In his essay, “WTFU: The Manifesto of The Nobodies,” Robert Hanna tells us that “WTFU,” pronounced “what-foo,” means wake the fuck up: and that that’s what he’s urging us all to do in this manifesto. Kantians and others will have already recognized that WTFU is a pithy, pungent contemporary equivalent of Immanuel Kant’s famous or … [continue reading]

(Wong, 2016) In his essay, “Higher Education Without Commodification, Mechanization, or Moralization,” Robert Hanna asks the question: what is the ultimate end of higher education? Giambattista Vico, echoing Socrates’s Delphic oracle, claimed that the ultimate end of all education is self-knowledge. Hanna fully agrees with Vico’s claim, but also wants radically to extend his idea … [continue reading]

(Blitzway, 2026) The doctrine of strong artificial intelligence says that the operations of digital computing systems or digital technology can equal or exceed the achievements of conscious, rational human animals. In “On the Impossibility of Kantbots” Robert Hanna argues against the thesis of strong artificial intelligence by demonstrating the impossibility of what he calls Kantbots, … [continue reading]

(Costa-Gavras, 1969) An earlier and exclusively online version of the essay, “Philosophical Rigor as Rigor Mortis, Or, How to Write a Publishable Paper Without Even Having to Think,” was written and published in 2015 by  the pseudonymous independent philosopher Z (aka, Robert Hanna), hence it appeared roughly five years prior to the “invasion of the … [continue reading]

“Whitehall From Charing Cross” (ca. 1899) by Herbert Menzies Marshall (Leithauser, 2021) In his essay “Philosophy and ‘A Complete Appreciation of the Usual’,” Robert Hanna begins with Henry James’s insightful remark that Anthony Trollope’s “great … [and] inestimable merit” as a novelist was “a complete appreciation of the usual.” By “the usual,” in this context, … [continue reading]

Figure 1: The Cosmic Rubber Sheet Torus (Wikimedia, 2012) Figure 2: (Coughlin et al., 2018) In “Space and Place” Robert Hanna asks the question “what is the nature of space?,” and answers it in terms of (i) Kant’s theory of the transcendental ideality of space, (ii) our representation of egocentrically-centered place, which grounds our representation … [continue reading]

Engraving of Kant at his desk (Birck, 18th century) In his essay “Kantian Futurism” (Hanna, 2024), Robert Hanna argued that all foreseeably future philosophy worldwide will be a series of positive or negative footnotes to Kant. Moreover, as regards negative footnotes, the 140-year-long anti-Kantian tradition of Analytic philosophy is in fact now coming to an … [continue reading]

(Bramesco, 2021) In Robert Hanna’s view, Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism is most charitably and defensibly interpreted as a version of realistic idealism in two parts: first, manifest realism, and second, weak or counterfactual idealism. In “Kant, Manifest Realism, and The Refutation of Digital Idealism,” Hanna spells out manifest realism, demonstrates weak or counterfactual transcendental idealism, … [continue reading]

(Hanna, 2025) Digital ethics and AI ethics are of fundamental importance for humankind and its future. In his book, Digital Technology for Humans, Robert Hanna shows how specifically Kantian moral principles can be applied to the design, production, and implementation of digital technology, with a special focus on how these principles flow from the concept … [continue reading]