Philosophy and the Mechanisms of Deconstructing the Contemporary Wes tern Epistemic Mind

While researchers in the field of philosophical thought believe that philosophy began as natural philosophy before Socrates and, with him, shifted to a philosophy concerned with human beings, and after him became a philosophy of governance, some assert that the philosophy that truly marked a turning point in the history of philosophical inquiry is contemporary Western philosophy. This modern philosophy is distinguished by its complex issues, methods, tools, and new intellectual mechanisms. It has ventured into areas that earlier philosophies did not explore—such as madness, sexuality, war, terrorism, prison, and the dialectic of femininity and masculinity.

Among the philosophical models that have paved the way for new philosophies concerned with the public good on an ordinary and natural level is the French philosopher Edgar Morin , whom some researchers regard as one of the greatest philosophers and thinkers of our time. This is due to the range of real and reflective issues he raises, which touch on sensitive topics and represent a significant and provocative intellectual stance on historical and sociological matters.

Despite his research in the previously mentioned fields, Morin attempted to enter the world of philosophy through his monumental work Mes Philosophes ("My Philosophers"), in which he discussed many philosophers who left a mark on his intellectual and philosophical journey and who influenced the issues that caught his attention. He employed his own methods, mechanisms, and intellectual tools—tools he believes offer a genuine way out of the dilemmas we currently face.

Contemporary philosophy has turned its attention to the human being, trying to understand the human condition more deeply than what has been written throughout history, from all perspectives—be it philosophical, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and so on. Edgar Morin emphasized that man is the master of wisdom and epistemological rationality. His mind became a place where contradictions coexisted: madness and reason, pleasure and pain, irony and tragedy, hope and despair, faith and anxiety, doubt and certainty, a love for life and an existential anxiety about the inevitable fate of death.

He harshly criticizes Western hegemony and the centralized, monolithic dominance of a single worldview. One of the key concepts that deeply troubled him and drew him into the world of thought was Western centralism, which, according to him, has caused anxiety, disasters, and civilizational problems—the Palestinian issue being a prime example. This centralism has led to forms of enslavement and deep cultural disruptions that cannot easily be repaired.

One could say that what we perceive today as a rational life may one day be revealed as the very essence of irrationality. The human mind, after all, is capable of creating a bomb—but that same invention can lead to the death of millions and may even destroy its creator. So how can we insist on a stable, rational order in the face of such strange and unpredictable variables— challenges that humanity has never fully overcome in its attempts to escape crises and contradictions?

It also becomes increasingly evident that some minds produce what is often labeled as madness—commonly understood as delirium or a loss of reason. In such cases, the irrational automatically steps in to replace reason. This concept of the irrational has puzzled many philosophers in contemporary Western thought, including Michel Foucault, Georges Bataille, Edgar Morin, Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler , and others.

So how can we conceive of the reality we are living today, with all its upheavals, in light of the dominance of rule by a minority over a weakened global majority? What is the illness that led to this situation? And what alternative did Edgar Morin propose to overcome this crisis—one that has stripped human beings of their humanity and turned them into machines, with some even classifying humans as mere extensions of nature and the world of objects, far removed from dignity and the sovereignty of rights?

1-The Human Being and His Cultural and Historical Complexity:

The new era of humanity on a global level represents a new perspective in which the human being is seen as living within new dimensions. He is a rational being in terms of his reason, an economic being in terms of his technicality, a utilitarian being in terms of his pursuit of benefit, and a prose-oriented being in relation to his needs and demands. The standard of living he experiences makes him a complex being , one who exists within multiple and varied dualities: between reason and madness, between play and work, between reality and imagination, between economy and waste, between prose and poetry (Morin, 1999, p. 54). From this, we understand that the human being has become composed of clear dualities—immersed in the realms of economy and poetry, realism and play. This shift has placed him in new positions that require understanding and interpretation through the lens of humanity itself, as a complex being who does not reject his rationality or economic nature.

There is no doubt—and this is agreed upon by psychologists, philosophers, and advocates of social and anthropological thought—that we are delusional, childish, neurotic beings , even as we affirm our rationality. We cry and laugh, we play and work, we strive and forget ourselves at times in the heights of rationality and the waves of magical renewal, all while attempting to align with a vision of a refreshing future. As long as we are human, we live between reality and imagination , between subject and object , between magic, myth, and religion .

“When illusions and collective delusion dominate, both the mad and the rational person submit, and the intellect is employed in the service of delusion.” (Morin, 1999, p. 55)When cultural, technical, and material supervision ceases, the individual begins to confuse what is objective with what is subjective, what is certain with what is speculative, what is rational with what is mad. At this point, we must emphasize a new law experienced by humanity: madness, which we may describe not merely as a symptom, but as something that has entered into our being—something we label as a disease, an excess foreign to us.

This subject has long been a matter of discussion and debate since ancient times, as the idea of madness was prevalent in ancient human civilizations, cultures, myths, and especially in Eastern wisdom—particularly among poets such as Rousseau, Pascal, and Erasmus . It was also recognized in the thought of Heraclitus , Confucius in Chinese civilization, as well as Schopenhauer , Michel Foucault , Einstein , Zarathustra , Victor Hugo , and many other writers, physicists, astronomers, and chemists (Bydén & Ierodiakonou, 2012).

Every mind that dared to think—especially in the modern era—has often been accused of madness , neurosis , or chaotic incoherence. Indeed, thinking at such a high level may exceed the bounds of genius and verge on madness. Yet what we call "madness" is not necessarily the opposite of what is rational, realistic, logical, or systematically human. In fact, madness can be the very essence of reason , for the same mind that occasionally goes mad enough to kill an innocent person with a gun, we must remember, is the mind that created the gun in the first place—a mind that thought, calculated, killed, and was killed.

So how did it think? That thinking reached such a high level of reasoning and abstraction that it ultimately led to the invention of this gun.

The understanding of the human being of himself through a return to his essence is considered as a PAIS² return. Edgar Morin affirms this by saying, “If I see a child crying, I understand based on the salinity of his tears, but I understand by diving into my own depths and extracting all the hardships of my childhood. I make this child merge with me just as I merge with him.” (Ajello, 2005)

What we see prevailing today on a global scale, which has become smaller thanks to technology and globalization that have turned it into a small village managed by one person from one place, is the rejection of the humanities, social sciences, anthropology, and other sciences that focus on the human being. These sciences always emphasize that leadership belongs to the human being, considering him as the center of the universe, or rather, the small universe, in contrast to the idea that the universe is a large human being. The latter affirms that the individual has not become extinct due to madness, but the indicator of his "disappearance" begins when rationality reaches the point of technology that turns him into a disassembled and bombed machine at the same time, as he has become trapped by it and possesses a limited level in it. On the other hand, the individual's time has been wasted in rituals, dances, and countless myths that have no end.(Ajello, 2005)

Ibn Abris, meaning delirium, here the wisdom suggests a new narrative where the wise person might be seen as a madman. In contrast, the veneration and worship of the mind led to the guillotine.

Education, as a human science, tries to explore the depths of human complexity. It aims to clarify the multiple fates of the human being from social, intellectual, and historical perspectives. Education has directed the study of the human being towards the complex and explicit understanding of this anxiety regarding inevitable destiny, searching for happiness, identity, and the reality of the throat in his life dominated by technology and technological culture. This is controlled by the republican culture that Francis Fukuyama enjoys when he says, "I am now at ease as long as the poor Somali carries a bottle of 'Coca-Cola' in his hands," in contrast to popular culture, which tells the Somali person that they should sleep on a mat of reeds, live with the forest, sand, and camels.

Thus, "the concept of complexity has formed, ignited, grown, and expanded, moving from the margins to the center of modern discourse. It has become subtle, understood, and a fundamental refuge for inquiries, where it now presents the intractable problem of the relationships between the empirical, the logical, and the mental."(Morin, 2004) This is what Edgar Morin intended through his discussion of the human being as complex and composed of dualities and dialectics, attempting to define the new human—one who is both rational and lost, anxious, and smiling with tears that he does not understand the reasons behind. He tries to hold on to what is in his hands, yet he falters. He cries, only to find himself in a new map called

"schizo-desire," as described by Gilles Deleuze, caught between the longing for eating, drinking, sleeping, caregiving, and sober breastfeeding in a delayed childhood that the human experiences. This is an old-new birth, where his eyes are enchanted by technology, and his thinking mind translates into a material embodiment that makes the rational madman ask, "Where are we headed? And how will we become?"

2-    Human: "The Noble Goal in Existence":

Thus, it is subject to both determinisms and coincidences at the same time. The multiple, diverse, and different fluctuations that history has gone through, and that remain open, for Morin, meant a departure from the norm. All those who carried the banner of change and renewal are, for Morin, people who are outside the norm. 'Moses, Christ, Paul, and Muhammad are outside the norm, and Copernicus and Galileo are outside the norm in relation to their religion, and outside the norm are Einstein, Fermi, Marie Curie, and Watson, in relation to the majority of their peers.'" "Moreover, the philosophers, politicians, leaders, emperors, and wise men, such as Napoleon, Hitler, De Gaulle, Lenin, etc., in addition to geographical, scientific, and historical discoveries, are considered as departures from the norm and a deviation from the old paradigm in favor of a new one. Additionally, capitalist and communist economic systems, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and all bold decisions are departures from the norm. Descartes’ doubt through the idea of 'cogito', Montaigne's doubt, Spinoza’s rationalism, Cervantes’ genius, Marx's boldness, Freud's, Einstein's, and Chaplin’s are all departures from Christianity and Judaism. Therefore, they are departures from the norm. The one who succeeds in deviating from the norm and rooting themselves creates a very small environment where they find their initial livelihood, growing by establishing networks and a group that embodies the new truth. This truth is judged by defenders of established truths as heresy, and it provokes hatred from defenders of deadly constants.". The departure from the norm is sometimes highlighted at the peak of states when bold laws are enacted against the governed people, constitutional laws, or laws that drive the state in its foreign principles, which are bold against other countries. These can be seen as a slow historical process emerging as a departure from the norm as well, culminating in revolutions that represent a moment that transcends all that is familiar and old in various fields of life across the ages and in all regions and nations.

Departure from the norm, in its simplest meaning, means rebellion. In this sense, it can be said that rebellion exists in every human experience because every human experience worthy of this name contains this type of rejection of reality as it is. It is like the slave telling his master or oppressor, "You have crossed the line," or telling him, "Do not go any further." It is a vision of the intellect rising against the irrational.

• 3-    The Absurd in Light of the Ethics of Technology: "Deconstructing the Contemporary Human Complex"

The human mind, which has long been thinking in a tangible and realistic manner, is a result of the revolutionary growth of a new era that globalization bestows its status upon and imposes its control. This is reflected in the modern human’s need for certain images promoted and nourished by globalization, such as the telephone, television, home appliances, and machines that allow humans to perform tasks in the shortest possible time, with the least effort and demand. However, this technology, which was born and continues to emerge, has been practiced in a barbaric and savage manner, as Edgar Morin calls it, complete barbarism. In this scenario, the car owner controls the pedestrian, and those who own machines, capital, factories, and devices dominate the poor. Ethics have disappeared, and the awareness of enjoyment has emerged through the execution of commands that scarcely have any connection to the modern human’s moral or aesthetic values that truly express their service to the humanity and nature of the human being. At a time when it should have provided the individual with refined rationality, human judgment, and good will, we see that this barbarism has surpassed all of this, even reaching the point of tyranny over theological authority, let alone its oppression of governing powers in countries across the world. Thus, irrationality was born from obscene materialism and excessive extravagance beyond its natural limits. The technological owner now sees himself as a god, a lord of the worlds.

This is what happened to the European people who rebelled and considered others from the rest of the world as their slaves and servants. One of them forgot that "there is rationality in every form of civilization, at least in the production of tools, the use of weapons, and the practice of hunting. There is, in every society and simultaneously, both a rational, technical, and practical thinking, as well as a magical, mythical, and symbolic thinking." This applies to our society as well. "Innovations, technological and cultural creations, and ideological inventions may emerge and alter development, even revolutionizing it. They work to develop the principles of progress. 'Creativity and inventions are deviations that can grow and strengthen, taking the form of directions that can either embed themselves within the dominant trend and change its course, or replace it entirely.' The changes that occur, whether political, social, or cultural, follow a straight and sound historical path."

The view of the world is according to an intentional vision. The world is "will and representation," as expressed by Schopenhauer. The world moves according to a tendency toward destruction, violence, and shock. Edgar Morin even called it "the crisis" (la crise). He stated, "We see that the world only exists through the fragments of this imbalance (crisis). If the world were complete, it would be a completely deterministic machine, without any purpose.". "The world follows an open/expansive vision (Lichtung) of its material and immaterial elements, which represent the universe, as well as the elements of culture. This openness gives existence and the world a fixed meaning and image. From the physiological aspect of the world, it is the face of the paper, while from the hidden side of matter and the world, it is its back.

The conditions of existence are multiple, different, and diverse, where the vision of the world is influenced by the variety of perspectives and conceptions about the world itself. The religious vision of the world, which is already possessed in religious texts about the world, is not the same as the intellectual and philosophical vision that the philosopher prepares and presents about the world. The latter, in turn, is not the same as the artistic vision that the artist paints of the world. As an imagined human, it surpasses what is presented by the physicist, astronomer, and biologist." Thus, "the scientist indicates through poetic or artistic signs that are the product of lived experiences. This is also the case for the philosopher, the religious figure, or the artist when their production of an idea, a sermon, or a work of art is an expression of a lived experience ( Erlebnis )—one that differs from the scientific experience ( Erfahrung ) conducted by the scientist in the laboratory. The scientist has a pragmatic relationship with the world (...), whereas the relationship of the philosopher, contemplative thinker, artist, or poet is not a 'technical expertise' derived from a collection of knowledge and procedures, but rather an aesthetic and existential experience that matures through life.". Where the worldview tends toward a "logical construction," a concept that Rudolf Carnap authored a book about, titled with this very name. The latter attempted to present a view aligned with the school to which he belonged—logical positivism—which sought to deconstruct the world from the perspective of eliminating metaphysics.

They considered metaphysics to be meaningless talk, defining a metaphysical statement as one that aims to express a factual proposition, while in reality, it expresses neither a tautology nor a hypothesis that can be verified through experience. Karl Jaspers, for his part, affirms that the worldview “is something total or universal. A worldview is not merely knowledge, but it is manifested in methods of evaluation, the organization of life and destiny, and in the actual hierarchy of values. In other words: when we speak of ‘worldviews,’ we mean the ultimate and comprehensive ideas of humanity—whether from the subjective perspective of lived experience and rational authority, or from the objective perspective of a world shaped as an object.”. Malek Bennabi described the relationship with the world in the same way he described the individual's relationship with history. He argued that we, as a nation, do not confront the world, nor do we possess the ability to read and understand it as intended by thinkers like Karl Jaspers. We find ourselves outside the framework of world knowledge, far from constructing a vision of the world itself. Living on the margins of history or merely alongside the world does not enable us to comprehend it or to deduce its optimal dynamics. A worldview is, above all, a cultural, sociological, and civilizational vision—before it is physical, scientific, or material.

Thus, history moves from creativity and invention, then gradually tends to deviate from its path. It is not like a river that flows in a single direction; rather, history deviates, innovates, sways, stirs currents, and mixes paradigms. With the end of every paradigm or path, it leads to a disruption of the old paradigm. Its end is marked by crisis, a reversal of direction, and the transformation of ends into means, where what was once a primary product becomes a secondary one. Edgar Morin gives us a clear example of this, where he considers that "pollution, which is a secondary product of industrialization, can become its primary product, and the vital benefits of reducing infant mortality can bring deadly risks resulting from the demographic wave.". The progress that the world experienced in the 1970s was the recognition of the principle of uncertainty. This is certainly the primary meaning that the crisis carries with it, at a time when everything appears certain to us, while uncertainty is orderly, controlled, and predictable. Bourgeois men during the 1960s believed that the industrial society, then post-industrial society, was built on solid ground, and that we were almost living at the end of history, at the moment when the final realization of the good society took place. The best advice that can be given, after attempting to understand the relationship that links the past, present, and future, is to possess the meaning of the complex, subjective dimension of historical development. Thus, the process of prediction helps explore the vortex of the present.

4-    Contemporary Philosophy: "From Human Crisis to Crisis of the Human":

Through our previous discussion on the relationship that always exists between humans within their new contemporary lives, which have been imposed as a result of various interactions and fluctuations, as we saw, at the forefront of which is technology. However, this technology has not reached a single, fixed, precise, and consistent level; rather, it has caused what is called the proliferation of multiple and diverse crises. This has led some writers, thinkers, and sociologists to describe modernity itself as a crisis on many levels. Let us take a look at the 20th century, where we saw the fires ignited, as the past century burned due to what the two great powers possessed: two world wars, two deadly and exterminating wars for nations, through which barbarism flowed from the heart of civilization itself. It is well known that the countries responsible for these wars were historically prestigious and among the most advanced and developed in the world. These wars resulted from huge social crises, ruptures in the process, and miscarriages and corruption in the paths of liberation. The First World War (1914-1918) did not only bring about the Bolshevik revolution, which turned Bolshevism into a foreign civil war, but it also gave birth to Italian fascism, and not only that, but also the end of 15 years of crises and Nazi shocks, which in turn led to the Second World War (19391945). The Second World War was not a response to the first but was, in fact, a fulfillment of it par excellence. It became a different kind of war, not only because of the growing forces of death but also, and especially, because of the intervention of the two competing totalitarian regimes.

It is also noticeable that the word "crisis" has become an empty term due to its excessive use. "Crisis of liberation, crisis of culture, crisis of progress, crisis of adolescence, crisis of marriage... etc." Morin points out in the same book that the crisis has multiplied into a series of crises. Let us now specifically define this term: when we take a first glance, we notice that a crisis does not only appear when there is a breakdown in communication or when there is a disturbance within a system that seemed stable. Rather, it multiplies and even generates more crises when possibilities overflow and fluctuations increase. Is the crisis the opposite of progress, or is it a clear indicator in the political, economic, and social spheres?

The logical answer is to describe civilization as "It seems that the crisis of civilization, particularly concerning our Western societies, the crisis of culture, the crisis of values, the crisis of the family, the crisis of the state, the crisis of urban life, and the crisis of rural life... etc., are multiple aspects of the entity of our societies, which seems to be a troubled entity. These are societies threatened by this crisis, but they are societies that feed on it.". That is, although the crisis takes on a negative form due to the fluctuations it causes in life at both the general and personal levels, it always takes on a positive and favorable form, considering that the crisis is a dual path for an individual who will eventually be liberated and embrace multiplicity afterward.

5-The Future of Human Identity: "From Complexity to Objectification"... Towards the Ignorance of Destiny :

From here, we attempt to return to the roots, to the origins— the genome —where biological studies that sought to decode the human genetic codes confirm that humans are complex beings. These studies explore the brain and its organs, which provided modern medicine with the opportunity to understand humans as a collection of interconnected cells, embryos, and brain cloning. This marked the beginnings of human control through mental and social cells. There was a synergy between biology and technology, and a convergence between the theoretical, grounded in the theory of information, which introduced the concept of genes, between the idea of a programmed organism and the concept of living beings, within the scope of a democratic independent intellect.

This means that the interference of new science has provided the opportunity to intervene in the birth of a human being, shape his identity, and control his physiological functions, and thus his psychological functions, by which a person is known. When we speak of his complexity, this was confirmed earlier by the French biologist Alexis Carrel through his book titled Man, the Unknown. He tried to demonstrate that a human being is a complex entity, not easily understood. The development that occurs through the unknown semen, pregnancy by mothers carrying the child or through artificial wombs, and finally human cloning, raises questions about the fundamental concepts of fatherhood, motherhood, and kinship.

This is what we are attempting to understand within a broader scope. Is it possible, from all this, to rid ourselves of the distortions that arise with a child and give birth to children as we wish and desire in the future? There is no doubt that broad-mindedness, whether on the experimental scientific level or the epistemological intellectual level, will allow us to obtain genetically modified bodies. These could eventually be produced in a standardized and normative way, and at that point, human traits and temperaments would become mere objects and commodities. Thus, parents would be able to conceive children according to a catalog, and at that point, we would be able to develop the physiological aspect of our children and choose the gender we desire. If the mind is in a dialogical relationship between the brain and culture, this means that the brain begins to function and stimulates the mind with cues that encourage intellectual and visual reading. The opposite effect occurs through certain toxic substances such as hallucinogens, narcotics, stimulants, sedatives, and so on.

Our civilization is keen on possessing sleeping pills, tranquilizers, hallucinogens, and antidepressants in order to influence our brains. We can often secretly obtain cannabis extract (a type of hashish), opium, cocaine, betel, and chemical narcotics like ecstasy. The possibilities for chemical influence on the brain are numerous and artificial. And once again, a seemingly bright and abundant future appears, but in reality, it is ominous.

Future possibilities are like a machine controlled by its owner. The best future is like playing a piano that creates the best works and musical pieces for us. It is like the melody played by the musician or the artwork painted by the visual artist.

On the other hand, from its ominous perspective, it is controlled by individual authoritarian power, in a barbaric and savage manner. In contrast to all of that, some seek immortality through cosmetic procedures and efforts to prolong life, avoiding aging and anything that causes physical fatigue, and using medications and traveling to countries around the world for medical treatment, both for the unborn and for adults and children, in addition to stimulating bodily cells.

The "forces of life and death connected to humanity evolve at the same rhythm. The forces of destruction can be contained and overcome, but eliminating them entirely from now on will accompany humanity's journey with the threat of global death.". "Furthermore, according to Edgar Morin, the current democratic movement is a path toward death, as he says: 'Democracy will be, and what an irony, surrounded by the threat of deadly nuclear weapons and the degradation of the environmental surroundings, and on the horizon, the death of the vast universe.'". "Thus, Edgar Morin attempted to shed light on the global mentality that has become and will continue to shape the entire world, steering it toward a certain yet simultaneously unknown inevitable fate.

Conclusion

The work of philosopher Edgar Morin is part of a broad project aimed at deconstructing complexity on one hand, while gathering the scattered fragments that compose it on the other. This process, difficult to capture using conventional methods, integrates sociological, cultural, anthropological, psychological, and physiological dimensions. Together, they form the complex whole of “brain, hand, language, culture, and society,” from which emerges the human being and, simultaneously, the mind in its spiritual and mental dimensions.

Our era is characterized by the emergence of diseases unknown in human history: the “neurosis of meaninglessness,” fear of the other, mistrust, anxiety toward reality, obsessions, chronic depression, and schizophrenia. These pathologies stem from oppression, war, violence, and repression linked to lives focused on trivial material goods, plunging humanity into unconsciousness, absurdity, and illogic. This crisis manifests itself in various forms, including revenge, terrorism, and other extreme violences.

Edgar Morin emphasizes that although the sciences and arts have produced significant advances, politics remains a domain marked by meaninglessness, monstrosities, and dehumanization. This observation lies at the heart of his work Where Is the World Heading?, where he questions the current direction of our world.