Volodymyr Yermolenko, ukrainian philosopher, journalist editor in chief of UkraineWorld.org, published Ukraine in Histories and Stories, from Holodomor to Maidan and Russian aggression to diversity in 2022 and together with his wife, Tetyana Ogarkova, Life on the Edge (La Vie à la lisière), éditions Gallimard, in 2026.

VY: Well, I think we are living in a situation where we have not only the process of disentangling language from reality, and here we have all this surrealist language that tyrants use, and that was initially described by Orwell in his double speak and all this on this concept, but we also have a new revolution where language really becomes to exist apart from human bodies. And of course, we had kind of a pre-feeling of that in 1960s, 1970s with all this idea of semiosphere and all the rest, but now it becomes much more present because, well, semiosphere is nice, but it’s still the world of the universe of science created by humans, while we are in an epoch right now of artificial intelligence where science are being created by non-humans, by the language models themselves. And I think in my formula, in this formula of Aristotle’s own Logan Ehron, what is more important is not even Logos, because we have Logos already, which is not human, but zone.

The idea that it is not only Logos, but the idea is that it comes from a living being, from zone, from a living being, which is not only mortal, but is aware of his or her mortality. It’s a human being like the Pascalian, Le Roseau qui Pense, which is aware of both its finitude and infinity, of both its fragility and eternity. And I think this is the most interesting, the most important.

And of course, this presumes, if it is a focus on zone, this presumes the empathy, the question of empathy, how empathic we can be in today’s world, which has become more and more violent and cruel. And it’s true that the language practises today are going away from empathy, are going away from this idea of humanity, are going away from this idea that language is a tool of friendship. Increasingly, we are in the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)