A HERMENEUTICAL ONTOLOGY OF CYBERSPACE Cristian Pralea A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2010 Committee: Rekha Mirchandani, Advisor Lubomir S. Popov Graduate Faculty Representative Donald McQuarie Ellen Berry ii ABSTRACT Rekha Mirchandani, Advisor In this study I build a hermeneutical ontology of cyberspace. In particular I interpret the conditions underlying existence in this virtual space that has been created by interacting communication machines, or what we have come to know as the World Wide Web. My argument is that there is a specific existence associated with this phenomenon and my aim is to frame and follow an inquiry upon its being. Ultimately, the “digital experience” is the end result of Modern Western cultural thought and therefore one of the privileged spaces for understanding Western culture. My approach is hermeneutical although I associate hermeneutics with ontology in a manner similar to that of Gianni Vattimo. Vattimo argues that any ontology at the end of metaphysics has to be hermeneutical. Therefore we are dealing with an “ontology of decline,” an inquiry into a declension of being, and thus realized along lines of intellectual genealogies. In this dissertation, I explore four major themes. First, we have the idea of cyberspace as a privileged ground for investigating Modernity. Second, is the idea of hermeneutics as a koiné of our times, thus an appropriate approach for this investigation. Third, I argue for the impossibility of separating the digital from the human, meaning that there is a general digital human experience which we can unearth by digging through cyberspace. The fourth theme, which appears towards the end, is the idea of an intimate connection between cyberspace, Modernity, and a democratic mindset understood in an ontological rather than political way. Dialogue and consensus, these essential characteristics of democracy, will reveal themselves essentially subverting the violent metaphysical categories through their cyber iii interplay. It is a glimpse of a feature of our times occasioned by this inquiry into the being of cyberspace. It may also be an open door that this study would offer, towards a different rewriting of Modernity. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to my committee, Rekha Mirchandani, Ellen Berry, Donald McQuarie, and Lubomir Popov, for their attitude and support regarding this project. Without their courage and without their trust in my abilities this study would have not been written. I would like to thank the American Culture Studies program at Bowling Green State University for providing me with an intellectual home throughout these years. In addition I extend my warmest thanks to all my friends in and outside Bowling Green. Our conversations were oftentimes of a tremendous help for the writing of this document. Your encouragements alone have kept me going. Last, but definitely not least, I thank my parents for their truly endless support, and for the continuous waves of warmth they have digitally sent across the “seven seas and seven countries.” v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 UNIT ONE …………. .......................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1: THE MODERN PROJECT ............................................................................ 7 The Idea of Progress .................................................................................................. 8 The Story of the Subject……………………………………………………………. 17 Being at Dusk………………………………………………………………………. 30 The Meanings of Abendland………………………………………………………... 39 CHAPTER 2: APPROACHING A QUESTION CONCERNING CYBERSPACE ............. 48 UNIT TWO ……....... ........................................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER 3: ELECTRIC LANGUAGES AND VIRTUAL REALISMS ........................... 73 CHAPTER 4: THE HERMENEUTICAL KOINÉ ................................................................ 100 UNIT THREE………........................................................................................................... 113 CHAPTER 5: A DIGITAL CAST OF BEING ...................................................................... 114 CHAPTER 6: THE FICTION OF REALITY ....................................................................... 133 CHAPTER 7: THE INHUMAN CYBERSPACE ................................................................. 142 In/human De/reconstruction ....................................................................................... 142 The Unnamed Difference of Possible Genealogies ................................................... 150 EPILOGUE: A FEATURE OF OUR TIMES ....................................................................... 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 173 1 INTRODUCTION In this study I build a hermeneutical ontology of cyberspace. In particular I interpret the conditions underlying existence in this virtual space that has been created by interacting communication machines, or what we have come to know as the World Wide Web. I argue that there is a specific experience associated with this phenomenon and my aim is to frame and follow an inquiry upon the essence1 of this experience. As with any such inquiry, the ultimate goal of this endeavor is to position this particular experience within the larger field of cultural activities. The “digital experience” will show itself to be the end result of Modern Western cultural thought and therefore one of the privileged spaces opening up grounds for understanding the cultural mode of the West. Being a modern progenitor, the “digital experience” points to a late modern or terminal type of rationality of which it is only a part. In a keynote address to a 2008 conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Rafael Capurro,2 mirroring Gadamer’s comment on the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo’s work,3 argued that hermeneutics, as the “philosophic theory dealing with issues of interpretation and communication,” thus being an essential tool for understanding the general human existence, needs to become “digital” or not be at all. Because of the global digital network affecting the access to knowledge, because of the digitization of the production and maintenance of 1. As the late modern framework apparent in the case of this project would suggest, I am working here with an understanding of the term “essence” along Heideggerian lines: it is about his Wesen concept, the answer to the question “what is?” an answer that provides the way (on which) something is, and not the substance something is made of (as the term “essence” from Aristotle to, say, Hegel, came to be used). 2. Rafael Capurro is a Uruguayan born philosopher, educated in Argentina, and with a PhD from Germany, currently Director of Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute of Information Ethics. The keynote address was called “Interpreting the Digital Human” and it was delivered at the conference “Thinking Critically: Alternative Perspectives and Methods in Information Studies” organized by the Center for Information Policy Research of the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 15-17, 2008. 3. That hermeneutics is a koiné of our times, a virtual “universal philosophical language.” Gianni Vattimo positioned himself in the postmodern debate arguing for an understanding of our contemporary culture in terms of “late modernity” in which hermeneutics as a discipline plays an important part. 2 knowledge, and because of the certain cultural hybridization that comes with this global network, hermeneutics cannot interpret the human existence independent of the technological changes of the digital age anymore. Hermeneutics needs to address the digital and let itself be addressed by it. Thus, hermeneutics would stand at the core of information ethics by accounting for the digital challenge to “the self-interpretation of human beings in all their existential dimensions.”4 My approach is hermeneutical although I associate hermeneutics with ontology in a manner similar to that of Gianni Vattimo. At the end of metaphysics, within Vattimo’s “late modernity,” ontological projects are, with good reason, regarded with suspicion. This does not mean though that the central question of ontology, which is a question of being, has lost its meaning. On the contrary, Vattimo argues that any ontology at the end of metaphysics has to be hermeneutical just in order to be able to keep asking that question. Therefore we are dealing with an “ontology of decline,” an inquiry into a declension of being, and thus realized along lines of intellectual genealogies. Because of this approach, as much as I find Capurro’s argument important for the identity of hermeneutics as a discipline, I cannot but remark a certain (perhaps rhetorical) artifice there. Studying the “impact” of digital technologies on the general human existence ends up separating these two, and our question of being turns into a gathering of beings around our contemplative position. Of course, we may speak of a digital divide, which means we may speak of the fact that, as pervasive as it is, digital technology cannot account for