Review of Sorgner's Philosophy of Posthuman Art

The Naturalist And Perspectivist Turn

Avant-garde aesthetics with its denial of mimesis, and imperatives of authenticity, truth, self-referentialism, and separation of pop-culture and high-culture in favor of the later does not possess the required conceptions to deal with posthuman artwork. Sorgner points to the ontological dualities that are foundational to the modernist art culture and to the categorical dualities that are also engrained within this art movement. Due to the dualistic ontology of the immaterial and material, which places the eternal world of the form, of divinity, of the immaterial above that of the material, greater value is given to the rational than to the sensual. Only art that requires the utilization of our rationality is worth pursuing. At the same time a type of art cannot be used for any other purpose than that of revealing itself. Meaning that the purpose of music is music, that of painting is painting, of photography is photography. To reveal itself each branch of art needs to explore its fundamental constituents and utilize them in a way in which they will not be tainted by external influences.

This siloing of art does not cut it anymore within the posthuman shift. Sorgner presents posthuman art as a movement that is non-dual, that does not separate poesis from praxis, nor the rational form the sensual. It is a naturalistic movement that acknowledges the impossibility of the sort of separation which the avant-garde requires.

Posthumanism seems to have one core requirement, namely non-duality. At the same time, it needs to be flexible with all other requirements. To fulfill the non-dual requirement posthuman aesthetic need to be rooted in naturalism and perspectivism which seem to go hand in hand. “[There] seems to be a dialectic relationship between naturalism and perspectivism, which are embedded in a hermeneutic circle” (119). The key requirement towards reaching a naturalist understanding is abandoning humanist ideas and realizations. As humanism as highlighted a world where value is given based on the degree to which something is connected to the immaterial realm, or to the res cogitas we have ended up placing white males at the top of the value hierarchy. In the posthuman shift we need to abandon these unfounded absurdities and relinquish the idea that the darker skin is associated with the world of instinct instead of rationality and is thus less valuable, or that males have reason and females have emotions thus only males could grasp the good, the truth and the beautiful, or that natural order unites male with female. Even the seemingly benign idea of “the dignity of all human beings” needs to be abandoned and transformed into the dignity of all beings. In other words, we need to abandon the unfounded humanist realizations of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and speciesism.

As dualism is relinquished, truth in correspondence also gets dissolved. What currently remains is a non-dual world where humans and animal are both results of evolutionary processes. While in the past we held steady the ideal of one truth this can no longer hold as it would require a static ontological realm. Though not mentioned by Sorgner, the naturalistic observation of permanent becoming is not the sole reason for the disappearance of the possibility of truth in correspondence. Another reason is the recognition of a permanent epistemic gap which comes from our filtering of reality through our sense apparatus and the processes of our mind. Given a world of permanent becoming and an unbridgeable epistemic gap, truth as correspondence is impossible. We need to move on to a pragmatic, a fictive, version of truth, a truth that is non-Platonic. “Truth is whatever works in this world. If acts make us feel good, if judgements lead to reliable conclusions and if reflections bring about predictable results, then these things work, and it is possible to regard them as true” (44). Truth in the posthuman world is not to be desired for truth’s sake but in order to deal “with life’s immense variety of challenges, and a timely scientifically informed kind of wisdom which enables us to live exciting, flourishing and fulfilled lives.” (47) Perspectivism does not imply that a philosophical judgement has to be false. It is solely an acknowledgement that it can be false.