It is not that the thing in itself is to be understood as pure facticity, as a given object of representation (the quasi ‘immediate’). This is what, for instance, the German Social-philosopher Jürgen Habermas and several others behind the so-called semiotic Kant-transformation assert it is. The thing in itself, however, can also be seen as a continuous common transcendental hypothesis and expectation – as Kant puts it – toward a possible future knowledge building about the nature, through the past, the present, and as future expectations within the natural sciences. The statement ‘This rose is red’ is, for Habermas, a sense impression given to our imagination, which each of us experiences privately. Like the natural scientist as well as you, dear colleagues, we expect that the Rose is part of nature. If a thorn of a rose hurts me, I do not scold with the evil rose spirit or the ‘god’ of the rose. I prefer to wear gloves next time to avoid such a situation in the future. The rose is thus treated as nature, as a non-subject. The phenomenology of the phenomenal world of the ‘thing for me’
presupposes a fundamental construction of the transcendental hypothesis of the nature, which is still to be investigated, which is never attained, but which is always constructed and reconstructed as a future expectation of connections in a nature that per se never is considered as something subjective. This interpretation thus forms the bridge to today's discussions of constructivism, as Latour indicates in the Politique de la nature (Latour 2001: 11), and Kant sees as his point of departure in the Critic of Pure Reason (1887). The rose qua nature is a conceptual defined undefined, not by the philosopher, but by natural scientists and in the prolongation hereof – by you and me. This may seem trivial. Nevertheless, it is not…
CONCLUSIONS
Why is it not? To answer this question let us now get back to the futures field. This Kant-interpretation somehow challenges a perspective on the relation between Man and Nature that is presupposed by the ecological and global shift within the futures research in the early 1970s, represented, in particular, by the Club of Rome. The potential of rethinking the subject-object distinction toward social-political actions is also tremendous as we now may consider even a quasi-given Nature as constructed through a common human (transcendental) hypothesis about connections within the physical world. It is not either materiality or humanism. It is both, at the same time in the same space.
‘Universal Perspectivism’ as a policy
The foremost political implications of what we have chosen to call universal perspectivism mean that a variety of political issues from today's public debate must be interpreted differently. Some also lose meaning. It is no longer appropriate to discuss nation-state versus supra-nationality, as the further development of global human beings in global environments is preferable. Whether to allow gene- and
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biotechnological R & D processes or not becomes less relevant as nature always already has been subject for manipulation. It would make sense, however, to talk about the way in which you manipulate the matter and the organism. Nor will the problem of whether or not you should be against growth or what a sustainable environmental policy could be, be of principal relevance, as technology development implies a dynamic growth community, and since there is no longer a so-called 'originally harmonious' nature that can be the absolute reference point for ‘the sustainable’. Instead, one could move parts of the political debate one-step higher and discuss how society will provide long-term protection against the re-barbarisation based on the recognition that technology and industry development is a crucial condition for the development of the civilisation. In my simulated Kant, a possible re-barbarisation resembles a breakdown in the human-nature relationship and a ‘return’ to a pre-modern state-of-the-art culture where the differentiation opposite of the human, as what human beings per. definition are not
- Man creates himself through his/her construction of what the human being is not, namely nature, technology, and the physical world
- Man could also be a cyborg
- Pluralism, fragmentation, individualism assumes a common human project - Futures pessimism is resignation
- Biotechnology and genetic engineering are not subject to fundamental ethical and moral considerations (precisely because the original/harmonic/ pure nature is not of a principally different character than the ‘processed’ nature or technology and the art world). It will only be subject to practical and functional assessments. ‘Is it appropriate to change your nose now? Yes/No! Is the clone Dolly useful for anything? ‘
- The term 'sustainability' loses some of its meaning, becomes less meaningful as the Nature (Thing) in itself also is considered as constructed.
- There is an inner link between increased economic growth, human liberation, and the solutions to environmental problems
- Networking cannot be a network between everything. Networking must be based on object-based case matters, an object-oriented relationship between man and what man is not.
- Information is matter and vice versa.
- Information/electronics are organisms and vice versa (see, for example, Texas' Instruments’ ways to create microchips; they cultivate them with bio-genetic programs).
- Universal Perspectivism is an expression of what the individual will call an
‘enlightened confusion’ or ‘confused enlightenment’.
- The Civilisation has just begun.
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