Wolfgang Schirmacher

Wolfgang Schirmacher (born 1944) has taught philosophy at the University of Hamburg, is a former Core Faculty Member of the Media Studies Graduate Program, New School for Social Research, and Director of International Relations, Philosophy and Technology Studies Center, Polytechnic University, New York. He is the editor of Schopenhauer-Studien, and the editor of Schopenhauer for New York Studies in Media Philosophy. He is an internationally active philosopher of technology with emphasis on media, gene technology, and neuroscience, president of the International Schopenhauer Association, and chair of the Artificial Life Group.

Related Topics:
1944 - Schopenhauer - New York

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Rogue philosopher, and enigmatic and inspirational professor, Schirmacher

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is dean of the Master and Doctoral Programs in

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Media and Communication at the European Graduate School, a unique concept

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in university-level education. Founded by the non-profit European

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Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies (EGIS), with the guidance of Jean-François Lyotard, in 1994, EGS is a carefully designed mix of Internet-

Related Topics:
Jean-François Lyotard - 1994

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based learning and intensive summer residencies for active and professional

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international students. The EGS Media and Communications program aims at

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creative breakthroughs and theoretical paradigm shifts in art, media,

Related Topics:
Art - Media

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communications, film, internet, web and cyberspace studies from a cross-

Related Topics:
Communications - Film - Internet - Web - Cyberspace

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disciplinary perspective. The EGS program?s focus is on philosophy as

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applied to media and communication. Schirmacher states: ?Philosophy, in its

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genuine sense as a bold and creative questioning of the world, guides our

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approach.? Theory and practice are given equal importance in the program,

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and the faculty members reflect this cross-disciplinary approach, as they

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are considered philosophers in their fields as filmmakers, academics,

Related Topics:
Filmmakers - Academics

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artists and media professionals. Schirmacher believes that every new

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thinker is in a position to change the nature of philosophy.

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Inspired by a diverse collection of post-Kantian, post-Hegelian

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philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger,

Related Topics:
Marx - Kierkegaard - Nietzsche - Heidegger

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Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Bataille, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida, and Lyotard,

Related Topics:
Adorno - Merleau-Ponty - Bataille - Arendt - Deleuze - Derrida - Lyotard

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Schirmacher announces the conviction of Modern Technology for first-degree

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murder of the body. As his mentors do, Schirmacher considers the body as

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our place of resistance, and its growing influence coincides with the

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growing threat technological progress seems to make to the bodily sphere.

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What Schirmacher calls ?homo generator? is a realization of the hope and

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the angst of the philosophers after Hegel: ?a Dasein beyond metaphysics, a

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human being which needs no Being, no certainty, no truth.? Modern

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technology is its ambiguous birthplace. Rather than considering homo

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generator a narrative of progress, technological triumph over nature, or

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movement to a higher form of living, he describes homo generator as having

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to face with courage his or her own mortality (complemented by natality) in

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the climate of ecocide. Homo generator begins to fulfill the artificial

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existence of humanity, and takes the form of the media artist, as generator

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of human reality and his/her responsibility for tomorrow's artificial

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world. Unlike other descriptions of humanity, homo generator addresses our

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ability to produce new forms of life and determine the biological, as well

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as the spiritual, future of the earth. Homo generator is in a position to

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tailor-make evolution, both in gene technology and in media technology.

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A phenomenologist at heart, Schirmacher states that homo generator's body

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politics claims aesthetic perception as the basis of comprehension and

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interaction. ?Homo generator is a concrete beginning, unique but not

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original, self care without egoism.? He brings attention to our postmodern

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technology that has abandoned the question of control. The body politics of

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homo generator states that we are jokes in the universe that will die only

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with our deaths. ?We are the artificial beings among all others, our bodies

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are artifacts by nature.?

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In a paper presented at the International Congress for Phenomenology,

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Frankfurt, in 1985, and printed in Analecta Husserliana XXII, 1987, titled

Related Topics:
Frankfurt - 1985 - 1987

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?The Faces of Compassion: Toward a Post-Metaphysical Ethics,? Schirmacher

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asks what shape morality will take in the search for an effective ethics

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for the technological age. He cites Arthur Schopenhauer?s and Albert

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Schweitzer?s ethics of practical compassion, renewed as a "Humanism of the

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Other" by what Emmanuel Levinas claims is the "hopeless compassion with all

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beings" which proves to be moral in the ecological and human crisis.

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Schirmacher asks in what way compassion shows itself in our life-world and

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how we can perceive the decisive characteristics of compassion without

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prior value judgment. ?In being the artificial ones we are the open,

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undetermined ones. Intuitive knowledge knows nothing, and compassion knows

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no law.? He indicates that ?justified individuality,? which practices

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compassion, is missing in Schopenhauer's model of ethics of compassion, and

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claims that compassion as a way of living will become tangible for us only

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when ?it has been bent back into an active sensitization?Sensitizing means

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to develop all senses (the few trained, the numerous untrained ) in

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a creative process and to do it without fear, without order, without

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foreknowledge.? He refers to compassion as an intuitive language: faint,

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yet impossible to ignore.

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In a paper presented at the XVIIth World Congress of Philosophy in Montreal

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1983, and printed in Social Science Information 23, 3 (1984), titled ?The

Related Topics:
1983 - 1984

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End of Metaphysics ? What Does This Mean?? Schirmacher addresses

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Heidegger?s reduction of the problem of modernity to the notion of the end

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of metaphysics. He claims that we are the literal proof of this end, or

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death, seen in the process of the extinction of the human species. It has

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become clear, he says, that we are far from being what we imagined we were

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in our metaphysics. He refers to the modern period as the last phase of

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Western metaphysics, which is today dominant throughout the world in its

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final form of scientific and technical rationality, and post-modernism as

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the expression of the expected break with metaphysics at its definitive

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end, after which there will be no new beginning. The end of metaphysics

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means that the life-long project of the human species has become, in its

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historical development, a suicidal enterprise. If we proceed along the way

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of metaphysics no human beings or objects will survive, leaving only

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artifacts. Schirmacher claims that a radical change is required for the

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human species to survive, and if we want to prevent our destruction, we

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must ?learn a "bodily" language which precedes the division into subject

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and object, and admit the individual to a successful enterprise which needs

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no planning.?

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Schirmacher continues his discussion of the postmodern world by stating

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that being has become cloning, and that the meaning of cloning has little

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to do with the scientific-technological act. Humanity protects its

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virtuality, its principally undefined status, by cloning with media the

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many ways in which a human being exists. He looks to Lyotard?s Just Gaming

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to support his position that the postmodern decision is about becoming a

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player rather than a spectator in the activity of cloning humans in order

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to allow for a good life. In the spirit of the new name of humanity: homo-

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generator, with ?openness as our existential taste and co-evolutionary

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power as our design,? what we clone is exactly this attitude of open

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generating and never a mere copy of anything.

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Schirmacher claims that humans are alone and fully responsible for

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artificial life, which is our only life. By cloning freely with media and

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designing a life-world in between natality and mortality, we fail to pay

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attention to the artificial life we generate. His advice is that we must

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become more experienced in perceiving our imperceptible actions of true

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humanity. The art of living: enjoying life without knowing why, living

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happily without expectations and acting without believing in the principles

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of our action, is rooted in judgment and prudence instead of concepts.

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Cloning humans with media works to distract our attention from this ethical

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art of living. In media we simulate humanity to the point of not

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recognizing ourselves anymore, and this life-consuming activity helps us to

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stay clear of authentic humanity. In ethical life humanity fulfills itself,

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of which we are vaguely aware and which we need to forget at once.

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Schirmacher writes that to work toward this forgetting is media's strongest

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claim.

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