Adam Kirsch, Why more people want human extinction: climate change, an AI ‘singularity’, and merging with a cosmic flow of data, South China Morning Post Magazine, 29 Jan 2023
Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.”
With this declaration in The Order of Things (1966), the French philosopher Michel Foucault heralded a new way of thinking that would transform the humanities and social sciences.
Foucault’s central idea was that the ways we understand ourselves as human beings aren’t timeless or natural, no matter how much we take them for granted. Rather, the modern concept of “man” was invented in the 18th century, with the emergence of new modes of thinking about biology, society and language, and eventually it will be replaced in turn.
As Foucault writes in the book’s famous last sentence, one day “man would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea”.
The image is eerie, but he claimed to find it “a source of profound relief”, because it implies that human ideas and institutions aren’t fixed. They can be endlessly reconfigured, maybe even for the better.
[…]
Humanity may be destined to disappear someday, but almost everyone would agree that the day should be postponed as long as possible, just as most individuals generally try to delay the inevitable end of their own life.
In recent years, however, a disparate group of thinkers has begun to challenge this core assumption. From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it.
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Adam Kirsch is an American poet and literary critic.
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