Masumi Nagasaka
The aim of this presentation is to briefly introduce Yuk Hui’s Kant Machine, focusing on the concept of the epigenesis of reason, described in the context of the confrontation of reason with its various antinomies.
In this work, the author uses the concept of the epigenesis of reason as a central thread to explore the possibility of cognition (e.g. intelligence), grounding of morality and the pursuit of the realisation of perpetual peace for artificial intelligence and humans in the age of AI.
The concept of epigenesis appears in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) and the Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790) in different contexts: one related to the categories containing the basis for the possibility of experience, the other related to the development of species through reproduction. In both works, the author explores a common inspiration for this concept. Furthermore, the author links the concept of epigenesis to the concept of the ‘expansion [Erweiterung] of reason’ described in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788). It is through this expansion that Kant describes the practical reason postulating God, freedom and the immortal soul, even if their objective reality cannot be proven by theoretical reason. Based on this interpretation, the concept of epigenesis can be seen to run through the three Critiques.
This presentation first examines briefly these contexts through which Kant elaborates the notion of the epigenesis of reason and the expansion of reason. Second, it discusses why this epigenesis is necessary for the possibility of cognition, the grounding of morality and the pursuit of perpetual peace, as well as what role this concept plays in the resolution of the antinomies that reason faces. This examination concludes with the antinomy of teleological judgements and its resolution based on the distinction between determining judgement and reflective judgement.
After this brief introduction to the book, this presentation will attempt to link this topic with Schelling’s interpretation of Kantian antinomy in the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800).
Prof. Sanja Bojanić, PhD
University of Rijeka (Croatia)
Waseda Institute Symposium 2026
Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies
Waseda University, Tokyo
June 5, 2026
This presentation connects Yuk Hui’s rereading of Kant after artificial intelligence with Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technics in order to theorize algorithmic society as a transformation of agency, judgment, and individuation. Hui’s Kant Machine asks whether contemporary machines can be understood as intelligent, moral, or even political by revisiting Kant’s critique of rationalist and empiricist machines and by relocating cybernetics and AI within the problem of judgment, autonomy, and reason. From this perspective, AI is not only a technical system but a challenge to the conditions under which critique, responsibility, and collective orientation remain possible. Stiegler radicalizes this problem by insisting that technics is not external to the human but constitutive of memory, desire, and individuation through tertiary retention. Digital and algorithmic systems are therefore pharmaka, they can support collective intelligence and care, but they can also produce proletarianization, disorientation, and the loss of savoir-faire, savoir-vivre, and savoir-théoriser.
Building on these two frameworks, From Hallucination to Protocol presentation argues that the “influencing machine” once described by psychoanalysis has become normalized as algorithmic infrastructure. The contemporary subject no longer merely hallucinates external control; it is addressed, evaluated, and formatted by ranking systems, recommendation engines, predictive analytics, and Model Context Protocols that pre-organize relevance, legitimacy, memory, and authority. The book therefore shifts critique from machine outputs to the protocolar conditions of address through which interpretation itself is automated. Read through Stiegler, such protocols are not neutral interfaces but organological arrangements that shape psychic and collective individuation. Read through Hui, they are contemporary tests of critical reason after AI. The presentation ultimately argues that agency must be reclaimed not as individual resistance alone, but as a politics of protocol design, institutional contestability, and collective care for the technical conditions of judgment.
Masumi Nagasaka
This presentation aims to decipher the structure of auto-immunity and its inherent violence within technoscience when combined with sacred symbols. It is based on Jacques Derrida’s notion of 'auto-immunity', as elaborated in Faith and Knowledge (Foi et Savoir: Les deux sources de la “religion” aux limites de la simple raison, 1996) and Rogues (Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison, 2003).
In Faith and Knowledge, Derrida draws on Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason to examine the entanglement of technoscience and religion, out of which 'radical evil' can emerge. Furthermore, in Rogues, through a reading of Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Derrida clarifies this auto-immunity of reason. He describes how reason’s attempt to save itself can become entangled with its own aggression, focusing specifically on the Husserlian notion of idealisation (Idealisierung).
Following Derrida’s arguments, this presentation clarifies, first, the mechanism of confusion between the 'schematism of object determination' and the 'schematism of analogy', which can multiply through the propagation of sacred symbols in technoscience. Second, it addresses the structure of the auto-immunity of reason as a consequence of idealisation, which can be characterised as a transcendental illusion of reason.
Abudjana H. E. Babiker, PhD
Waseda University (Tokyo)
Waseda Institute Symposium 2026
Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies
Waseda University, Tokyo
June 12, 2026
Infrastructures of Victory
As the 15th century marked the start of the colonial empire era, it also brought the transformation of the mechanics of the notion of war and victory. Nonetheless, the conception of antagonism remained, arguably, to the modern day. The East India Companies (EICs) introduced themselves as a case of a semi-sovereign, autonomous, non-state entity that was capable of producing victory through antagonistic means, where (proxy)wars were rendered as transitory actions in obtaining victory. While the discourse of war and victory necessitates the presence of an enemy, the EICs marginalized it and adopted antagonism as an alternative and further constructed and institutionalized victory through infrastructures, as this presentation discusses. Babiker suggests that the colonial project and EICs model persist and transform under the current institutional crisis. Looking into this model from a spatial perspective, it institutionalizes territories and geospatiality, hard and soft infrastructure, and architecture as active agents, operating through an institutional immune logic that participates in the production of protracted victory. The work further present some case-studies of these infrastructures, in relation to Petar Bojanić's notion of ‘victorious mind,' arguing for the necessity for infrastructures of victory, which are utilized by state and non-state actors, and how function as critical instruments in sustaining ‘the project of absolute victory.’
Phenomenology Encountering Metaphysics
– Reading Derrida’s Two Seminars on Husserl in 1963
Masumi Nagasaka
For Husserl’s phenomenology, overcoming dogmatic metaphysics is one of the most crucial starting points. As described in the Cartesian Meditations, the eidetic reduction must be carried out in conjunction with the transcendental reduction. This is because, for Husserl, eidos should not be posited dogmatically, as is the case in Plato. Husserl therefore introduces eidetic intuition as an act performed by subjectivity. In other words, eidos must be given as evidence for consciousness.
However, as Husserl states in section 64 of the Cartesian Meditations, phenomenology does not exclude metaphysics in its entirety; rather, it seeks a certain kind of metaphysics. How, then, should we conceive of this encounter between phenomenology and metaphysics? One reasonable approach is to divide metaphysics into several types, distinguishing between dogmatic and non-dogmatic metaphysics, and arguing that phenomenology excludes only the former.
Looking into Derrida’s 1963 lectures on Husserl, however, reveals a more radical interpretative direction. This perspective suggests there is no inherent contradiction between phenomenology’s attempt to exclude metaphysics and its acceptance of, or aspiration to, metaphysics. In fact, the more one attempts to exclude metaphysics, the more one is haunted by it.
This presentation tries to clarify this encounter of phenomenology and metaphysics by following Derrida’s two seminars on Husserl conducted in 1963, focusing specifically on the questions of God and the Other.