Ce travail vise à scruter quatre lectures de Kafka dans la philosophie allemande. Pourquoi ces philosophes ont-ils rencontré et interprété Kafka ? La première hypothèse est d’ordre biographique : leurs découvertes de Kafka sont marquées par le sentiment d’une proximité personnelle à l’égard ce qu’il donne à lire. Kafka est l’écrivain d’un certain moment, où le rapport à la langue ne va pas de soi, où l’expérience de l’exil prédomine, et où les mutations historiques rendent les contours de la subjectivité flous. La seconde hypothèse est philosophique : leurs lectures se fondent sur la nécessité de philosopher autrement, afin d’intégrer ces mutations. On ne peut plus penser selon les catégories du sens, de l’identité, de la conscience - mais il faut accepter que le sujet découvre en lui un étranger. Le défi que Kafka dresse devant ces philosophes serait donc de pouvoir « penser la métamorphose ». Celle du sujet, mais aussi celle que subit la philosophie au contact de la littérature. Et enfin, celle que Kafka invente dans l’ensemble de son œuvre, dont nous montrons qu’elle est irriguée par le « devenir-animal ». / We are focusing on studying four readings of Kafka in german philosophy. Why have these philosophers met and interpreted Kafka ? Our first hypothesis is a biographical one : their reading of Kafka’s books are influenced by the feeling of a proximity between his life and their experiences. Kafka represents a crisis : in his work, the language is not innate anymore, experiencing exile is prevailing, the historical mutations affect the concept of subjectivity. The second hypothesis concerns the philosophy itself : because of these mutations, the traditional metaphysical categories of sense or consiousness are obsolete ideas. The subject is becoming a stranger. Kafka is challenging philosophers to « think out the metamorphosis », the subject’s metamorphosis, the philosophy’s metamorphosis, and finally, the one Kafka invented, which is everpresent in his works, the notion of a « becoming-animal ».

This paper aims to analyze the philosophical implications of the atomic bomb in the thinking of three German post-war philosophers: Günther Anders, Hannah Arendt, and Karl Jaspers. Although they differ greatly in interest and philosophical perspective, the atomic bomb can be discerned as a problem of humanity's technological, ethical, and political conditions in the intersection of their authorships. In the examination of their ideas, they are situated within a diachronic tradition of philosophy of technology. Their common entanglement with phenomenological-hermeneutic philosophy is also considered, most notably in the form of the influence of Martin Heidegger. For Anders, the atomic bomb is the defining feature of the ethical and political conditions of post-war humanity, yet humans are unable to grasp its reality. In the thinking of Jaspers, the bomb necessitates a supra-political principle grounded in the faculty of reason. For him, politics in the nuclear age must rest upon the responsibility of the many individuals, in an ethical re-birth of humanity. Arendt primarily understands the bomb as a product of the increasing power of the thoughtless instrumentality of science. The destructive potential of atomic weapons solidifies to her a crisis in the meaning of politics, in which brute force has undermined political power. All three thinkers share the view that the atomic bomb must be understood in conjunction with a certain thought- and meaninglessness in the science and politics of their contemporary. The bomb also signifies to them a technological obscuring of human agency, the implications of which are exacerbated by the fact that it has also immensely improved the ability of one individual to commit heinous acts. In impairing the conditions for ethical action and meaningful politics for lasting peace, the bomb necessitates these very same principles. By threatening to make humanity as mortal as only individuals had been before, the bomb has made radical change in human thinking and activity urgent. However, to what extent sufficient adaptations are probable, or even possible, is a question in which the philosophers discussed in this paper diverge.

This study analyzes the politics of contemporary conspiracy theory discourses in the United States. Departing from the predominant methodological individualism that characterizes many contemporary analyses of conspiracy theory, which take the individual subject as the unit to be explained and governed, this study situates the production and proliferation of conspiracy theory discourses in the context of cybernetics and related transformations in politics that have tended to reduce democratic representativeness and increase forms of economic and political inequality. Cybernetics, which is often defined as the science of command and control, offers a series of concepts that facilitate an understanding of how freedom and control have become aligned in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States. I utilize Michel Foucault's governmentality approach to formulate a cybernetic governmentality methodology, which analyzes the governance of subjectivity in and through cybernetic systems of communication. Cybernetics, which seeks to invite the individual subject to realize itself through 'choice' and by way of its imbrication into machinic systems, conceptualizes the subject as a consumer and processor of information. I put forth the notion of the scripted political to analyze a key tension within contemporary U.S. politics, as politics is becoming increasingly uncertain yet also often appears to be strongly controlled by political and economic elites. Conspiracy theory, as a speculative genre of thinking, aims to steer events towards certain political ends. Conspiratorial speculation has become a popular means to connect and reflect on a felt obsolescence or superfluity on the part of the individual subject. To substantiate these arguments, I specifically analyze the discourses of QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy theories. These discourses express political fantasies that often privilege the idea of a liberal autonomous individual subject. The politics of contemporary conspiracy theory in the United States thus concerns the fact that these conspiratorial discourses seek to perform a form of liberal subjectivity. However, this performance of individual liberal subjectivity is always caught in cybernetic systems of communication, which seek to produce value, harvest data, and maximize the attention of their 'users', thus undermining the potential for any meaningful form of liberal subjectivity. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study analyzes the politics of contemporary conspiracy theory discourses in the United States. Whereas today many scholars approach conspiracy theory as concerning the beliefs of individual subjects, whose thoughts are considered deviant and potentially requiring reform or monitoring, this study engages with conspiracy theory discourses and their conditions of possibility. While many acknowledge that conspiracy theory is a response to a felt loss of control, this notion of control is understood to be only potentially true or valid. Cybernetics, which is often defined as the science of command and control, offers a series of concepts that facilitate an understanding of how freedom and control have become aligned in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States. Cybernetics, which seeks to invite the individual subject to realize itself through 'choice' and by way of its imbrication into machinic and technological systems, conceptualizes the individual subject as a consumer and processor of information. I develop a new notion that I call the scripted political to study a key tension within contemporary U.S. politics, as politics is becoming increasingly uncertain yet also often appears to be strongly controlled by political and economic elites. Conspiracy theory is a speculative genre of thinking that is well-suited to produce social and political meaning in a condition of information saturation characteristic of today's social domain. It does so, among other things, by providing explanations about the operations of what many conspiracy theorists consider to be concentrated forms of power and by attempting to steer events towards certain desirable political ends. However, as a way of producing social and political meaning, conspiracy theory often misses the mark. Yet, despite its frequent factual inconsistencies, conspiratorial discourses and speculations have become popular means to create social connections and to reflect on a sense of obsolescence or superfluity felt by many individual subjects. To support these arguments, I focus on the conspiratorial discourses of and about QAnon and about the Covid-19 pandemic. These discourses express political fantasies that often privilege the idea of a liberal autonomous individual subject. However, I show in this study that fantasies about a re-empowered mode of individual liberal subjectivity are often caught in cybernetic systems of communication, which are more interested in producing economic value, harvesting all sorts of data about individual subjects, and maximizing the attention of their 'users', thus undermining the potential for any return to a meaningful form of liberal subjectivity.

Ancien élève de Husserl et Heidegger, Günther Anders (1902-1992) composa une oeuvre philosophique dont la particularité est d'interroger la situation de l'homme face aux événements les plus sombres du 20e siècle. Ce travail, élaboré à partir d'une lecture de l'oeuvre éditée à ce jour, complétée par celle du Nachlass, vise à ressaisir l'unité, la cohérence et la singularité de sa pensée autour d'une question majeure : comment un monde technicisé, un monde sans hommes, est-Il compatible avec une éthique pour des hommes sans monde ? Décrire les ombres du monde, celles d'abord laissées par un monde humain technicisé, c'est déceler les idéalités de la technique qui recouvrent chaque chose d'une évidence artificielle. Observer le monde fabriqué par des hommes devenus des ombres, c'est aussi percevoir qu'ils peuplent un environnement dont ils sont les produits. Ce monde artificiel, à défaut de ne faire que soulager l'hostilité naturelle, ajoute d'autres souffrances au poids de la nécessité, que les arts parviennent à peine à déjouer. Théoriser les ombres du monde, c'est relever la négativité d'un nihilisme réalisé par la technique, à refuser. L'hypothèse philosophique ici défendue est celle d'un nihilisme métaphysique conçu comme préalable nécessaire au refus de toute autre pratique nihiliste. A cet effet, à partir de l'oeuvre d'Anders se conçoit une philosophie occassionnelle comme pratique théorique d'une sobriété tragique. Si briser toute idée métaphysique aboutit à désenchanter les victimes de trop naïves généralités, cette théorie n'impose cependant en rien de s'interdire de faire de la métaphysique. / As a former student of Husserl and Heidegger, Günther Anders (1902-1992) wrote a philosophical work which characteristic is to examine the situation of man facing the darkest events of the 20th century. Our thesis developed with a reading of the edited work supplemented by the Nachlass, aims to synthesize the unity consistency and uniqueness of his thoughts by asking a specific question : how a technical world, a world without men, could be compatible with any ethic for men without world ? To describe the shadows of the world left by a technical one, is meant to identify idealities which cover everything with an artificial obviousness. To observe the world made by men, who themselves became shadows, is like to perceive thet they are living in a environment whose they are the products. This artificail world, instead of relieving man about the nature hostility, adds other difficulties, which the technology is only sometimes able to cope with. To theorize the shadows of the world is meant to seek the specific negativity of nihilism, which is produced by technology. Our task is to show that we can refuse the nihilism as an attitude. The philosophical hypothesis defended here is metaphysical nihilism designed as prerequisite for the refusal of any other nihilistic praxis. The philosophical work of Anders allows us to conceive an occasional philosophy as a theoretical practice, pointed out as a tragic sobriety. If to break any metaphysical idea leads to disenchant the naïve victims of generalities, this theory however does not refrain us from doing metaphysics.