This interview with the philosopher Bernard Stiegler was conducted in Paris on 28 January
2015, and first appeared in Dutch translation in the journal De uil van Minerva. The conversation
begins by discussing the fundamental place occupied by the concept of ‘technics’ in Stiegler’s
work, and how the ‘constitutivity’ of technics does and does not relate to Kant and Husserl.
Stiegler is then asked about his relationship with Deleuze, and he responds by focusing on the
concept of quasi-causality, but also by arguing that there is a certain trajectory in Deleuze’s
thought, situating his own philosophy in relation to its various moments. Stiegler is then asked
to respond to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks carried out three weeks prior to the interview.
After making a couple of precautionary remarks, Stiegler relates such occurrences to the
problem of what he calls ‘spiritual poverty’, to the intensification of ‘negative sublimation’ that
can occur when there is a disconnection between the generations, and more generally to the
growth of nihilism. All of these phenomena relate to the exploitation of technology by a virulent
capitalism that irrationally believes that only the market is rational. After consideration of the
complex historical relationship between Islam and modernization, and of both of these to
Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’, and after recalling the destructive role played by the West in the rise
of fundamentalism and jihadism, Stiegler concludes by reflecting on the fact that, ultimately,
‘intellectuals’ have failed to use technologies in ways that produce alternatives to consumerism.
