Shows
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishWhat does it mean to be literate?Following our presentation of the »Labyrinth of Signs,« parts I and II, we now provide a deeply reflective yet light-hearted post-mortem discussion between us to help you understand what it means to be literate. Martin’s concept of Psychotope becomes more understandable as our conversation progresses; it becomes clear how essential the Alphabet is in enabling us to be literate in our thinking, writing, and discourses, revealing that we are essentially working with an outsourced, historical unconscious in how it shapes us through its use. This is evident from the fact that the origin of Symbolic Logic remains a gapi...2025-06-2946 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 12Examining the question of how the Universal Machine represents an epistemic force - this chapter explores how a Machine Culture’s socioplastic nature inevitably subjects its societies to a certain order.Long before Columbus sets off to cross the Atlantic, the European Middle Ages is already the New World that it will seek and find in America.Speaker: Hopkins StanleySound-Design: Martin BurckhardtMusic: Hopkins Stanley & Martin BurckhardtFrom: The Philosophy of the Machine, translated by Hopkins Stanley and Martin Burckhardt. (to be published)To listen to pr...2024-03-0355 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 11If we remember that the machina mundi, like the Deus ex Machina, flies in from above, it's unsurprising that the scene of the Machine Discourse shifts to where the Politics of Heaven are fought over. It's the emerging Christianity that takes up the Machine question - albeit in a way that seems like a palimpsest, a parchment that has been scraped over and over again: constantly rewritten.This chapter deals with the paradox of the Christian world (which is trying to free itself from ancient materialism) becoming the catalyst of the Machine World - through the detour...2023-12-2333 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 10The chapter deals with the birth of metaphysics and eternal damnation, the emergence of that peculiar attitude of mind called Gnosis in the science of religion. That the Earth becomes transformed into a vale of tears is, in this sense, a dialectical necessity. That culture becomes the angel maker.If the pure sign represents the appearance of eternity, the question arises why we still concern ourselves with the decrepitude of the earthly. Why not live eternally right away?Speaker: Hopkins StanleySound-Design: Martin BurckhardtMusic: Hopkins Stanley & Martin Burckhardt2023-08-0839 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 9The idea of another world arises with the pure, animate signs: Pure spirit, eternity, Platonic bodies. In contrast, the real world is a cave, an underworld realm of shadows, in which illusory existences see only reflections of their destiny: the reflection of the true, the good, and the beautiful.The chapter tells of philosophy's birth - and of how thinking thus begins to run in circles: That which philosophy considers as being or essence is the art of running in the circle of the universal machine. En kyklos paidein. But as we know, still every...2023-07-0452 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 8The chapter deals with the birth of Pythagorean mathematics - or, more precisely, the way with which mathematicians fall into the delirium of Infinity.Carnival. In that old-fashioned sense, every mathematical calculus has a strange carnivalesque side because you extract the flesh from life. Just as the tones of the music are abstracted from the body of sound, the formula dissolves an experience from reality, imposing on it a system of rules in which the highest is at the bottom, the lowest is at the top.Speaker: Hopkins StanleySound-Design: Martin...2023-05-1631 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 7The chapter tells of how the Machine, as socioplasty, inscribes itself on antiquity - how it becomes an ideal of personality and, as imprinted freedom, ultimately determines social relations.From then on, sacrifices were no longer made to the gods but to the Polis. It is no coincidence that taxation is the only area in which we still talk about having to make sacrifices today.Speaker: Hopkins StanleySound-Design: Martin BurckhardtMusic: Hopkins Stanley & Martin BurckhardtFrom: The Philosophy of the Machine, translated by Hopkins Stanley and Martin Burckhardt...2023-04-0543 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 6The sixth chapter tells how the phallic sign of the bull deity turns into an alphabetic type. But where does this story begin? There, where the god in bull form abducts Europa to Crete? Or in the labyrinth of Daedalus, where the Alpha-beast and mythical figure awaits its extinction?With the Alphabet, the twilight of the gods begins…we do not meet the riddle of creation here, but rather a nature that is spun into the type wheel of an already given understanding of the world.Speaker: Hopkins StanleySound-Design: Martin Burckhardt...2023-03-1531 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 5The fifth chapter deals with the paradox that the art of memory (ars memoria) is joined by the art of forgetting (ars oblivionis) - which may explain why the beginnings of Western culture are obscure or, as the case may be, declared as “the Greek miracle.”The realization that the alphabetic sign isn’t only what it notates but also what it makes us forget.From: The Philosophy of the Machine, translated by Hopkins Stanley and Martin Burckhardt. (to be published)To listen to previous chapters:Philosophy of the Machine 4Phil...2023-02-1431 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 4This chapter tells of the origin of the god Zeus, who was originally Zeus metallon, a metallurgical godhead reflecting the social practices of mining and metal extraction. Underpinning Jacques Lacan's beautiful remark: the gods are from the field of the real.Vertigo of the Proteus. Swindle of Art. That behind every realization, a universe of discarded possibilities opens up: all the possible worlds that have not been realized.From: The Philosophy of the Machine, translated by Hopkins Stanley and Martin Burckhardt. (to be published)To listen to previous chapters:Philosophy of...2023-01-1829 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 3This chapter goes back to the beginning of the machine concept, or more precisely: it makes clear that the Greek deus ex machina is based on an even older understanding of the machine, deeply interwoven with magical ideas.Could it be in the stage production of the godhead that the numinous passes over to the Machine? And the other way around: Is it possible that the godhead originates from the Machine? But then the godhead would be a product of the Machine. Basically, both are absurdities: the deified Machine, the reified god.To...2022-12-1826 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 2This chapter continues uncovering the obscurations of what a Machine is by examining the Phenomenology of what it is or isn’t. What lies behind and beyond the phenomena of its skeuomorphic medially of a technological system?The closer you get to the Machine, the stranger it looks back. Speaking of a system of interacting elements functioning great than their sum is simply a tautology that leaves the question unanswered.From: The Philosophy of the Machine, translated by Hopkins Stanley and Martin Burckhardt. (to be published)To listen to the previous ch...2022-12-0335 min
Ex nihilo - Podcast EnglishPhilosophy of the Machine 1Martin Burckhardts Philosophy of the Machine, Introdction. Translation & Music: Hopkins Stanley Get full access to Ex nihilo - Martin Burckhardt at martinburckhardt.substack.com/subscribe2022-11-1729 min