The Spirit of Hope

by Byung-Chul Han

Thinking has an affective, bodily dimension. Goosebumps are the first thought image. Thought images have deep roots in the physical body. Without feelings, emotions or affects – in general terms, without being stirred – there is no knowledge. Stirrings innervate thinking. This is precisely why artificial intelligence cannot think. Because feelings and affects are analogue, bodily events, they cannot be represented in algorithms. Intelligence merely calculates. It is based on ‘inter-legere’, meaning ‘to choose between’. And the choice is between already existing possibilities. Intelligence therefore does not create anything new. Someone who is capable of genuine thought is not intelligent. Only through thinking do we gain access to the altogether other. Someone who thinks, Deleuze would say, is an idiot. The gesture of thinking is ‘faire l’idiot’.1 Only whoever is capable of being an idiot can make a new beginning, break radically with what exists, leave the past in favour of what is coming. Only idiots can hope.