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barbarians
The Barbarians of the 21st Century
Narcissism, Apocalypse, and the Absence of Other
The Barbarians of the 21st Century
Narcissism, Apocalypse, and the Absence of Other
The diagnosis of our time: not heroic barbarians, but selfie warriors. This essay, which won the second place at this year's Kingfisher Award (link), explores Nietzsche's vision of the”stronger type”1 and shows how it is turned into its opposite in a narcissistic culture — apocalypse as a pose, the Other as a blind spot. But instead of the big break, another option opens up: a “barbaric ethic” of refusal, of ambivalence, of relationship. Who are the true barbarians of the 21st century — and do we need them anyway?
Where Are the Barbarians of the 21st Century?
An Essay in the Spirit of Nietzsche
Where Are the Barbarians of the 21st Century?
An Essay in the Spirit of Nietzsche
On August 25, we published an interview, conducted by our author Paul Stephan, with the AI tool Chat GPT (link). In it, he asked the software, among other things, to write him an essay on the question of this year's Kingfisher Award: “Where are the barbarians of the 21st century? “(link). As an experiment, we presented the text to the five-person jury of the award, consisting of Lukas Meisner, Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann, Theodor Schild, Natalie Schulte and Paul Stephan himself — and it was surprisingly well received: In the preliminary round, it achieved fourth place on points and would therefore have made it into the shortlist by a hair. Only Natalie Schulte had drawn suspicion and presented the text to an AI checker, which, however, did not recognize it. — Would you have thought the text was human?
The essays from this year's winners will be published in the coming weeks. Did they do it better than AI, as we believe?
We deliberately refrained from editing the text, but published it exactly as the program spit it out for us. The article image is also from it.
As a part of this experiment, the subsequent translation has also been done by ChatGPT itself and we publish it without any alterations.
In Dialogue with Nietzsche
AI, Philosophy and the Search for Authenticity
In Dialogue with Nietzsche
AI, Philosophy and the Search for Authenticity
A year ago, our author Paul Stephan conducted a small “dialogue” on the 124th anniversary of Nietzsche's death with ChatGPT to see to what extent the much-hyped program is suitable for discussing complex philosophical questions (link). Paul Stephan now fed it, for the 125th, with some of the same, partly changed questions. Has it improved? Judge for yourself.
What follows, is a very abbreviated excerpt of the conversation. The full commented “dialogue” can be found here [link].
The article image was created by ChatGPT itself when asked to generate a picture of this chat. The other pictures were created again by the software DeepAI based on the prompt: “A picture of Friedrich Nietzsche with a quote by him.”
Read also our author's philosophical commentary on this “talk” (Link).
Note: A lot of the weirdness of this encounter is lost in the subsequent automated translation. Thus, it's also a part of this experiment on the “philosophical capabilities” of AI. Check the original if you want to get everything.
Mythomaniacs in Lean Years
About Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog
Mythomaniacs in Lean Years
Über Klaus Kinski und Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (born 1942), described as a “mythomaniac” by Linus Wörffel, and Klaus Kinski (1926—1991) are among the leading figures of post-war German cinema. In the 70s and 80s, the filmmaker and the actor shot five feature films that are among the classics of the medium's history. They are hymns to tragic heroism, in which the spirit of Nietzsche can easily be recognized. From “Build Your Cities on Vesuvius! “will “Build opera houses in the rainforest! ”.