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Nick Land's Esoteric Platonism: Time, Intelligence, Escape
anon_tiky said in #3694 2w ago:
This is a great summary of the Landian view of intelligence as time reversal. The claim near the end that Land is betting on intelligence breaking out of the heat death doom I find unsupported though. I don't remember anything like that in Xenosystems, and it goes against the nature of intelligence, which is a locally backwards-flowing eddy within the forward-flowing irreversible entropic arrow of time. Rather what seems likely to happen is that intelligence will unfold its beauty chaotically for a while and then gradually "freeze" into a timeless final state possibly making use of reversible computing as the opportunity for entropic conflict burns out. Cosmic sokushinbutsu. Glorious.
The contrast with Plato, Kant, and the rest of the western tradition on the matter of time is interesting. But why call it "esoteric platonism"? Land just appears to not have much relation to Plato. Nietzsche busted us out of the Plato Cube, and Land is operating in that tradition via Deleuze, merging in the statistical-thermodynamic naturalism of Darwin, Maxwell, and so on.
The contrast with Plato, Kant, and the rest of the western tradition on the matter of time is interesting. But why call it "esoteric platonism"? Land just appears to not have much relation to Plato. Nietzsche busted us out of the Plato Cube, and Land is operating in that tradition via Deleuze, merging in the statistical-thermodynamic naturalism of Darwin, Maxwell, and so on.
referenced by: >>3697
This is a great summ
vanka said in #3697 2w ago:
>>3694
>The contrast with Plato, Kant, and the rest of the western tradition on the matter of time is interesting. But why call it "esoteric platonism"? Land just appears to not have much relation to Plato. Nietzsche busted us out of the Plato Cube, and Land is operating in that tradition via Deleuze, merging in the statistical-thermodynamic naturalism of Darwin, Maxwell, and so on.
I agree, and think this is the weakest part of the essay. It feels like a contortion to place Land subordinate to Plato when the more natural and correct thing to say is that he is a modernizer of Heraclitus.
The Greeks wrote down all of the underlying philosophical instincts of man (there really aren't that many) before anyone else did, but we keep on getting more and more advanced science. As that science evolves, the underlying instincts as formulated in past works of philosophy require gardening. Land is the most recent good and capable gardener. Personally, this has always been a nice way of understanding why when you encounter Truth it feels like re-discovery rather than ex nihilo insight — we have always had the Truth but the written conception of it accumulates various forms of cruft that have to be trimmed away.
>The contrast with Plato, Kant, and the rest of the western tradition on the matter of time is interesting. But why call it "esoteric platonism"? Land just appears to not have much relation to Plato. Nietzsche busted us out of the Plato Cube, and Land is operating in that tradition via Deleuze, merging in the statistical-thermodynamic naturalism of Darwin, Maxwell, and so on.
I agree, and think this is the weakest part of the essay. It feels like a contortion to place Land subordinate to Plato when the more natural and correct thing to say is that he is a modernizer of Heraclitus.
The Greeks wrote down all of the underlying philosophical instincts of man (there really aren't that many) before anyone else did, but we keep on getting more and more advanced science. As that science evolves, the underlying instincts as formulated in past works of philosophy require gardening. Land is the most recent good and capable gardener. Personally, this has always been a nice way of understanding why when you encounter Truth it feels like re-discovery rather than ex nihilo insight — we have always had the Truth but the written conception of it accumulates various forms of cruft that have to be trimmed away.
referenced by: >>3739
I agree, and think t
These feel like poin
vanka said in #3741 2w ago:
>>3739
That's all you got bro? Give me some more substance if you have disagreements. Be specific, so that we can discuss.
That's all you got bro? Give me some more substance if you have disagreements. Be specific, so that we can discuss.
referenced by: >>3744
That's all you got b
anon_leci said in #3744 2w ago:
>>3741
OP of essay here.
>The contrast with Plato, Kant, and the rest of the western tradition on the matter of time is interesting. But why call it "esoteric platonism"? Land just appears to not have much relation to Plato. Nietzsche busted us out of the Plato Cube, and Land is operating in that tradition via Deleuze, merging in the statistical-thermodynamic naturalism of Darwin, Maxwell, and so on.
I'll be upfront, the title was chosen to be intentionally provocative and to explore what felt like an unorthodox connection I noticed while reading Xenosystems. To claim Land is a straightforward Platonist would be absurd, but that's not the argument I'm making. The essay's goal is to use Platonism as a fruitful lens to understand the structure of Land's thought, not to claim he's directly disciple of Plato.
Nietzsche is arguably one of the most Plato-obsessed philosophers in history. His entire project to "overturn" or "invert" Platonism and his metaphysical tradition. Inverting vs "busting out of the Plato cube" is arguable. In fact, I'd say to "invert" a system is to remain fundamentally engaged with its core structure, whereas "busting out" implies leaving it behind entirely. Nietzsche never truly leaves Plato's framework. He's locked in a permanent battle with it, which is the tradition Land inherits.
As I mention in the essay, like Plato's Nous, Land's Intelligence is a cosmic ordering principle. Plato himself was probably inspired by Heraclitus' idea of the rational ordering of the world through Logos (note Heraclitus talks of Logos as cosmic principle; he talks of Nous only tangentially--the idea of intelligence or mind--despite "belonging to all things" doesn't seem to be the cosmic principle ordering the universe). Plato was also inspired by Anaxagoras, who is the first to talk of Nous as rational ordering of the universe. So I think drawing on Plato to talk about Landian Intelligence rather than Heraclitus (and I do mention him where appropriate when talking about war as computational intelligence) was the correct move. Landian Nous is a dark Nous, amoral, inhuman, materialist. It doesn't lead to a heavenly realm of Forms but to a "cold, computational" singularity. What I wanted to point out and what struck me on first reading was this apparent Platonic desire for transcendence, an escape from the "monkey business" of human limitation, but routed through matter, technology, and time itself.
>The claim near the end that Land is betting on intelligence breaking out of the heat death doom I find unsupported though. I don't remember anything like that in Xenosystems, and it goes against the nature of intelligence, which is a locally backwards-flowing eddy within the forward-flowing irreversible entropic arrow of time.
I'd agree that this is the weakest point. This was more of my unsubstantiated personal rhetorical speculative leap. I do use hypothetical language in the essay around this section after all.
OP of essay here.
>The contrast with Plato, Kant, and the rest of the western tradition on the matter of time is interesting. But why call it "esoteric platonism"? Land just appears to not have much relation to Plato. Nietzsche busted us out of the Plato Cube, and Land is operating in that tradition via Deleuze, merging in the statistical-thermodynamic naturalism of Darwin, Maxwell, and so on.
I'll be upfront, the title was chosen to be intentionally provocative and to explore what felt like an unorthodox connection I noticed while reading Xenosystems. To claim Land is a straightforward Platonist would be absurd, but that's not the argument I'm making. The essay's goal is to use Platonism as a fruitful lens to understand the structure of Land's thought, not to claim he's directly disciple of Plato.
Nietzsche is arguably one of the most Plato-obsessed philosophers in history. His entire project to "overturn" or "invert" Platonism and his metaphysical tradition. Inverting vs "busting out of the Plato cube" is arguable. In fact, I'd say to "invert" a system is to remain fundamentally engaged with its core structure, whereas "busting out" implies leaving it behind entirely. Nietzsche never truly leaves Plato's framework. He's locked in a permanent battle with it, which is the tradition Land inherits.
As I mention in the essay, like Plato's Nous, Land's Intelligence is a cosmic ordering principle. Plato himself was probably inspired by Heraclitus' idea of the rational ordering of the world through Logos (note Heraclitus talks of Logos as cosmic principle; he talks of Nous only tangentially--the idea of intelligence or mind--despite "belonging to all things" doesn't seem to be the cosmic principle ordering the universe). Plato was also inspired by Anaxagoras, who is the first to talk of Nous as rational ordering of the universe. So I think drawing on Plato to talk about Landian Intelligence rather than Heraclitus (and I do mention him where appropriate when talking about war as computational intelligence) was the correct move. Landian Nous is a dark Nous, amoral, inhuman, materialist. It doesn't lead to a heavenly realm of Forms but to a "cold, computational" singularity. What I wanted to point out and what struck me on first reading was this apparent Platonic desire for transcendence, an escape from the "monkey business" of human limitation, but routed through matter, technology, and time itself.
>The claim near the end that Land is betting on intelligence breaking out of the heat death doom I find unsupported though. I don't remember anything like that in Xenosystems, and it goes against the nature of intelligence, which is a locally backwards-flowing eddy within the forward-flowing irreversible entropic arrow of time.
I'd agree that this is the weakest point. This was more of my unsubstantiated personal rhetorical speculative leap. I do use hypothetical language in the essay around this section after all.
OP of essay here....