Crediting Stiegler

Moore, Gerald

Abstract

The opening contributions to this special edition on "The Truth of Stiegler" make the case that the more Bernard Stiegler develops his analysis of the catastrophic collapse of society, the further he risks departure from the philosophical rigour of his earliest ideas on the technical constitution of "intermittently not-inhuman" ("noetic") life. His diagnoses of the collapse of trust revolve around a critique of misplaced faith (mécréance) in computational capitalism's pursuit of certainty, but are arguably themselves undermined by Stiegler's dogmatic certainty in his own arguments. We can make more sense of the apparent inconsistency by extending Stiegler's ideas on exhaustion and the disintegration of the public sphere to show how a surfeit of certainty gives rise to a defensive posture that complicates his insistence of the therapeutic value of truth and openness. Mécréance and the exhaustion of certainty June 2020 saw the release of Bifurcate: There Is No Alternative, the work, cowritten with two dozen or so of the close collaborators Bernard Stiegler baptized the "Internation Collective," and several of whom-Alombert, Lindberg, Ross and myself-have contributed to this collection, too. He saw Bifurcate as laying out the blueprint for rebuilding a civilization in the midst of collapse. "It's the best book I've ever read!" Stiegler grandiosely told a confidante in the heady aftermath of its publication. Within two months, he would be dead, but not before submitting

Citation

Moore, G. (2024). Crediting Stiegler. Philosophy Today: An International Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, 68(3), 425-442. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday2024683532

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 21, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Sep 24, 2024
• Publication Date: Sep 24, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 26, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 27, 2024
• Journal: Philosophy Today: An International Journal of Contemporary Philosophy
• Print ISSN: 0031-8256
• Electronic ISSN: 2329-8596
• Publisher: Philosophy Documentation Center
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 68
• Issue: 3
• Article Number: 1
• Pages: 425-442
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday2024683532
• Keywords: Canguilhem; Covid-19; certainty; exhaustion; intermittence; mécréance; noodiversity; philosophy; Stiegler; truth
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2879776