Article ID: CBB798000079

The Political Theology of Entropy: A Katechon for the Cybernetic Age (2020)

unapi

The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we think about decision, control, and will at a time when technologies of automation are transforming every dimension of human life, from military combat to mental attention, from financial systems to the intimate lives of individuals? This article looks back to a moment in the 20th century when the concept of the political as an independent logic was developed, in a time when the boundaries and operations of the classic state were in question. At the same moment, a whole new technological era was opened up with the emergence of intelligent machines and computers in the postwar cybernetic age. Technology, and cybernetics in particular, loomed large in Carl Schmitt’s articulation of the concept of the political, while the problem of radical open decision was at the heart of influential cybernetic approaches to politics. Linking these was the idea of entropic decay. Schmitt’s invocation of the theological concept of the Katechon, who restrains chaos in the time before Christ’s return, in fact exemplifies the new understandings of order in a cybernetic age facing new challenges of technology in a globalized condition.

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Article Stefanos Geroulanos; Leif Weatherby (2020) Cybernetics and the Human Sciences. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-11). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Jones-Imhotep, Edward Charles
Boden, Margaret A.
Crosthwaite, Paul
Gerovitch, Slava
Guilhot, Nicolas
Hessler, Martina
Journals
History of the Human Sciences
Social Studies of Science
Blätter für Technikgeschichte
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
History and Technology
Journal of the History of Ideas
Publishers
Princeton University
MIT Press
Oxford University Press
Routledge
The MIT Press
University of Pennsylvania Press
Concepts
Automation
Automata; robotics; cyborgs
Cybernetics
Artificial intelligence
Science and politics
Human-machine interaction
People
Schmitt, Carl
Arendt, Hannah
Barthes, Roland
Clarke, Arthur C.
Craik, Kenneth James William
Frayn, Michael
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
18th century
17th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Soviet Union
Europe
France
London (England)
Institutions
United States. Department of Defense
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