We have become superheroes. Nothing can resist us anymore: not
persons, ideas, facts, realities, or beings. We owe our superhuman
strength to a tool we have taken up that submits everything to the
scrutiny of our judgment: critique. After its first formulation at the
end of the sixteenth century, the project of critique spread from one
sphere to another until it became almost universal: we have all of us
been transformed by our equal capacity to judge, approve, and reject.
If modernity is defined as the journey we have taken to move away from
the myths and dogmas of the past, then critique, with its emphasis on
reason and the autonomy of judgment, has been the lynchpin of
modernity.
Today, however, the critical project shows signs of exhaustion. We are
beginning to realize that being right is useless, now that everyone
can lay claim to the same power as we can. The democratization of
reason, proceeding alongside the development of critique through
modernity, has produced a stalemate: for every judgment that we
pronounce, there is another opposing one - with grounds as solid as
our own, and the same right to assert itself. Rather than elevating us
above the world, critique has mired us in an impasse of claim and
counter-claim.
The age of critique is now over, argues Laurent de Sutter, and in its
place we need to develop a postcritical form of thinking, one he calls
“superweak,” a form of thinking based not on establishing grounds,
pronouncing judgment, and determining duty, but on welcoming
possibility, exploring what the world has to offer, and cultivating a
vertiginous appreciation for moving within a world less grounded and
less bounded by the terms of critical reason.
Les mer
Thinking in the 21st Century
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781509566488
Publisert
2026
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Polity
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter