The Fourth Fudan Nihilism Forum: Scholars Discuss AI and the Revival of Philosophical Anthropology

In 1799, in a letter to Fichte, Jacobi used the term "nihilism" for the first time in the modern sense, worrying that radical Enlightenment rationality would dissolve sacred values and bring about spiritual emptiness. Nietzsche, by contrast, understood nihilism as the self-depreciation of the highest values: "God is dead" is both the collapse of old values and the opening of a path toward the revaluation of all values and the awakening of life itself. Today, the anxiety of replacement brought about by artificial intelligence is forcing us to re-examine the value foundation of "what it means to be human." Recently, at the Fourth Nihilism Forum held at Fudan University—"AI and the Revival of Philosophical Anthropology"—participating scholars engaged in in-depth discussion around topics such as the ontology of AI, AI and social theory, AI's subjectivity, AI and philosophical anthropology, and nihilism in the AI era. Professor Wang Nanshi of the School of Philosophy at Nankai University re-examined the theoretical significance of Engels' proposition that "labor created man" in the AI era, pointing out that it reveals that human beings can continuously generate themselves through labor practice, the evolution of tools, and cultural transmission, constituting an important theoretical foundation of historical materialism. What artificial intelligence may mainly replace is labor governed by survival needs and external purposes, whereas free creative activities such as artistic creation, scientific discovery, and critique should still be regarded as important dimensions constituting what it means to be human. Professor Wu Xiaoming of the School of Philosophy at Fudan University emphasized that although nihilism may have seemed at the time to be a "European phenomenon," it actually possesses world-historical significance. Unbelief in the sense of the decline of Christian faith is by no means the essence and foundation of nihilism, but has always been merely a result of nihilism. For this reason, a distinction should be made between the essence of this phenomenon and its concrete manifestations, avoiding substituting phenomena or results for the inquiry into their roots. He believes that AI's surpassing of humans in specific capacities does not mean a comprehensive surpassing of human existence; on the contrary, we should start from the finitude unique to humans or the authentic existential situation of humans as "beings-toward-death" and rethink the connections and differences between artificial intelligence and humans. Professor Sun Zhouxing of the School of Philosophy at Zhejiang University and the China Academy of Art, starting from Heidegger's "forgetfulness of Being" and his critique of modern technology, judged that digital technology is no longer a mere external tool, but through datafication, algorithmization, and the logic of calculability penetrates deeply into human perception, action, and understanding, thereby forming a new form of digital existence. Digital nihilism is both the inevitable fate of technological civilization and a symptom of the imbalance of meaning mechanisms. Only by rebuilding the capacities for embodied perception, individual creation, and artistic generation can new space be opened for human freedom and dignity. When algorithms take over the distribution of attention, the task of philosophy is to teach people anew "how to pause," "how to feel," and "how to create." This is not only a theoretical response but also an ontological exercise that every individual must practice in the technological age. Professor Fu Yongjun of the Center for Chinese Hermeneutics and the School of Philosophy and Social Development at Shandong University believes that the development of generative artificial intelligence in language, reasoning, and autonomous decision-making has profoundly challenged the status of the rational subject established by Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." However, this crisis does not mean that human existence itself will come to an end; rather, it exposes the theoretical limitation of traditional philosophy in equating reason with a certain logical and formalized mode of thinking. Facing the challenges of the AI era, philosophy should shift from pure reason to historical reason, and in the activity of historical understanding re-reveal the unique mode of human existence and the possibility of its meaning generation. Professor Wang Xingfu of the School of Philosophy at Fudan University, starting from Hobbes' discussion of the "pricing" of human value and combining it with Marx's critique of the commodification of labor power and capitalist social relations, proposed another possible path for understanding nihilism, revealing the political-economic roots of modern nihilism. Nihilism manifests not only as the disintegration of transcendent values but also as the commodification, monetization, and instrumentalization of human beings in modern society. Thus, nihilism is no longer merely a historical event of Western metaphysics, but has deeply permeated the daily life of modern society and become an omnipresent universal phenomenon. Associate Professor Yu Mingfeng of the School of Humanities at Tongji University likened AI to a civilization's "Trojan horse": it is a bestowed "gift," whose embedded message has not yet fully appeared but is in the process of being conveyed. The root of the nihilism crisis lies in the metaphysics of subjectivity, namely man's "revolt (Aufstand)," in which man becomes the master and subject of the totality of beings, while other beings are reduced to objects. The AI era requires a re-examination of this subjective situation, because AI is not simply a tool but an infrastructure that constructs a "new reality." The old framework used by modern philosophy to articulate the difference between humans and machines has become ineffective, and philosophical anthropology needs to reflect on the extent to which its own conceptual framework remains constrained by metaphysics. This forum was jointly hosted by the School of Philosophy at Fudan University, the Center for Contemporary Foreign Marxism Studies, and the Institute of Ethnic Studies at Fudan University.