Many scholars, and nearly all tech related advertising, assume a chirpily upbeat, focus on technology and how it is changing the world, transforming us: the transhuman is the human plus (whatever) technological enhancement.
As a specific, Stefan Sorger is one scholars who raises the issue of Nietzsche and evolution, an issue that is itself far from straightforward (most readings of Nietzsche and evolution depend upon a fairly limited understanding of Darwin and, not less, a fairly limited understanding of Nietzsche’s own understanding of Darwin).
We can hardly raise all the relevant questions that remain to be explored on the (very, very) complicated theme of Nietzsche and Darwin, but the key issue seems to be the (may we say mildly Lamarkian?) parallel Sorgner constructs between education and genetic enhancement. Nevertheless, and his argument depends on this, education and genetic enhancement are “structurally analogous procedures.”
This is worth noting as arguments in favor of technogically sophisticated enhancements in a many arenas similarly depend upon such analogies.[1]
But what is “education”?
Shall we understand this in the traditional sense of Bildung or as what counts for the French as formation and where we may speak of either in terms of what Nietzsche also called getting oneself a culture, that is: personal and intellectual cultivation?
Or, and now apart from these traditional meanings, will an “education” correspond to nothing more than the business (emphasis on the economic or cost-based affair) of acquiring and conferring, i.e., obtaining and selling degrees and certificates — all like such modules, courses, degrees, parallel to many add-ons and upgrades, like iPhone or android apps and the enormous market that there is for cell-phone accessories which same pale in comparison to the market for iPad accessories, Apple and otherwise?
And yet, it may be that this surface parallel calls for a bit more reflection, especially with regard to Nietzsche who himself reflected quite a bit on educational institutions as well as the idea of education—even if we begin with his very paradoxical, very provocative claim: “There are no educators” [Es gibt keine Erzieher] (HH II, The Wanderer and his Shadow § 267).
What is certain is that many of us even within the academy do tend to suppose that education is just and only the acquisition of such degrees, especially at the graduate but also at the undergraduate level, and especially as evident in the current debate in England and mainland Europe on the virtues of the privatization of the university—a debate which manages to overlook any review of the actual practice of the same as this can be found in the US.
What is certain is that many of us even within the academy do tend to suppose that education is just and only the acquisition of such degrees, especially at the graduate but also at the undergraduate level, and especially as evident in the current debate in England and mainland Europe on the virtues of the privatization of the university—a debate which manages to overlook any review of the actual practice of the same as this can be found in the US.
European advocates focus on Princeton, or Yale, or Harvard, somehow managing to piss paying attention to the hundreds of thousands of tuition-driven, for-pay or profit institutions as these abound at every level of post-secondary education in the United States. As for me, I’d compare CUNY or SUNY or the University of California system to private schools, even top tier schools, any day—if not of course when it comes to prestige as that is a market and class affair, but indeed and when it comes to education. Nor would I be the only one. The more critical point however is indeed that European fantasies about private schools tend to suppose that all private schools work like top tier schools. For a discussion, see Babich, “Educationand Exemplars: Learning to Doubt the Overman” (but I also recommend the other contributions in) Paul Fairfield, ed., Education,Dialogue and Hermeneutics (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 125-149.
No need for factual feedback to sully our models, as Orrin Pilkey, a very practical or applied or hands-on coastal scientist has argued with stunning consequentiality when it comes to beach erosion and the public costs of “maintaining” the same and with very specific meteorological applicability to the debates on global warming.
See Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, Useless Arithmetic:Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) as well as Pilkey’s new Global Climate Change: A Primer. And see his very practical, timely editorial: “The road ahead on the Outer Banks,” Newsobserver.com, Sat., Oct 08, 2011. I discuss Pilkey’s analysis of modeling further in Babich, “Towards a Critical Philosophyof Science: Continental Beginnings and Bugbears, Whigs and Waterbears,” International Journal of the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 24, No. 4 (December 2010): 343-391.
I.e., no empiricism, please: we’re idealists cum speculative realists.
[1] Sorgner, “Beyond Humanism: Reflections on Trans- and Posthumanism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 21, Issue 2 (October 2010):1-19. Here cited from: http://jetpress.org/v21/sorgner.htm
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