I think, therefore I am

Abstract

Complex and contemporary phenomena such as algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and disinformation reveal a new form of capitalism, transform communication relationships, and impose new conditions on the Symbolic and Imaginary Orders. All of these situations are analyzed by Eugênio Bucci in his book A razão desumana: cultura e informação na era da desinformação inculta (e sedutora) as products of an inhuman reason, based on which this review develops its main concepts. His proposal stands in opposition to the traditional sense of reason, which considers a subject who thinks and is endowed with language. In inhuman reason technology is elevated to the second power and operates through a capitalism that extracts data from people while also generating an inversion of culture. In this process, the machine detaches the spirit from the human—specifically from thought—while also stripping away the possibility of feeling and thinking. Reclaiming these conditions may represent the recovery of reason as a uniquely humanistic characteristic.