Philosopher and author Federico Campagna discusses the concepts of reality, Technic, and Magic in his book 'Technic and Magic'. He explores the idea of a reality that varies with each era, the limitations of Technic, and the potential of Magic as an alternative system. The podcast delves into the interplay between neoplatonic emanationism and linguistic realities, the intersection of technique and salvation, and the exploration of reality and magic. Federico also discusses the concepts of beauty in Technic and magic, contrasting commercial scalability with transformative emotional experiences.
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Politics Begins With Metaphysics
Federico Campagna argues that our political imagination is prefigured by metaphysical hypotheses that define what counts as reality.
Changing politics requires revising these foundational world-making assumptions, not only economic policy.
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Existence Tied To Language
'Technic' defines existence by what can be captured in language or formal systems, erasing what resists linguistic capture.
This makes undocumented or liminal beings effectively exist less within the operative world.
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Technique's Response Is Expansion
Technique responds to its own limits by promising infinite expansion of capture and policing language to assimilate anomalies.
This salvific envelope denies genuine limits and recasts resistances as solvable problems.
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Federico's 'The Last Night' on Zer0 Books: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/zer0-books/our-books/last-night
Technic and Magic: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/technic-and-magic-9781350044036/
We take for granted that only certain kind of things exist – electrons but not angels, passports but not nymphs. This is what we understand as 'reality'. But in fact, 'reality' varies with each era of the world, in turn shaping the field of what is possible to do, think and imagine. Our contemporary age has embraced a troubling and painful form of reality: Technic.
Under Technic, the foundations of reality begin to crumble, shrinking the field of the possible and freezing our lives in an anguished state of paralysis. Technic and Magic shows that the way out of the present deadlock lies much deeper than debates on politics or economics. By drawing from an array of Northern and Southern sources – spanning from Heidegger, Junger and Stirner's philosophies, through Pessoa's poetry, to Advaita Vedanta, Bhartrhari, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra's theosophies – Magic is presented as an alternative system of reality to Technic. While Technic attempts to capture the world through an 'absolute language', Magic centres its reconstruction of the world around the notion of the 'ineffable' that lies at the heart of existence.
Technic and Magic is an original philosophical work, and a timely cultural intervention. It disturbs our understanding of the structure of reality, while restoring it in a new form. This is possibly the most radical act: if we wish to change our world, first we have to change the idea of 'reality' that defines it.
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