David Bates
University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric, Faculty Member
- Intellectual History, Artificial Intelligence, Political Theory, History of Science, Early Modern Intellectual History, History Of Psychology, and 28 moreMedia Theory, Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Georges Canguilhem, Kurt Goldstein, Rhetoric, Epistemology, Natural Law, Legal History, French Revolution, John Locke, Jean Jaques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Enlightenment Political Thought, Historiography of the French Revolution, French Enlightenment, Montesquieu, Hugo Grotius, Condorcet, Samuel von Pufendorf, Emergency Laws, Philosophy, Critical Theory, Cybernetics, Bernard Stiegler, and Philosophy of Technologyedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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... 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.
Research Interests:
In: Bernard Stiegler, ed., La verité du numérique: Recherche et enseignement supérieur à l'ère des technologies numériques (Paris: FYP Editions, 2018), 29-40.
Research Interests:
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... 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.
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.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
From: States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political
Research Interests:
in: Thinking with Rousseau: From Machiavelli to Schmitt, ed. Helena Rosenblatt and Paul Schweigert (Cambridge University Press, 2017): 276-294.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Genealogies of Genius, Edited Joyce E. Chaplin and Darrin M. McMahon (Palgrave, 2016).
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In The Time of Catastrophe: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Age of Catastrophe, ed. Christopher Dole et al. (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015): 99-123.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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... 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.
