program capable of creating images in the style of this or that artist, enlarging their masterpieces, and crossbreeding their styles. In the latter case, a program capable of producing text by gathering, synthesizing, and cross-referencing information in informal conversations with the user. Disbelief and unease are spreading. Human pride is wounded. Was Kasparov’s defeat not enough? Do they now want to dethrone Vermeer, Beethoven, Kant? When the Supreme Court rules in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, it will surely declare that the use of racial preferences in higher education admissions violates the U.S. Constitution. There is some uncertainty about the precise shape its arguments will take, and their scope, but the basic outcome is clear enough. Here are seven reasons to welcome it from the standpoint of some traditional concerns of Telos. First, a ruling against race-based affirmative action will diminish the material interests at stake in racial identity politics. It will thereby undercut the racialism that lies at the ideological heart of the liberal managerial establishment. Individual good intentions notwithstanding, the Tories of the managerial class use this insidious set of principles and rhetorical moves to justify their power and to bludgeon the working- and private sector middle classes. Second, the ruling may enable colleges and universities to overcome the morally degrading culture of lies that the existence of racial preferences has spread throughout higher education, beginning in the elaborate charade that all applicants for admission or employment are judged by common criteria. It will help individual members of those communities to live in truth. |
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