Automatic Decision and Sovereignty
(2025) LIBERTÀ E TECNICA (Freedom and Technology) — Location: Università di Torino (9.June.2025)
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- In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that modernity promises the triumph of the “sovereign subject” (Adorno & Horkheimer 2016). Since the book denounces the reversal of this historical project into the automation of conformist behavior, a question arises: does the Western notion of sovereignty pave the way for automatic decision-making? Or, phrased in a more contemporary way: is the sovereign individual the appropriate subject for a life mediated by recommendation engines? The goal of this presentation is to formulate a critical genealogy of the concept of sovereignty with a central hypothesis in mind: the digital is a decision-making machine that relieves us of individual sovereignty. I propose that there is a fundamental connection between the culture of individual sovereignty that characterizes late Western modernity and the success of digital media. This hypothesis finds supporting evidence in Schwartz’s diagnosis, according to which we would gladly welcome a machine that chooses daily on our behalf in all areas: selecting a movie, a travel destination, or even a vote (Schwartz 2016). As more and more of our choices rely on the “scores” assigned to us by platforms, and as we appear paralyzed by the “fear of a better option” (FOBO), the challenge is to provide a philosophical framework for Schwartz’s observation. My argument unfolds in two stages. First, I will situate my discussion within the current debate on individual sovereignty. I will demonstrate not only to what extent we can consider ourselves as living in a culture of individual sovereignty (Ehrenberg 1998; Han 2015), but also what hypotheses have been proposed to explain the surprising convergence between political theories of sovereignty – particularly those of Hobbes and Schmitt – and decision automation (Supiot 2015; Guilhot 2020). Then, I will explore the possibility of a “critical theory of sovereignty” (Loick, 2019) in the digital context, arguing that digital technology can be understood as a decision-making machine. This, of course, requires acknowledging the centrality of “decision”, as a concept, in current debates on digital technology (Gasser & Mayer-Schönberger, 2024). It also necessitates questioning the very concept of sovereignty, noting that – especially from Hobbes to Schmitt – it has gradually detached itself from the political body to become associated with a lone individual, one who seeks a machine to relieve him of this burden.
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Ghins, J.-B. (2025). Automatic Decision and Sovereignty. LIBERTÀ E TECNICA (Freedom and Technology), Università di Torino. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/267504