Beginning in the spring of 1667, public opinion in Paris was rocked by a remarkable affair involving domesticated animals: the first practical experiments to transfuse animal blood into humans for therapeutic purposes. The experiments that came to be known as the “Transfusion Affair” were shrouded in the competing claims of a highly public controversy in which consensus and truth, alongside the animal subjects themselves, were the first victims. “There was never anything that divided opinion as much as we presently witness with the transfusions”, wrote the Parisian lawyer at Parlement, Louis de Basril, late in the affair, in February 1668. “It is a topic of the salons, an amusement at the court, the subject of philosophical dissertations; and doctors talk incessantly about it in all their consultations.”1
At the center of the controversy was the young Montpellier physician and “most able Cartesian philosopher” Jean Denis, recently established in Paris, who experimented with animal blood to cure sickness, especially madness, and to prolong life. With the talented surgeon Paul Emmerez, Denis transfused small amounts of blood from the carotid arteries of calves, lambs, and kid goats into the veins of five ailing human patients between June 1667 and January 1668. Two died, but three were purportedly cured and rejuvenated.2 The experiments divided the medical establishment and engaged a Parisian public avid for scientific discoveries, especially medical therapies to cure disease and to stay forever young.3
The Transfusion Affair took place in the shadow of Descartes. Not only was Jean Denis trained at the Montpellier Medical School in 1667, following a program receptive to the mechanistic physiology of Descartes, but he also carried out his experiments under the patronage of Henri-Louis Habert de Montmor, whose private scientific salon or “academy” had been receptive and deeply sympathetic to Cartesian mechanism in the 1650s. Descartes developed the idea of animal automatism in his 1637 Discours de la méthode, which opposed the ‘‘thinking substance’’ and the “corporeal and mechanical” body, thus denying reason, speech, and consciousness to animals. The soul of animals, which had survived as a “sensible” one in the tripartite scheme of Aristotle and Galen (nutritive, sensible, and rational), fell away. While Descartes admired the infinitely complex mechanisms of animal bodily functions, he expressed extreme skepticism about the interior life of animals and inevitably denied their moral exemplarity.
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/beast-in-the-blood-jean-denis-and-the-transfusion-affair?utm_source=newsletter
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-32604-7_9
In this study, I reconsider the question of the continuities and discontinuities between the Renaissance and the Early Modern period, putting the accent on the idea of “the perfection of man,” as René Descartes conceived it in his Meditations and his Principles of Philosophy. I show in what sense it is possible to speak in this connection of a humanist thought, and I proceed to distinguish between the two complementary meanings recognized by Descartes as being a part of the hominis perfectio. There is, on the one hand, a remarkable confidence in the natural capacities of the human mind and the conviction that since our faculties are all good by their nature, what is important is to make the best use of them; and on the other hand there is a general project to “elevate our nature to its highest degree of perfection.” Still, Descartes rejects, in the wake of Montaigne, the ontological conception of the hominis perfectio, which, after the manner of a Raymond Sebond, would make the human being the highest creature in the scale of beings. The main perfection of the human being declares itself for Descartes with respect to the less considerable perfections that are within us: a comparison that is internal to the study of the human being, and that is not carried out with respect to other creatures. Hence it is not between Montaigne and Descartes, between the time of the Renaissance and the Early Modern period, but, within the Renaissance itself, between Sebond and Montaigne, that the break with the image of the human being qua center of the world and goal of creation took place.
“Veneziani notices that Western society realizes the essence of Marxism: “radical atheism and materialism, internationalism and universal non-belonging, the primacy of praxis and the death of philosophy, the domination of production and the universal manipulation of nature, technological Faustianism and equality that realizes itself as homogenization.” The new globalist liberalism, Veneziani observes, absorbs the lesson of Marxism, purifying it of all prophetic, gnostic and anti-modern slag, and of solidaristic suggestions. Therefore we can say that the West is Marxism’s full secularization, as well as its perfect realization. (source for this citation unknown in my note but findable.)
So now post covid it is Cartesian Capitalism that absorbs Cartesian Communism, using it to erase religious sacredness and national sacredness, a goal it could not have reached in any other way. Transhuman is ontological conception of the hominis perfectio.
Escobar writes regarding Serbian analyst, Prof. Slobodan Vladusic. His main thesis, in a nutshell: “Megalopolis hates Russia because it is not Megalopolis – it has not entered the sphere of anti-humanism and that is why it remains a civilization alternative. Hence Russophobia.” Vladusic contends that the intra-Slav war in Ukraine is “a great catastrophe for Orthodox civilization” – mirroring my recent first attempt to open a serious debate on a Clash of Christianities.
Yet the major schism is not on religion but culture: “The key difference between the former West and today’s Megalopolis is that Megalopolis programmatically renounces the humanistic heritage of the West.”
So now “it is possible to erase not only the musical canon, but also the entire European humanistic heritage: the entire literature, fine arts, philosophy” because of a “trivialization of knowledge”. What’s left is an empty space, actually a cultural black hole, “filled by promoting terms such as ‘posthumanism’ and ‘transhumanism’.”
Now pausing I stipulate that this is propaganda.
What we see is overcome by the fundamental world view of Descartes and the optimal Machine-Man of post modernity as hominis perfectio. Russia and China have no interest in the God-Man any more than does the West. All eyes and energy invested in the A.I race to create the literal Communist Colossus, the Fauci Project.
Karen Kingston wrote -For quite some time, I have been discussing that there is no mRNA found in the vaccines by many teams around the world. In my mind, this stunning find should have made world news, and should have had the sincere scientists and doctors discussing these findings. The best counter argument many could muster was: “Well, you did not look at millions of vials.” No, we did not, but does this result not bother you? Maybe it suggests a different explanation? Most surprisingly to me - even Steve Kirsch did not find mRNA - but that did not inspire the freedom doctors to any discussion.
https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/on-the-utility-for-inducing-peaceful