DHUM 25A40 - Rethinking the Social Contract in the age of Artificial Intelligence

“Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you (...) Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like rods of iron” (Job 40:18). Alongside Leviathan and Ziz, Behemoth is a mythical biblical creature beyond human control. In Hobbes' Leviathan (1651), humanity constructs its own Leviathan, surrendering individual sovereignty to this ultimate ruler to escape the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” State of Nature. In contrast, Hobbes' posthumous essay Behemot reflects on the chaos of the English Civil War. Can we imagine Behemoth not as chaos, but as a human-made force—one that reshapes our social contract? This course examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenges the foundations of our social contract(s) while also exploring the relevance of classical and contemporary social contract theories in addressing the political and ethical dilemmas posed by AI. Through the works of “classical” thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Mikhail Bakunin, Leo Strauss, and John Rawls, as well as contemporary thinkers and scientists like Stanislas Dehaene, Cathrin Misselhorn, Kathryn Haynes, and Shermin Voshmgir, students will engage with pressing questions of justice, freedom, rights, and democracy in a rapidly evolving world where reason, intelligence, and life itself are being redefined.

Yaël HIRSCH

Séminaire

English

There are no prerequisites to take this course. There are 10-15 pages of required reading per session

Spring 2024-2025

1 Oral Presentation of a work (text, film, picture, video-game...to be chosen in a list of suggestion, in groups of 2) 40% 1 Midterm 20 % 1 Final Essay 30 % + Class Participation 10%