Alain Badiou: The Century (2005–)

“Everywhere, the twentieth century has been judged and condemned: the century of totalitarian terror, of utopian and criminal ideologies, of empty illusions, of genocides, of false avant-gardes, of democratic realism everywhere replaced by abstraction.

It is not Badiou’s wish to plead for an accused that is perfectly capable of defending itself without the authors aid. Nor does he seek to proclaim, like Frantz, the hero of Sartre’s Prisoners of Altona, ‘I have taken the century on my shoulders and I have said: I will answer for it!’ The Century simply aims to examine what this accursed century, from within its own unfolding, said that it was. Badiou’s proposal is to reopen the dossier on the century – not from the angle of those wise and sated judges we too often claim to be, but from the standpoint of the century itself.”

First published as Le Siècle, 2005.

Translated, with a Commentary and Notes by Alberto Toscano
Publisher Polity, 2007
ISBN 0745636314, 9780745636313
233 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-7-5)

Michael Bakunin: God and the State (1882/1970)

A colorful, charismatic personality, violent, ebullient, and energetic, Bakunin was one of two poles between which 19th and early 20th-century anarchism was formed. Although it was never finished, God and the State, his only major work, is the torso of a giant. A basic anarchist and radical document for generations, this book makes one of the clearest statements of the anarchist philosophy of history: religion by its nature is an impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity.

With a New Introduction and Index of Persons by Paul Avrich
Publisher Dover Publications, 1970
This Dover edition, first published in 1970, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the edition published in 1916 by Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York.
ISBN 048622483X, 9780486224831
89 pages

wikipedia
google books

PDF (updated on 2014-9-5)

Norbert Wiener: God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (1964–) [EN, RU, ES, RO]

“In this book, Norbert Wiener concerns himself with major points in cybernetics which are relevant to religious issues.

The first point he considers is that of the machine which learns. While learning is a property almost exclusively ascribed to the self-conscious living system, a computer now exists which not only can be programmed to play a game of checkers, but one which can “learn” from its past experience and improve on its own game. For a time, the machine was able to beat its inventor at checkers. “It did win,” writes the author, “and it did learn to win; and the method of its learning was no different in principle from that of the human being who learns to play checkers.

A second point concerns machines which have the capacity to reproduce themselves. It is our commonly held belief that God made man in his own image. The propagation of the race may also be interpreted as a function in which one living being makes another in its own image. But the author demonstrates that man has made machines which are “very well able to make other machines in their own image,” and these machine images are not merely pictorial representations but operative images. Can we then say: God is to Golem as man is to Machines? in Jewish legend, golem is an embryo Adam, shapeless and not fully created, hence a monster, an automation.

The third point considered is that of the relation between man and machine. The concern here is ethical. “render unto man the things which are man’s and unto the computer the things which are the computer’s,” warns the author. In this section of the book, Dr. Wiener considers systems involving elements of man and machine.

The book is written for the intellectually alert public and does not involve any highly technical knowledge. It is based on lectures given at Yale, at the Société Philosophique de Royaumont, and elsewhere.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1964
ISBN 0262730111, 9780262730112
ix+95 pages

Publisher

God and Golem (English, 1964, updated on 2021-4-8)
Tvorets i robot (Russian, trans. M.N. Aronz and R.A. Fesenko, 1966, DJVU, added on 2021-4-8)
Dios y Golem (Spanish, trans. Javier Alejo, 1967, EPUB, added on 2021-4-8)
Dumnezeu şi Golem (Romanian, trans. Edmond Nicolau and Lucia Nasta, 1969, added on 2021-4-8)