Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Yuk HUI (許煜)

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Yuk HUI is currently Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions. Hui studied Computer Engineering at the University of Hong Kong and Philosophy at Goldsmiths College in London where he wrote his doctoral thesis under the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020); he obtained his Habilitation ( venia legendi in philosophy of technology) from Leuphana University Lüneburg. He held professorship and visiting professorships at the city University of Hong Kong, the University of Tokyo and the China Academy of Art. Hui is a juror of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture since 2020, and convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology since 2014.

Hui has published in academic journals such as Research in Phenomenology, Philosophy Today, Metaphilosophy, Parrhesia, Angelaki, SubStance, Theory Culture and Society, Cahiers Simondon, Deleuze Studies, Derrida Today, Intellectica, Krisis, Implications Philosophiques, Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, Techné, Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, Appareil and Foundations of Science.

He is author of several monographs including On the Existence of Digital Objects (prefaced by Bernard Stiegler, University of Minnesota Press, March 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic/MIT Press, 2016/2nd print 2019/3rd print 2023), Recursivity and Contingency (prefaced by Howard Caygill, Rowman & Littlefield International, January 2019), Art and Cosmotechnics (University of Minessota Press/e-flux, June 2021/2nd print 2022/3rd print 2023),Post-Europe (Sequence Press/Urbanomic, 2024), Machine and Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) and Kant Machine (Bloomsbury, 2026). Hui's books have been translated into a dozen languages including German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Norwegian, Polish, Czech, Spanish and Portuguese, and have been reviewed and endorsed by academic journals such asThe Philosophical Quarterly, Radical Philosophy, Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, Theory Culture and Society, Issue in Science and Technology as well as popular newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El País, Folha de Sao Paulo.

He is the editor of 30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory (Meson 2015), Cosmotechnics: For a Renewed Concept of Technology in the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2021) and Cybernetics for the 21st Century (Hanart, 2024) among many others.

Yuk Hui was awarded the Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship (2023) by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council; and received the Certificate of Commendation of the Saint Francis Prize in Techno-Humanities (2024) from the Saint Francis University for his “significant achievement in the study of philosophy and technology.”

Research Interests: Philosophy of Technology and Media, Philosophy of Nature, History of Technology, History of Philosophy, Phenomenology, German Idealism, Cybernetics, Artificial Intelligence

Languages

English, French, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Chewchau
JAVA, C++, PHP, Processing, Python

Education

Habilitation (Philosophy), Leuphana Univeristy Lüneburg
PhD (Philosophy), MA, Goldsmiths College London
B.ENG (Computer Engineering), University of Hong Kong

Publications

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machine and sovereignty

"Yuk Hui’s Kant Machine offers an eloquent and reasoned reflection on the origins and futures of AI, and a sharply critical assessment of the Kant Machine. Charting a course between the utopias and dystopias, this book offers a timely challenge to the assumptions informing the current debate, and invites a new and more sophisticated approach to the understanding and critique of AI."

——Howard Caygill

machine and sovereignty

“Machine and Sovereignty is a profound, groundbreaking, and timely call for a refoundation of political order and governance in light of current technological and ecological challenges at the planetary scale.This book is destined to become a seminal text in political philosophy and technology studies. It is not only an intellectual tour de force but also a crucial guide for navigating the complexities of the twenty-first century.”

——Antoinette Rouvroy

post-europe

“an intriguing provocation to think differently about Europe, its complacencies and its role in a rapidly changing world.”

— International Affairs

“uniquely valuable for readers interested in the geopolitical and intellectual histories bridging Europe and Asia, while challenging them to rethink technology’s role in shaping our future"

— Philosophy East and West

art and cosmotechnics

“Art and Cosmotechnics opens the way to rethinking technology beyond Gestell, by exploring the obscure paths of the experience of art.”

— Augustin Berque

“Yuk Hui has played a key role in creating a framework within which current art-historical discourse regarding this vital subject can thrive.

— Leonardo

recursivity and contingency

"In my opinion, the most interesting book on theory in recent years."

— Peter Sloterdijk

"The conceptual versatility of recursivity and contingency may prove useful in further displacing the dominance of the technology as anthropological universal and means of exploitation."

— The Philosophical Quarterly

YukHuiCover2

"There is no more challenging work for anyone interested in trying to understand both the manifold philosophical challenges of Western scientific technology and the contemporary rise of China on the world-historical scene."

— Carl Mitcham

"In this remarkable book, Yuk Hui draws on the major thinkers of both the West and the East to elaborate an original reflection on the nature of technology."

—Andrew Feenberg

Forwarded by Bernard Stiegler, Minneapolis :University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

"Hui’s project is remarkable for a conceptual engagement with twentieth-century philosophies of technology (Simondon, Heidegger, Husserl, Stiegler, Ellul) that pushes these theories further by confronting them with questions of the digital."

— Radical Philosophy

"It has all the qualities of becoming a genuine classic in the future."

— Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie