Yuk Hui

CosmotechnicsasCosmopolitics

The end of unilateral globalization and the arrivalof the Anthropocene force us to talk aboutcosmopolitics. These two factors correlate withone another and correspond to two differentsenses of the word cosmopolitics:cosmopolitics as a commercial regime, andcosmopolitics as a politics of nature.First, we are witnessing the end ofunilateral globalization. Until now, so-calledglobalization has been a largely one-sidedprocess, entailing the universalization ofparticular epistemologies and the elevation,through techno-economic means, of a regionalworldview to a putatively global metaphysics. Weknow that this unilateral globalization hasreached its end because of how the 9/11 attackswere misread as an attack on the Occident by anOther. In fact, 9/11 was an autoimmune event,internal to the Atlantic bloc, wherein its ownanti-communist cells, lingering after the ColdWar, turned against their hosts.1 Still, thespectacular image of the event provided a kind ofRorschach test, onto which the representativesof unilateral globalization could project theirgrowing insecurities about being strandedbetween the old configuration and the new exemplifying what Hegel called the unhappyconsciousness.2 This is clear in an articleentitled The Straussian Moment by one of theleading financiers of American neoreaction,Peter Thiel:

The modern West has lost faith in itself. Inthe Enlightenment and post-Enlightenmentperiod, this loss of faith liberated enormouscommercial and creative forces. At thesame time, this loss has rendered the Westvulnerable. Is there a way to fortify themodern West without destroying italtogether, a way of not throwing the babyout with the bathwater?3

Thiels unhappy consciousness recalls a past ageof commercial glory renounced by the end ofunilateral globalization, and aspires to atranshumanist futurism based on technologicalacceleration on all cosmic scales. This leads to aredefinition of the sovereign nation-state as aresult of global technological competition (as theRussian president Vladimir Putin recentlyclaimed, whoever leads in AI will rule theworld). It is necessary to start imagining a newpolitics which is no longer a continuation of thissame sort of geopolitics with a slightly differentpower configuration, that is, with the role of theleading power now played by China or Russiainstead of the US. We need a new language ofcosmopolitics to elaborate this new world orderthat goes beyond a single hegemon.Second, the human species on earth is

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Diagram used by JohannesKepler to establish his laws ofplanetary motion. Photo:Wikimedia Commons.

confronting the crisis of the Anthropocene. Theearth and the cosmos have been transformedinto a gigantic technological system, theculmination of the epistemological andmethodological rupture which we call modernity.The loss of the cosmos is the end of metaphysicsin the sense that we no longer perceive anythingbehind or beyond the perfection of science andtechnology.4 When historians like Rmi Bragueand Alexandre Koyr write about end of thecosmos in seventeen- and eighteenth-centuryEurope,5 this should be read in our presentAnthropocene context as an invitation to developa cosmo-politics, not only in the sense ofcosmopolitanism but also in the sense of apolitics of the cosmos.6 In response to thisinvitation, I would like to suggest that in order todevelop such a cosmopolitics it is necessary toelucidate the question of cosmotechnics. I havebeen developing this concept of cosmotechnicsin order to reopen the question of technology byundoing certain translations that were driven bythe search for equivalence during modernization.This problematization can be presented in termsof a Kantian antinomy:Thesis: Technology is an anthropologicaluniversal, understood as an exteriorization ofmemory and the liberation of organs, as some

anthropologists and philosophers of technologyhave formulated it;Antithesis: Technology is notanthropologically universal; it is enabled andconstrained by particular cosmologies, which gobeyond mere functionality or utility. Therefore,there is no one single technology, but rathermultiple cosmotechnics.In order to elaborate the relation betweencosmotechnics and cosmopolitics, I will dividethis article into three parts. First, I willdemonstrate how the Kantian concept ofcosmopolitics is rooted in Kants concept ofnature. In the second part, I situate the multi-naturalism proposed by the ontological turn inanthropology as a different cosmopolitics, onewhich, in contrast to Kants pursuit of theuniversal, suggests a certain relativism as thecondition of possibility for coexistence. In thethird part, I will try to show why it is necessary tomove from cosmology to cosmotechnics as apolitics to come.

1. Cosmopolitanism: Between Nature andTechnology

The main difficulty of all cosmopolitics is thereconciliation between the universal and theparticular. The universal tends to contemplate

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the particulars from above, as in the way thatKant regarded the French Revolution, like aspectator considering a violent piece of theaterfrom the mezzanine. Universality is the view of aspectator, never that of an actor. Kant writes, inhis Idea for a Universal History with aCosmopolitan Aim:

There is no other way out for thephilosopher who, regarding human beingsand their play in the large, cannot at allpresuppose any rational aim of theirs than to try whether he can discover an aimof nature in this nonsensical course ofthings human; from which aim a history inaccordance with a determinate plan ofnature might nevertheless be possible evenof creatures who do not behave inaccordance with their own plan [Nature]did produce a Kepler, who subjected theeccentric paths of the planets in anunexpected way to determinate laws, and aNewton, who explained these laws from auniversal natural cause.7

Throughout his political writings, Kant maintainsthat this relation between nature andcosmopolitics is necessary.8 If Kant sees therepublican constitution and perpetual peace aspolitical forms that may be able to bring forwarda universal history of the human species, it isbecause he understands that such progress isalso a progress of reason, the telos of nature.This progress toward an end goal namely,universal history and a perfect stateconstitution is the completion of a hiddenplan of nature (Vollziehung eines verborgenenPlans der Natur). What does it mean for nature tohave a hidden plan? And why is the realization ofcosmopolitics the teleology of nature?Authors such as Hannah Arendt and EckartFrster, among others, suggest that Kantspolitical philosophy centers on his concept ofnature.9 Arendt proposes a juxtapositionconcerning Kants perpetual peace: on the onehand, Besuchsrecht, the right to visit foreigncountries and the right to hospitality; and on theother, nature, the great artist, as the eventualguarantee of perpetual peace.10 If after the1789 revolution Kant is even more consistent inhis affirmation of cosmopolitics as the teleologyof nature, it is because he has developed theconcept of self-organization, which plays acentral role in the second book of his Critique ofJudgment, and which affirms the two importantcategories of relation, namely community(Gemeinschaft) and reciprocity (Wechselwirkung).Consider Kants example of the tree from64 of the Critique of Judgment. First, the treereproduces itself according to its genus, meaning

that it reproduces another tree. Second, the treeproduces itself as an individual; it absorbsenergy from the environment and turns it intonutrients that sustain its life. Third, differentparts of the tree establish reciprocal relationswith one another and thus constitute the whole;as Kant writes, the preservation of one part isreciprocally dependent on the preservation ofthe other parts.11 In such a totality, a part isalways constrained by the whole, and this is trueof Kants understanding of cosmopoliticalwholeness as well: All states are in danger ofacting injuriously upon one another.12 Nature isnot something that can be judged from aparticular point of view, just as the FrenchRevolution cannot be judged according to itsactors. Rather, nature can only be comprehendedas a complex whole, and the human species, asone part of it, will ultimately progress towards auniversal history that coincides with theteleology of nature.13Here we only want to show that as Kantdevelops his thinking towards universalism, hisconceptualization of the relation betweencosmopolitics and the purposiveness of nature issituated within a peculiar moment in history: thesimultaneous enchantment and disenchantmentof nature. On the one hand, Kant recognizes theimportance of the concept of the organic forphilosophy; discoveries in the natural sciencesallowed him to connect the cosmos to the moral,as indicated by his famous analogy near the endof Critique of Practical Reason: Two things fillthe mind with ever new and increasing wonderand awe, the more often and constantlyreflection concerns itself with them: the starryheavens above me and the moral law withinme.14 Howard Caygill makes an even strongerclaim, arguing that this analogy points to aKantian physiology of the soul and the cosmosthat unites the within me (freedom) and theabove me.15 On the other hand, as we saw inKants citation of Kepler and Newton in Idea fora Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim,the affirmation of universal history andadvancements in science and technology led inthe eighteenth century to what Rmi Brague callsthe death of the cosmos:

The new astronomy, following Copernicusand his successors, had consequences forthe modern view of the world Ancient andmedieval thinkers presented a synchronicschema of the structure of the physicalworld, which erased the traces of its owngenesis; the Moderns, on the other hand,remembered the past and in additionprovided a diachronic view of astronomy as if the evolution of ideas about thecosmos was even more important than the

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Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Xaipiri,2012.

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truth about it Can we still speak ofcosmology? It seems that the West ceasedto have a cosmology with the end of theworld of Aristotle and Ptolemy, an end dueto Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Theworld then no longer formed a whole.16

New discoveries in the natural sciences thanksto the invention of the telescope and themicroscope exposed human beings tomagnitudes they could not previouslycomprehend, leading us to a new relation withthe entire span of nature (in dem ganzenUmfang der Natur).17 The Kantian scholar DianeMorgan suggests that through the worldsbeyond worlds revealed by technology, natureceases to be anthropomorphic, for the relationbetween humans and nature is thus reversed,with humans now standing before theunsurveyable magnitude (Unabsehlich-Gro) ofthe universe.18 However, as we indicated above,there is a double moment that deserves ourattention: both the enchantment anddisenchantment of nature via the naturalsciences, leading to a total secularization of thecosmos.In addition to the revelation of nature andits teleology through technical instruments,technology also plays a decisive role in Kantspolitical philosophy, when he asserts thatcommunication is the condition of the realizationof the organicist whole. Arendt made explicit therole of the sensus communis in Kantsphilosophy, as both the question of communityand consensus.19 But such a sensus communis isachieved only through particular technologies,and it is on this ground that we shouldproblematize any naive discourse on thecommon as something already given orpreceding technology. The age of Enlightenment,as noted by Arendt (as well as Bernard Stiegler),is the age of the public use of ones reason, andthis exercise of reason is expressed in thefreedom of speaking and publishing, whichnecessarily involves the technology of printing.On an international level, in Toward PerpetualPeace: A Philosophical Sketch Kant writes thatit was trade that first brought them intopeaceful relations with one another and therebyinto relationships based on mutual consent,community, and peaceful interactions even withremote peoples, later adding, it is the spirit oftrade, which cannot coexist with war, which will,sooner or later, take hold of every people.20

2. Ontological Turn as CosmopoliticsThis reiteration of Kantian cosmopolitanism is anattempt to demonstrate the role of nature inKants political philosophy. Kant somehowassumes one single nature, which reason

compels us to recognize as rational; therationality corresponds to the organicistteleological universality ostensibly realized inthe constitution of both morality and the state.This enchantment of nature is accompanied by adisenchantment of nature, driven by themechanization enforced by the IndustrialRevolution. Bragues death of the cosmosbrought about by European modernity and itsglobalization of modern technology necessarilyforms one of the conditions for us to reflect oncosmopolitics today, insofar as it illustrates theinefficacy of a biological metaphor forcosmopolitanism. If we start with Kant ratherthan with more recent discussions oncosmopolitanism such as Martha Nussbaumsrootless cosmopolitanism, Habermassconstitutional patriotism, or Anthony Appiahscosmopolitan patriotism21 it is because wewant to reconsider cosmopolitanism byexamining its relation to nature and technology.In fact, Appiahs rooted cosmopolitanism isrelevant to our discussion below. He holds theview that cosmopolitanism denies theimportance of affiliations and particularloyalties; this means that it is necessary toconsider cosmopolitics from the point of view oflocality. This crucial point is the reason I wouldlike to engage with the idea of multi-naturalismrecently proposed by anthropologists associatedwith attempts to present a new way of thinkingcosmopolitanism.The ontological turn in anthropology is amovement associated with anthropologists suchas Philippe Descola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro,Bruno Latour, and Tim Ingold, and earlier, RoyWagner and Marilyn Strathern, among others.22This ontological turn is an explicit response tothe crisis of modernity that expresses itselflargely in terms of ecological crisis, which is nowclosely associated with the Anthropocene. Theontological-turn movement is an effort to takeseriously different ontologies in differentcultures (we have to bear in mind that knowingthere are different ontologies and taking themseriously are two different things). Descola hasconvincingly outlined four major ontologies,namely naturalism, animism, totemism, andanalogism.23 The modern is characterized bywhat he calls naturalism, meaning anopposition between culture and nature, and theformers mastery over the latter. Descolasuggests that we must go beyond such anopposition and recognize that nature is no longeropposed or inferior to culture. Rather, in thedifferent ontologies, we can see the differentroles that nature plays; for example, in animismthe role of nature is based on the continuity ofspirituality, despite the discontinuity ofphysicality.

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In Beyond Culture and Nature, Descola hasproposed an ontological pluralism that isirreducible to social constructivism. He suggeststhat recognizing these ontological differencescan serve as an antidote to the dominance ofnaturalism since the advent of Europeanmodernity. But does this focus on nature (or thecosmos, we might say) in the interest of opposingEuropean naturalism actually revive theenchantment of nature, this time in the name ofindigenous knowledge? This seems to be ahidden problem with the ontological-turnmovement: many anthropologists associatedwith the ontological turn have focused on thequestion of nature and the politics of thenonhuman (largely animals, plants, minerals,spirits, and the dead). This is evident when werecall that Descola proposes to call his disciplinean anthropology of nature. Furthermore, thistendency also suggests that the question oftechnics is not sufficiently addressed in theontological-turn movement. For example,Descola talks often of practice, which mayindicate his (laudable) desire to avoid anopposition between nature and technics; but bydoing so, he also obscures the question oftechnology. Descola shows that analogism,rather than naturalism, was a significantpresence in Europe during the Renaissance; ifthis is the case, the turn that took place duringEuropean modernity seems to have resulted in acompletely different ontology and epistemology.If naturalism has succeeded in dominatingmodern thought, it is because such a peculiarcosmological imagination is compatible with itstechno-logical development: nature should bemastered for the good of man, and it can indeedbe mastered according to the laws of nature. Orput another way: nature is regarded as thesource of contingency due to its weakness ofconcept, and therefore it has to be overcome bylogic.These oppositions between nature andtechnics, mythology and reason, give rise tovarious illusions that belong to one of twoextremes. On the one hand, there are rationalistsor progressivists who hysterically struggle tomaintain their monotheism after havingmurdered god, wishfully believing that the worldprocess will stamp out differences anddiversities and lead to a theodicy. On the otherhand, there are left intellectuals who feel theneed to extol indigenous ontology or biology as away out of modernity. A French revolutionarythinker recently described this situation thus:

A funny thing to see these days is how allthese absurd modern leftists, all unable tosee anything, all lost in themselves, allfeeling so bad, all desperately trying to

exist and to find their existence in the eyesof the Other how all these people arejumping on the savage, the indigenous,the traditional in order to escape and notface themselves. I am not speaking of beingcritical towards ones whiteness, towardsones modernism. I am talking of theability to peer inside [transpercer] oneself.

My refusal of the above two extremes does notcome out of any postcolonial politicalcorrectness, but rather out of an attempt to gobeyond postcolonialisms critique. (Indeed, I haveelsewhere reproached postcolonialism for itsfailure to tackle the question of technology.24) Ihold the thesis that an ontological pluralism canonly be realized by reflecting on the question oftechnology and a politics of technology. Kant wasaware of the importance of technology in hiscomment on trading as communication; however,he didnt pay much attention to the technologicaldifference that finally led to planetarymodernization, and now planetary computation,since what was at stake for him was the questionof the whole that absorbs all differences. Kantcriticized the impolite guests, the greedycolonizers who brought with them oppression ofthe native inhabitants, the incitement of thedifferent states involved to expansive wars,famine, unrest, faithlessness, and the wholelitany of evils that weigh upon the humanspecies.25 Commenting on the defensestrategies of China and Japan, Kant said thatboth countries have

wisely, limited such interaction. Whereasthe former has allowed contact with, butnot entrance to its territories, the latter hasallowed this contact to only one Europeanpeople, the Dutch, yet while doing so itexcludes them, as if they were prisoners,from associating with the nativeinhabitants.26

When Kant wrote this in 1795, it was too early forhim to anticipate the modernization andcolonization that would take place in Japan andChina. If this phase of globalization was able totake place, it was because of the technologicaladvancement of the West, which allowed it todefeat the Japanese, the Chinese, and otherAsian civilizations. Nature, the guarantee ofperpetual peace, didnt really lead us toperpetual peace but rather to wars and morewars. To appeal for a cosmopolitanism today, Ithink we must reread Kants cosmopolitanismaccording to the process of modernization andrevisit the question of nature and technologyanew. The arrival of modern technology in non-European countries in recent centuries has

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A diagram ofSu Songs(10201101)clock tower. Theoriginal designincluded anarmillary sphere,awaterwheel,an escapement mechanism, anda chain drive. Photo: WikimediaCommons.

created a transformation unthinkable toEuropean observers. The restoration ofindigenous natures itself has to first bequestioned, not because it doesnt exist butbecause it is situated in a new epoch and istransformed to the extent that there is hardly anyway to go back and restore it.27Lets review what has been said aboveregarding the ontological turn. Central to theanthropologists concept of nature andontology is cosmology, since such nature isdefined according to different ecologies ofrelations in which we observe differentconstellations of relations, e.g., the parentalrelation between females and vegetables, orbrotherhood between hunters and animals.These multi-ontologies are expressed as multi-natures; for example, Descolas four above-named ontologies correspond to differentcosmological views. I believe that it is verydifficult, if not impossible, to overcomemodernity without directly confronting thequestion of technology, which has becomeincreasingly urgent after the end of unilateralglobalization. Therefore, it is necessary toreformulate the question of cosmopolitics inrelation to cosmotechnics.

3. Cosmotechnics as CosmopoliticsI propose to go beyond the notion of cosmology;instead, it would be more productive to addresswhat I call cosmotechnics. Let me give you apreliminary definition of cosmotechnics: it is theunification of the cosmos and the moral throughtechnical activities, whether craft-making or art-making. There hasnt been one or two technics,but many cosmotechnics. What kind of morality,which and whose cosmos, and how to unite themvary from one culture to another according todifferent dynamics. I am convinced that in orderto confront the crisis that is before us namely,the Anthropocene, or the intrusion of Gaia(Latour and Stengers), or the entropocene(Stiegler), all presented as the inevitable futureof humanity it is necessary to reopen thequestion of technology, in order to envisage thebifurcation of technological futures byconceiving different cosmotechnics. I tried todemonstrate such a possibility in my recent bookThe Question Concerning Technology in China: AnEssay in Cosmotechnics. As one can gather fromthe title, it is an attempt to respond toHeideggers famous 1949 lecture The QuestionConcerning Technology. I propose that in orderto rethink the project of overcoming modernity,we must undo and redo the translations of

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techn, physis, and metaphysika (not as merelyindependent concepts but also concepts withinsystems); only by recognizing this difference canwe arrive at the possibility of a common task ofphilosophy.Why, then, do I think its necessary to turn tocosmotechnics? For a long time now we haveoperated with a very narrow in fact, far toonarrow concept of technics. By followingHeideggers essay, we can distinguish twonotions of technics. First, we have the Greeknotion of techn, which Heidegger developsthrough his reading of the ancient Greeks,notably the Pre-Socratics more precisely, thethree inceptual (anfngliche) thinkers,Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaximander.28 Inthe 1949 lecture, Heidegger proposes todistinguish the essence of Greek techn frommodern technology (moderne Technik).If the essence of techn is poiesis, orbringing forth (Hervorbringen), then moderntechnology, a product of European modernity, nolonger possesses the same essence as technbut is rather an enframing (Gestell) apparatus,in the sense that all beings become standingreserves (Bestand) for it. Heidegger doesnttotalize these two essences of technics, but nordoes he give space to other technics, as if thereis only a single homogenous Machenschaft afterthe Greek techn, one that is calculable,international, even planetary. It is astonishingthat in Heideggers so-called Black Notebooks(Schwarze Hefte) of which four volumes havebeen published so far we find this note: Ifcommunism in China should come to rule, onecan assume that only in this way will Chinabecome free for technology. What is thisprocess?29 Heidegger hints at two things here:first, that technology is international (notuniversal); and second, that the Chinese werecompletely unable to resist technology aftercommunism seized power in the country. Thisverdict anticipates technological globalization asa form of neocolonization that imposes itsrationality through instrumentality, like what weobserve in transhumanist, neoreactionarypolitics.My effort to go beyond Heideggersdiscourse on technology is largely based on twomotivations: 1) a desire to respond to theontological turn in anthropology, which aims totackle the problem of modernity by proposing anontological pluralism; and 2) a desire to updatethe insufficient discourse on technology that islargely associated with Heideggers critique oftechnology. I have proposed that we reopen thequestion of technics, to show that one mustconsider technics as a variety of cosmotechnicsinstead of either techn or modern technology. Inmy book, I used China as a testing ground for my

thesis and tried to reconstruct a lineage oftechnological thought in China. However, thistask is not limited to China, since the centralidea is that every non-European culture mustsystematize its own cosmotechnics and thehistory of such a cosmotechnics. Chinesecosmotechnical thought consists of a longhistory of intellectual discourse on the unity andrelation between Qi and Dao. The unification of Qiand Dao is also the unification of the moral andthe cosmic, since Chinese metaphysics isfundamentally a moral cosmology or a moralmetaphysics, as the New Confucian philosopherMou Zongsan has demonstrated. Mou suggeststhat if in Kant we find a metaphysics of themoral, it is at most a metaphysical exploration ofthe moral but not a moral metaphysics, since amoral metaphysics can only start with the moral.Mous demarcation between Chinese andWestern philosophy situates his conviction thatChinese philosophy recognizes and cultivatesthe intellectual intuition that Kant associatedwith knowing the noumenon, even as Kantdismissed the possibility that human beingscould possess such an intuition. For Mou, themoral arises out of the experience of the infinityof the cosmos, which necessitates infinitizationas the condition of possibility for Daseinsfinitude.30Dao is not a thing. It is not a concept. It isnot the diffrance. In the Cixi of YiZhuan (),Dao is simply said to be above forms, while Qi iswhat is below forms.31 We should notice herethat xin er shang xue (the study of what is aboveforms) is the word used to translatemetaphysics (one of the equivalences thatmust be undone). Qi is something that takesspace, as we can see from the character and alsoread in an etymological dictionary it has fourmouths or containers and in the middle there is adog guarding the utensils. There are multiplemeanings of Qi in different doctrines; forexample, in classic Confucianism there is Li Qi(), in which Qi is crucial for Li (a rite), which isnot merely a ceremony but rather a search forunification between the heavens and the human.For our purposes, it will suffice to simply say thatDao belongs to the noumenon according to theKantian distinction, while Qi belongs to thephenomenon. But it is possible to infinitize Qi soas to infinitize the self and enter into thenoumenon this is the question of art.In order to better understand what I meanby this, we can refer here to the story of thebutcher Pao Ding, as told in the Zhuangzi.However, we will have to remind ourselves thatthis is only an example from antiquity, and amuch larger historical view is necessary tocomprehend it.Pao Ding is excellent at butchering cows. He

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claims that the key to being a good butcherdoesnt lie in mastering certain skills, but ratherin comprehending the Dao. Replying to aquestion from Duke Wen Huei about the Dao ofbutchering cows, Pao Ding points out that havinga good knife is not necessarily enough; it is moreimportant to understand the Dao in the cow, sothat one does not use the blade to cut throughthe bones and tendons, but rather to passalongside them in order to enter into the gapsbetween them. Here, the literal meaning of Dao way or path meshes with itsmetaphysical sense:

What I love is Dao, which is much moresplendid than my skill. When I first began tocarve a bullock, I saw nothing but the wholebullock. Three years later, I no longer sawthe bullock as a whole but in parts. Now Iwork on it by intuition and do not look at itwith my eyes. My visual organs stopfunctioning while my intuition goes its ownway. In accordance with the principle ofheaven (nature), I cleave along the mainseams and thrust the knife into the bigcavities. Following the natural structure ofthe bullock, I never touch veins or tendons,much less the big bones!32

Hence, Pao Ding concludes that a good butcherdoesnt rely on the technical objects at hisdisposal, but rather on Dao, since Dao is morefundamental than Qi (the tool). Pao Ding addsthat a good butcher has to change his knife oncea year because he cuts through tendons, while abad butcher has to change his knife every monthbecause he cuts through bones. Pao Ding, on theother hand an excellent butcher has notchanged his knife in nineteen years, and it looksas if it has just been sharpened with awhetstone. Whenever Pao Ding encounters anydifficulty, he slows down the knife and gropes forthe right place to move further.Duke Wen Huei, who had posed thequestion, replies that having heard from PaoDing, now I know how to live; and indeed, thisstory is included in a section titled Master ofLiving. It is thus the question of living, ratherthan that of technics, that is at the center of thestory. If there is a concept of technics here, it isone that is detached from the technical object:although the technical object is not withoutimportance, one cannot seek the perfection oftechnics through the perfection of a tool or askill, since perfection can only be accomplishedby Dao. Pao Dings knife never cuts tendons orbones; instead, it seeks the void and enters itwith ease. In so doing, the knife accomplishesthe task of butchering the cow withoutendangering itself i.e., without becoming blunt

and needing to be replaced. It thus fully realizesitself as a knife.What I have said above is not sufficient tobe formulated into a program, since it is only anexplanation for the motivation behind the muchlarger project that I tried to initiate in TheQuestion Concerning Technology in China. Also,we must pay attention to the historicaldevelopment of the relationship between Qi andDao. Specifically, the search for unity between Qiand Dao has gone through different phases inChinese history in response to historical crises(the decline of the Zhou Dynasty, theproliferation of Buddhism, modernization, etc.);it was widely discussed after the Opium Wars ofthe mid-nineteenth century, but such aunification was not resolved due to a very limitedunderstanding of technology at the time and aneagerness to look for equivalences betweenChina and the West. I have attempted to rereadthe history of Chinese philosophy not only asintellectual history, but also through the lens ofthe Qi-Dao episteme, with the aim ofreconstructing a tradition of technologicalthought in China. As I have emphasizedelsewhere, this question is by no means only aChinese affair.33 Rather, every culture mustreflect on the question of cosmotechnics for anew cosmopolitics to come, since I believe thatto overcome modernity without falling back intowar and fascism, it is necessary to reappropriatemodern technology through the renewedframework of a cosmotechnics consisting ofdifferent epistemologies and epistemes.Therefore, my project is not one ofsubstantializing tradition, as in the case oftraditionalists like Ren Gunon or AleksandrDugin; it doesnt refuse modern technology, butrather looks into the possibility of differenttechnological futures. The Anthropocene is theplanetarization of standing reserves, andHeideggers critique of technology is moresignificant today than ever before. The unilateralglobalization that has come to an end is beingsucceeded by the competition of technologicalacceleration and the allures of war, technologicalsingularity, and transhumanist (pipe) dreams.The Anthropocene is a global axis of time andsynchronization that is sustained by this view oftechnological progress towards the singularity.To reopen the question of technology is to refusethis homogeneous technological future that ispresented to us as the only option.The author would like to thank Pieter Lemmens and KirillChepurin for their comments on a draft of this essay.

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Yuk Huistudied computer engineering, cultural theory,and philosophy at the University of Hong Kong andGoldsmiths College in London, with a focus on thephilosophy of technology. He is currently a researchassociate at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics ofDigital Media (ICAM) atLeuphana University ofLneburg, Germany. He coedited 30 Years after LesImmatriaux: Art, Science and Theory(Meson Press,2015)and is the author ofOn the Existence of DigitalObjects(University of Minnesota Press,2016) andTheQuestion Concerning Technology in China:An Essay inCosmotechnics(Urbanomic, 2016).

1On the autoimmune character ofthe 9/11 attacks, see GiovannaBorradori, Philosophy in a Timeof Terror: Dialogues with JrgenHabermas and Jacques Derrida(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2004); and ChalmersJohnson, Blowback: The Costsand Consequences of AmericanEmpire (New York: Holt, 2004).

2See Yuk Hui, On the UnhappyConsciousness ofNeoreactionaries, e-flux journal81 (April 2017) http://www.e-flux.com/journa l/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-c onsciousness-of-neoreactiona ries/.

3Peter Thiel, The StraussianMoment, in Studies in Violence,Mimesis, and Culture: Politicsand Apocalypse, ed. RobertHamerton-Kelly (East Lansing:Michigan State University Press,2007), 207. I also cited thispassage in my On the UnhappyConsciousness ofNeoreactionaries.

4See specifically MartinHeidegger, Der Satz vom Grund(Frankfurt am Main:Klostermann, 1997).

5See Rmi Brague, The Wisdom ofthe World: The HumanExperience of the Universe inWestern Thought (Chicago:University of Chicago Press,2003); and Alexandre Koyr,From the Closed World to theInfinite Universe (Baltimore:John Hopkins Press, 1957).

6On this point, see the work ofIsabelle Stengers, CosmopoliticsI and II (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 2010, 2011).

7Immanuel Kant, Idea for aUniversal History with aCosmopolitan Aim, in KantsIdea for a Universal History witha Cosmopolitan Aim: A CriticalGuide, eds. Amlie OksenbergRorty and James Schmidt(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2009), 11. (AK8: 18.)

8See Kants Idea for a UniversalHistory with a CosmopolitanAim (1784) and TowardPerpetual Peace: APhilosophical Sketch (1795),and in between, Critique ofJudgment (1790), a mainresource for Kants nonexistentpolitical philosophy, according toHannah Arendt. See her Lectureson Kants Political Philosophy(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1992).

9See Arendt, Lectures on KantsPolitical Philosophy; and EckartFrster, The Hidden Plan ofNature, in Kants Idea for aUniversal History with aCosmopolitan Aim: A CriticalGuide, 18799.

10Arendt, Lectures on KantsPolitical Philosophy, 25.

11Immanuel Kant, Critique ofJudgment, trans. James CreedMeredith, ed. Nicholas Walker(Oxford: Oxford University Press,2007), 64, 199.

12Cited by Arendt, Lectures onKants Political Philosophy, 53.

13Concretely, Kant here isinterested in the question oforganization, which finds itshighest potency in the organism.Kants conception here has to bedistinguished from Spinozism(pantheism), theism, andhylozoism, which Kant explicitlyrejects in 72 of the Critique ofJudgment.

14Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPractical Reason, trans. LewisWhite Beck (New York:Macmillan, 1993), 169.

15Howard Caygill, Soul andCosmos in Kant: A Commentaryon Two Things Fill the Mind ,in Cosmopolitics and theEmergence of a Future, eds.Diane Morgan and Gary Banham(New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2007), 21334, 215. Caygilltraces the relation between thecosmos and the moral in Kantsanalogy (e.g., beauty as a symbolof the moral) to the influence ofBrown and Hallers theory ofirritability on Kants OpusPostumum, affirming theorganicist structure found inboth.

16Brague, Wisdom of the World,18889.

17Immanuel Kant, UniversalNatural History and the Theory ofthe Heavens, ed. and trans. S.Jaki (Edinburgh: ScottishAcademic Press, 1981), 164.Cited by Diana Morgan,Introduction: Parts and Wholes Kant, Communications,Communities andCosmopolitics, in Cosmopoliticsand the Emergence of a Future,8.

18Kant, Critique of PracticalReason, 166. Cited by Morgan,Introduction: Parts andWholes, 8.

19Arendt, Lectures on KantsPolitical Philosophy, 7072.

20Immanuel Kant, TowardPerpetual Peace and OtherWritings on Politics, Peace, andHistory, ed. Pauline Kleingeld,trans. David L. Colclasure (NewHaven: Yale University Press,2006), 88. (AK 8: 364.)

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I will not be able to commenthere on these differentapproaches to cosmopolitanism,but for a overview, see AngelaTaraborrelli, ContemporaryCosmopolitanism, trans. IanMcGilvray (London: Bloomsbury,2015).

22For this intellectual trajectory,see Martin Holbraad and MortenAxel Pedersen, The OntologicalTurn An AnthropologicalExposition (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2017).

23Philippe Descola, Beyond Natureand Culture (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 2003), 122.

24Yuk Hui, The QuestionConcerning Technology in China:An Essay in Cosmotechnics(Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2016),28.

25Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace,83. (AK 8: 359.)

26Ibid.

27On this question we will have toconfront Viveiros de Castroelsewhere, since for himAmerindian perspectivism isanything but obsolete.

28In order to better understandHeideggers concept of techn,we should go back to his earlierwritings. In the 1936Introduction to Metaphysics,Heidegger attempts to reconcileParmenides the philosopher ofbeing with Heraclitus thephilosopher of becomingthrough an interpretation of averse from Sophocless Antigone.The reflection centers on thedescription of human Dasein asto deinataton, the uncanniest ofthe uncanny (das Unheimlichstedes Unheimlichen). According toHeidegger, the uncanny hastwo senses. In one sense, itrefers to a violence(Gewaltttigkeit) associated withtechn; here, techn is neitherart nor technics in the modernsense, but knowing a form ofknowing that can set Being towork in beings. In a secondsense, the uncanny refers tooverwhelming (berwaltigend)powers, such as those of the seaand the earth. Thisoverwhelming is manifested inthe word dik, which isconventionally translated asjustice (Gerechtigkeit),although Heidegger translates itas fittingness (Fug). For adetailed analysis, see Hui, TheQuestion Concerning Technologyin China, 8, 6979.

29Martin Heidegger, AnmerkungenI-V (Schwarze Hefte 194248),ed. Peter Trawny (Frankfurt amMain: Klostermann, 2015), 441.German original: Wenn derKommunismus in china an die

Herrschaft kommen sollte, stehtzu vermuten, da erst aufdiesem Wege china fr dieTechnik frei wird. Was liegt indiesem Vorgang?

30Mou Zongsan, Collected Works21: Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself () (Taipei: StudentBooks Co., 1975), 2030.

31

32Zhuangzi (bilingual edition)(Hunan: Hunan PeoplesPublishing House, 2004), 445.Translation modified.

33Yuk Hui, For a Philosophy ofTechnology in China: GeertLovink Interviews Yuk Hui,Parrhesia 27 (2017): 4863http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia27/Parrhesia27_Hui.pdf.

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