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18 pages, 261 KB

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Transhumanism, Religion, and Techno-Idolatry: A Derridean Response to Tirosh-Samuelson

by Michael G. Sherbert

Religions 2025, 16(8), 1028; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081028 - 9 Aug 2025

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This paper critiques Hava Tirosh-Samuelson’s view of transhumanism as techno-idolatry by applying Derrida’s notion of the unconditional “to-come” and the generalized fetish. While acknowledging Tirosh-Samuelson’s stance that fetishes should not be reduced to idols, I argue that she fails to extend this understanding to transhumanism, instead depicting its fetishes as fixed idols. Drawing on Derrida’s notion of the generalized fetish, I argue that religious objects in Judaism (like the shofar or tefillin) function not as objects of worship but as material mediators of divine relation—tangible signs that carry symbolic, spiritual, and covenantal meaning while gesturing toward the divine without claiming to contain or represent it. Similarly, in transhumanism, brain-computer interfaces and AI act as fetishes that extend human capability and potential while remaining open to future reinterpretation. These fetishes, reflecting Derrida’s idea of the unconditional “to-come,” resist closure and allow for ongoing change and reinterpretation. By reducing transhumanism to mere idolatry, Tirosh-Samuelson overlooks how technological fetishes function as dynamic supplements, open to future possibilities and ongoing reinterpretation, which can be both beneficial and harmful to humanity now and in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and/of the Future)

14 pages, 211 KB

Open AccessArticle

Fetishism for Our Times: A Rhetorical and Philosophical Exploration

by Timo Airaksinen

Religions 2024, 15(10), 1192; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15101192 - 30 Sep 2024

Viewed by 4913

Abstract

This article develops a detailed theory of the fetishes of the modern world. Fetishes may still have their original religious application as talismans and totems, but their actual range is much wider, as I illustrate. I show that a modern fetish satisfies our needs in an unexpected and unlikely manner: it does what it, prima facie, is not supposed to do. How does this happen? To explain, we must trace the construction of fetishes; I do this using some key rhetorical concepts. Paradiastole is a technique of evaluative redescription. It describes the world in value terms as something it is not—we can then ironize the result. If it serves the speakers’ essential interests and satisfies their desires, we have explained a fetish as a good-maker. The fetishization of an object, because of its ironic background, tends to invite critical, meiotic, and even derogatory responses—usually, the issue is and remains essentially contested. For example, early Christians wrote hagiographies that treated some people as saints, thus creating ad hoc beliefs that satisfied their religious interests. I also suggest a different, metonymic understanding of fetishes and their educational benefits. Perhaps my theory is overly permissive, allowing too many fetishes. My final conjecture is that true fetishes function as identity markers; for example, the crucifix is a fetish that defines Christianity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Humanities/Philosophies)

8 pages, 190 KB

Open AccessArticle

The West Nickel Mines Amish School Murders and the Cultural Fetishization of “Amish Forgiveness”

by Darcy Metcalfe

Religions 2019, 10(9), 524; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10090524 - 11 Sep 2019

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 7801

Abstract

In the days and weeks following the West Nickel Mines Amish school murders, hegemonic U.S. cultural discourse largely fetishized the Amish response of forgiveness in revealing ways. Within this discourse, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were referenced in articles and commentaries which sought to weigh the moral value of forgiveness in response to extreme violence. In this way, understandings of Amish forgiveness were largely “strip-mined” from the Nickel Mines community and “transported wholesale” to other counter-cultural settings. In dominant U.S. capitalistic and consumeristic culture, Amish forgiveness quickly became a fluctuating material commodity that was fetishized in ways which revealed the destabilized moral consciousness of a nation. Dominant cultural discourse exposed this destabilization while it also worked to interrogate it. I conclude that the fetishization of forgiveness following the Amish school murders reflected collective concerns that reached far beyond the immediate context of the Nickel Mines Amish community. The U.S. cultural fetishization of forgiveness revealed, instead, a cultural consciousness that desperately sought relief from the chaos and confusion of what it means to be a citizen of nation that exists in and by the normativity of extreme violence. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)

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