Thierry Ménissier

In this contribution, we wish to examine a hermeneutical hypothesis that may seem strange. This hypothesis is that some of the most interesting contemporary philosophical contributions to thinking about the digital and algorithmic are produced by authors who are very familiar with the philosophy (epistemological, metaphysical, moral and political) of the second half of the Renaissance (they have, for example, devoted their doctoral thesis to a current or thinkers from this period of European history). As far as we know, there is no such correlation, at least at this level, between philosophers trained by more recent currents and thinkers (from the 17th to the 20th century) and an interest in philosophy for the problems posed by the digital and algorithmic world. There seems to be no affinity between readers of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant or Hegel and algorithms, whereas between the latter and readers of Machiavelli, Bodin, Montaigne and La Boétie, not only do they exist, but they also give rise to original theoretical productions. Our aim is first to examine what justifies this hypothesis, and then to identify some of its heuristically interesting consequences. These consequences give us food for thought about the relationship between political philosophy and technological discourse, and thus enable us to shed new light on the massive deployment of artificial intelligence in our time. There are several reasons why this hypothesis is credible. On the one hand, it has to do with a certain configuration, homogeneous between the Renaissance and today, in the distribution of practical and theoretical knowledge, to which modern philosophy has literally turned its back. On the other hand, it's possible to argue that the political logic of the digital and algorithmic world corresponds in some respects to that before the institution evoked by Hobbes' Leviathan (1651). This does not mean that the world governed by digital technology and algorithms is returning to an anomic sociality, and even less to a state of nature understood as pure violence (which Hobbes always claimed was fictitious), nor that legitimate public authority is no longer granted to states in the contemporary world. It's rather that the type of normativity that unfolds in societies governed by networks and algorithms is of a different kind from the modern normativity instituted by Hobbes: digital and algorithmic governmentality (Rouvroy & Berns, 2013) corresponds to forms of post-modern normativity, which, in the logic induced by what we call "wild innovation" (Ménissier, 2021) evokes the Machiavellian game of tumulti that call forth ordini that bear no resemblance to the Hobbesian institution (Machiavelli, 1531). And to push certain consequences of the hypothesis further, can we shed more light on what is currently happening with Renaissance authors? Our answer is affirmative, and we will mobilize other arguments from Renaissance authors to explore certain areas of digital and algorithmic sociality and ways of being, notably La Boétie, Montaigne or the promoters of ancient skeptics like Sextus Empiricus.

In this paper, we observe an undergoing transformation in the qualification of the processes of emergence that we call ‘innovation’. First conceived in the industrial mode defined by Schumpeter within the consumer economy context, innovation has now acquired a more general meaning and has been transformed in the understanding of collective action. Against the backdrop of transformations in the industrial reality, the crisis of desire in consumer societies, and the impoverishment of the imaginary, ‘social innovation’ appears to be a new form of imaginary institution of society in the definition that Cornelius Castoriadis gave to this expression. The semantic enrichment of the notion of innovation allows us to glimpse a new framework for the ethics of innovation, which needs to be interpreted from the perspective of the age of transitions.

Époque de transition, la Renaissance connaît une série d’évolutions de l’idée politique d’empire (héritée du Moyen Âge) vers la réalité moderne d’un vaste marché coordonnant progressivement les économies nationales particulières et leurs réseaux d’influence. Ces évolutions permettent-elles d’évoquer la mise en place d’une « version économique de l’empire » ? Peut-on regarder ce qui se joue à la Renaissance, saisie à travers ses relations géopolitiques, comme la préfiguration de la globalisation ? L’article examine ces questions à partir de plusieurs hypothèses et défend la thèse que l’idée d’empire subit à cette époque des « métamorphoses », c’est-à-dire des évolutions qui en modifient le concept, notamment en ce qui concerne le rapport entre domination et territorialité

Résumé — La notion de prophétie joue dans l’œuvre de Machiavel un rôle qu’on ne saurait minimiser. Cet article propose d’étudier la fonction de cette notion en relation avec la politique et avec la représentation machiavélienne de l’histoire. L’article met enfin l’accent sur les liens entre celle-ci et la pensée de l’événement.— The notion of the prophecy in Machiavelli’s work plays a role which can’t be underestimated. This article studies the function of this notion relating to politic and Machiavellian representation of History. Lastly the article shows the links between this one and the thought of event

During the Renaissance, as an age of transition, the political idea of empire (a legacy of the Middle Ages) is subject to a series of evolutions leading to the modern reality of a large market, gradually coordinating national economies and their influence networks. Do these evolutions allow us to speak of an « economical version of the empire »? Can we view this process, described through the geopolitical relationships of the Renaissance, as a prefiguration of modern globalization? This paper deals with these questions from various points of view, in order to prove that the Renaissance idea of empire undergoes « metamorphosis », or evolutions, which modify its concept, regarding notably the relationship between domination and territoriality.

À partir de l ’ article 51 de la Charte des Nations unies, ce texte examinequelques problèmes posés dans l ’ histoire des idées politiques par l ’ argument de la légitime défense dans le cadre de la justification politique de la guerre et en fonction de laréflexion philosophique sur le thème de la guerre juste. Il envisage analytiquement cetargument, en mettant en lumière l ’ importance qu ’ il accorde à la souveraineté nationale,puis l ’ ambiguïté de la notion de « droit naturel » des États sur laquelle il se fonde. Or,conçue de manière « réaliste », au lieu d ’ être vectrice de désordres, la légitime défenseoffre paradoxalement le moyen d ’ une intégration des relations internationales, dans lesystème westphalien comme dans le système onusien. L ’ article aborde enfin la pertinencephilosophique et politique de la « légitime défense préventive ».