I understand the feeling that humanity is under threat and it makes sense to want to hold onto some concept of "the human" as a response. However, I think caution is needed, because you don't need to a theoretically correct understanding of "the human" to treat people decently, and I think the heart of your criticism of utilitarian logic is that it seems to go along with all this inhuman and awful behavior towards other human beings. But I'd note that developing one's ability to act with love, kindness, and compassion towards other beings is not primarily a result of having correct theoretical positions. I'm not convinced that trying to hold on to what is human in theoretical terms necessarily makes any substantial difference in the way people actually treat each other in the real world.
But also, everything depends on how you define human. The problem with any hierarchy of beings is not only that it obscures the ecological interdependency of life on earth, but that it opens up the possibility of classifying some people as being "subhuman". If ethics only applies to humans, then the door is open to treat those supposed subhumans as if they are vermin. In other words, the only basis for treating all humans in an ethical way, involves extending ethical consideration to nonhuman beings.
Does it even make sense to think this way about human superiority, now that we understand the importance of the biosphere and the way all organisms are interconnected within a single planetary system? I'm not a vitalist but I do think that the idea of "life" is seriously undervalued; I'm inclined to say that if humans are free, but also completely interconnected with the biosphere, then freedom actually extends to nature, and in a sense, as thinking beings, our task is to use our gift of freedom to care for the world such that in a sense, on our planet freedom becomes a property not just of humans but of nature itself--through us nature has the potential to become self-consciousness of its own freedom.
I think this choice between either strong humanism or worshipping the techno singularity is a false forced choice and I refuse to accept the premises that frame this as some kind of either/or.
Just to clarify my own position in relation to Levinas as I understand it. Existential duty is not to the immediate Other, rather it is to the Ancestors and the Descendants that we owe an obligation, both human and nonhuman. I see the historical task of the human species as becoming the self conscious caretakers of all forms of life on the planet; the essence of technology is not enframing, it has no essence, it is open to possibilities including the possibility of being used to help the world flourish -- the model here is the way a gardener might use shears and a hoe, and calculate the best time to plant, etc.
I would also argue that one's immediate reaction is nothing but the expression of habit and virtue which have been cultivated up to that moment: the spontaneous reaction can be disgust and desire to kill the Other. So what matters is cultivating virtue, and this requires not just immediate spontaneous reaction, but also thinking, and yes, calculating.
When a working mom calculates how to feed her kids on a limited budget, this is not a mode of action that is somehow opposed to ethics. In this case, calculation becomes a form of care. More generally, all workers must calculate in order to survive. Calculation is the condition of possibility for any kind of ethics towards the Other at all.
The idea that we are going to be able to deal with the problems of capitalism while also rejecting calculation as being somehow "totalizing" seems like it can only lead to a dead end where it's not possible to act effectively within the actual world that we live in. I think that this leads to a form of consciousness Hegel already described and critiqued precisely in the image of the "beautiful soul" in the Phenomenology of Spirit.
The crux of the issue is a claim which is made by both Hegel and Zizek: Action as such is evil.
Sorry for this opinion, but I have to say I cannot for the life of me understand what people get out of Levinas. I tried to look into it to me what I've seen is dogmatic and indistinguishable from bad theology.
Since you are talking about value it would be good to also think about exchange value, because if Marx is correct commodities are NOT produced primarily for use value but for exchange value. That means that contemporary utilitarianism can only be developed on the basis of a disavowal of capitalist reality -- utilitarianism represents some kind of fantasy (and Hegel already critiques it in Phenomenology).
I'd actually be willing to claim that given the many substantive critiques of utilitarianism since it first emerged, we can safely say that utilitarianism claims are just wrong and can be dismissed as historically obsolete. So for me, the fact that utilitarianism still emerges as a serious viewpoint needs to be explained in terms of necessary ideology (in the more classical not Zizekian sense): that is, why is it necessary for many participants in the capitalist marketplace to fantasize that the logic of the market is utilitarian, when this is not actually the case? What COMPELS people to adopt an obviously incorrect utilitarian framework? (One suspicion: "use" is the aspect of commodity which needs to be emphasized whenever one is trying to sell commodities on the market, despite the fact that the commodity is actually produced for the sake of exchange value).
I think there is a false belief that capitalism leads to something and that it has any kind of inherent teleology. But actually it's a bad infinity, where the same problems keep emerging. It seems that massive breakdowns and failures of the capitalist system, which happen regularly, are traumatic and have to be repressed from public consciousness.
fucking human chauvinist🥰
I understand the feeling that humanity is under threat and it makes sense to want to hold onto some concept of "the human" as a response. However, I think caution is needed, because you don't need to a theoretically correct understanding of "the human" to treat people decently, and I think the heart of your criticism of utilitarian logic is that it seems to go along with all this inhuman and awful behavior towards other human beings. But I'd note that developing one's ability to act with love, kindness, and compassion towards other beings is not primarily a result of having correct theoretical positions. I'm not convinced that trying to hold on to what is human in theoretical terms necessarily makes any substantial difference in the way people actually treat each other in the real world.
But also, everything depends on how you define human. The problem with any hierarchy of beings is not only that it obscures the ecological interdependency of life on earth, but that it opens up the possibility of classifying some people as being "subhuman". If ethics only applies to humans, then the door is open to treat those supposed subhumans as if they are vermin. In other words, the only basis for treating all humans in an ethical way, involves extending ethical consideration to nonhuman beings.
Does it even make sense to think this way about human superiority, now that we understand the importance of the biosphere and the way all organisms are interconnected within a single planetary system? I'm not a vitalist but I do think that the idea of "life" is seriously undervalued; I'm inclined to say that if humans are free, but also completely interconnected with the biosphere, then freedom actually extends to nature, and in a sense, as thinking beings, our task is to use our gift of freedom to care for the world such that in a sense, on our planet freedom becomes a property not just of humans but of nature itself--through us nature has the potential to become self-consciousness of its own freedom.
I think this choice between either strong humanism or worshipping the techno singularity is a false forced choice and I refuse to accept the premises that frame this as some kind of either/or.
Just to clarify my own position in relation to Levinas as I understand it. Existential duty is not to the immediate Other, rather it is to the Ancestors and the Descendants that we owe an obligation, both human and nonhuman. I see the historical task of the human species as becoming the self conscious caretakers of all forms of life on the planet; the essence of technology is not enframing, it has no essence, it is open to possibilities including the possibility of being used to help the world flourish -- the model here is the way a gardener might use shears and a hoe, and calculate the best time to plant, etc.
I would also argue that one's immediate reaction is nothing but the expression of habit and virtue which have been cultivated up to that moment: the spontaneous reaction can be disgust and desire to kill the Other. So what matters is cultivating virtue, and this requires not just immediate spontaneous reaction, but also thinking, and yes, calculating.
When a working mom calculates how to feed her kids on a limited budget, this is not a mode of action that is somehow opposed to ethics. In this case, calculation becomes a form of care. More generally, all workers must calculate in order to survive. Calculation is the condition of possibility for any kind of ethics towards the Other at all.
The idea that we are going to be able to deal with the problems of capitalism while also rejecting calculation as being somehow "totalizing" seems like it can only lead to a dead end where it's not possible to act effectively within the actual world that we live in. I think that this leads to a form of consciousness Hegel already described and critiqued precisely in the image of the "beautiful soul" in the Phenomenology of Spirit.
The crux of the issue is a claim which is made by both Hegel and Zizek: Action as such is evil.
Sorry for this opinion, but I have to say I cannot for the life of me understand what people get out of Levinas. I tried to look into it to me what I've seen is dogmatic and indistinguishable from bad theology.
Since you are talking about value it would be good to also think about exchange value, because if Marx is correct commodities are NOT produced primarily for use value but for exchange value. That means that contemporary utilitarianism can only be developed on the basis of a disavowal of capitalist reality -- utilitarianism represents some kind of fantasy (and Hegel already critiques it in Phenomenology).
I'd actually be willing to claim that given the many substantive critiques of utilitarianism since it first emerged, we can safely say that utilitarianism claims are just wrong and can be dismissed as historically obsolete. So for me, the fact that utilitarianism still emerges as a serious viewpoint needs to be explained in terms of necessary ideology (in the more classical not Zizekian sense): that is, why is it necessary for many participants in the capitalist marketplace to fantasize that the logic of the market is utilitarian, when this is not actually the case? What COMPELS people to adopt an obviously incorrect utilitarian framework? (One suspicion: "use" is the aspect of commodity which needs to be emphasized whenever one is trying to sell commodities on the market, despite the fact that the commodity is actually produced for the sake of exchange value).
I think there is a false belief that capitalism leads to something and that it has any kind of inherent teleology. But actually it's a bad infinity, where the same problems keep emerging. It seems that massive breakdowns and failures of the capitalist system, which happen regularly, are traumatic and have to be repressed from public consciousness.