Thresholds of Existence

Things are getting more and more unreal—from markets to the public sphere to the automation of intelligence. We are witnessing a collapse of reality as we know it. The challenge taken up by Jan Söffner in this erudite book is to approach the present collapse of reality genealogically through a triangulation of three existential dimensions: the Real, the Actual, and the Virtual. As Söffner argues that, while these three existential dimensions occur in any and all cultures or subcultures, the recent era of realism has constellated them in distinct ways fueled by entrepreneurial capitalism, political institutions, the sciences, and technicity. Söffner scrutinizes the monolithic realist equation of "world = reality" that has dominated Western cultures since early modernity, tracing the era of reality as a case study—its cultural dominance, epistemic successes, and societal implications as well as its inner struggles, category mistakes, and existential shortcomings. Simultaneously the book looks ahead to the new era of the 'automation of everything' as an overarching virtualization. It asks: how did we come to think of ourselves as real and what does the unsettlement of this seeming self-evidence mean for the future?