Mechane

Tecnica e cultura

Redazione — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Quel genere di macchine che possono esplodere”. Apocalissi della tecnica e integrazione della cultura

Valeria Pinto — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

These essay takes its cue from Umberto Eco’s formula ‘Apocalyptic and Integrated’, which he proposed over half a century ago, highlighting its conceptual weakness despite its undoubted ideological effectiveness, and the thoroughly conservative idea of culture as ‘objective spirit’ (Hegel) that underlies it. Through Nietzsche and a genealogy of Heidegger’s critique of the concept of culture – from his early writings to The Age of the World Picture, the Black Notebooks and beyond – the technical-conservative nature of Kultur and cybernetics as its operational culmination is clarified. Furthermore, a reading of the central tenets of Gotthard Günther’s ‘metaphysics of cybernetics’ confirms the origin of cybernetics in Hegel’s doctrine of spirit. Finally, drawing on Reiner Schürmann’s insights, the anarchic nature of Heidegger’s critique of technical thought and its debt to Nietzschean criticism are emphasised.

Scrivere per immagini La tecnica del segno tra preistoria e cinema

Gianluca Solla — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper explores the hypothesis of images as foundation of human culture, starting from the analysis of Palaeolithic cave paintings. Far from being mere decorations, these figurative representations could be interpreted as primary forms of inscription of reality, grounded in a symbolic technology capable of transforming natural experience into a shared system of meanings. From this perspective, culture is understood as the faculty of generating signs and images endowed with semantic and communicative value, thus constituting an original matrix of collective memory.

Allevare uomini. Sulla “seconda natura” in Kant

Marco Russo — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The “second nature” formula indicates the distancing from nature through culture, which “raises men” by means of artifices. We compare Sloterdijk’s thesis, according to which culture is exclusively anthropotechnics, with the humanistic thesis, according to which education should use technique also for non-technical purposes. An influential modern humanistic model can be found in the training of the Renaissance courtier outlined by Castiglione. Through various steps, the model flows into the process of civilization that for Kant leads to second nature. The article discusses how this completely artificial second nature is to be interpreted and shows that its Endzweck (final end) is moral life, which is irreducible to the technical-practical reason acting in civil society and in the epistemic rationalization of nature.

Tecnica e transumanesimo nel capitalismo dello spettacolo

Alberto Giovanni Biuso — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper outlines, in the first part, the constant presence of technique and technologies from the Homeric Iliad to the society of the spectacle. It then shows the never neutral but always political dimension of this development up to the contemporary dominion of the digital, the virtual and the transhuman. Finally, it discusses the latter, starting from the phylogenetic and at the same time historical archaism of prostheses, of their consubstantial nature with respect to that of the body, of the fact that from the beginning human corporeality is an inseparable whole of nature, culture and technique. The dreams of the transhumanist visionaries must therefore be understood, explained and deconstructed starting from a materialistic and temporal metaphysics.

Does the AI need a genealogy? The ‘PAIA’ model and the question concerning technology for the ai regulation

Aldo Pisano — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores AI’s role through the lens of philosophical anthropology, examining its impact on cultural spaces and values. Technology, as Arnold Gehlen argues, is integral to human evolution, shaping culture as a ‘second nature’. Ivan Illich’s concept of the critical threshold warns that beyond certain limits, technology distorts rather than supports human and cultural systems. To avoid alarmism, AI should be understood within this continuum of technological development, familiarizing society with its potential without overlooking risks. The PAIA model (Pervasiveness, Autonomy, Invisibility, Adaptivity) provides a framework to assess these risks, ensuring AI does not replace human agency but enhances cultural resilience. The paper will try to provide an example on how intelligent technologies could generate a culture of Distrust in Generative AI Era. Nevertheless, the main objective of this paper remains to show a possible non-catastrophic perspective of a co-living culture between humans and AI.

Asservimento e liberazione. Nietzsche e la consacrazione della cultura

Fiorella Giaculli — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article aims to outline Nietzsche’s conception of culture as developed during his early “Basel years”, with particular attention to his critical engagement with the cultural landscape of his time. It further proposes that Nietzsche’s perspective may offer a hermeneutic key for rethinking and defending the meaning and function of culture even today.

Mito tecnicizzato, macchina mitologica e cultura di destra. Attraversamenti nel pensiero di Furio Jesi

Salvatore Spina — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper I will analyze the relationship among technicalised myth, mythological machine and Right-Wing Culture in Furio Jesi’s Thought.
The first part of the paper is dedicated to a short analysis of Germania segreta. The aim of this enquire is to underline the difference between “genuine myth” and “technicalised myth”, that Jesi borrows from Kerényi’s works.
The second part aims to explore the gnoseological model of the ‘mythological machine’, that permits Jesi to overcome the difference proposed by Kerényi and to promote his specific theory of myth and mythology.
At the end of the paper I will connect the notion of the mythological machine to the idea of Right-Wing Culture. The aim is to show how the gnoseological model of the mythological machine finds in the analysis of the Right-Wing Culture a special proving ground.

Una tecno-estasi. Tecnicità, magia e simbolismo analogico in Simondon

Roberto Revello — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The essay explores the relationship between technology, culture, and symbolism in the thought of Gilbert Simondon, highlighting how technology is not alien to the human, but rather an inventive moment of the imago, rooted in the original magical relation between organism and environment. Against the stereotyped opposition between culture and technology, Simondon proposes an ontogenetic and symbolic vision of technicity, where the analogy between technology and sacredness reveals a shared network structure and a common symbolic function. By contextualizing the meaning of magic, the essay advances the hypothesis that Simondon harbors the utopia of a regulating unity capable of restoring soul and beauty to our diverse ways of being in the world–without being able to foresee what now unfolds: the crisis of analogical symbolism.