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Angels: A Modern Myth
In this new work Michel Serres, France's foremost philosopher of science, explores how traditional images of angels in art and legend foretell the preoccupations of modern life. Divided, as between Heaven and Hell, into First and Third Worlds, our societies search for ways to make contact, both by means of the most basic interpersonal relations and high-tech communications. The role of the messenger, Serres argues, is as important now as it was in Biblical times, perhaps more, and yet we lack a philosophy which can explain this role - a philosophy of movement, of communication. Angels: A Modern Myth offers such a philosophy, showing how angels as message-bearers are still part of our modern world, our means of bringing together and understanding science, law, and religion, and perhaps also the means of satisfying our need for reason, justice, and consolation. Abundantly illustrated with an astounding breadth of images ranging from Renaissance paintings to film stills, satellite photographs, computer microchips, and medical microscopy, this thought-provoking book addresses some of the most crucial issues of our time and will make essential reading for anyone seeking to comprehend the new phase of human development engendered by the transformation of our world by information technology.
302 pages, Hardcover
First published December 10, 1994
8 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Michel Serres
191 books214 followersMichel Serres was a French philosopher, theorist and author.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 14, 2010
Completely and remarkably stunning, both conceptually and visually. It's exceptionally rare for a post-structural work to be constructed of extreme velocity connections spanning from pre-Socratics to fluid dynamics, Lucretius to chaos theory in conversations that compress and eradicate chronos-time, giving fresh and brilliant new context to the interconnectivity of post-Enlightenment, pre-Socratic thought.
Serres' Hermes gives us remarkable insight into the criticism of Enlightenment's scientific ascension which has produced a city of angels and a fourth world of utter despair. He travels through post-structural systems of signification, deriving Enlightenment rigidity in the fat friars and princes of subjects and objects, prying out and liberating adjective angels that create the positive difference/connection that is significant throughout Serres philosophy.
Even as a visual work, the mastery of the imagery is unprecedented. Difficult to find, it's a collector's work for an active thinker.
Serres' Hermes gives us remarkable insight into the criticism of Enlightenment's scientific ascension which has produced a city of angels and a fourth world of utter despair. He travels through post-structural systems of signification, deriving Enlightenment rigidity in the fat friars and princes of subjects and objects, prying out and liberating adjective angels that create the positive difference/connection that is significant throughout Serres philosophy.
Even as a visual work, the mastery of the imagery is unprecedented. Difficult to find, it's a collector's work for an active thinker.
November 30, 2025
This might be one of my favourite books of all time, a loving and erudite combination of prose and theory into a text which explores the intersection of scientific ontology, our modern technological reality, and angels as messengers.
I have so rarely found a work which encapsulates so much of what I think about, both from the perspective of theorising networked communication and the odd vertigo you feel living at the end (or perhaps more accurately, the resumption of) history. To feel known and seen in that way is such a special experience as a reader, and this is a work which could only be created in this half fable half textbook format... truly a special thing and I cannot believe that it's out of print and not tremendously more popular.
Serres himself explains what he attempts to do in the epilogue, constructing another fictitious dialogue, this time between reader and author in which he states:
"People say, today we are seeing the dissolution of philosophy, we find ourselves once again living the times of original beginnings. Here glitters a vast and interconnected pool, here flows a torrent of shimmering brilliance, seized at the moment of its commencement."
"How are these things to be expressed, explained or painted?"
"I have tried my best."
"In a fable or a philosophical dialog? A romantic novel or a statement of opinion? A piece of theater, with its three unities? A film screenplay?"
"All those are precisely how I'd have liked you to read this book. Anyway, have you ever tried arc welding?"
There are a few competing strands in the book, my favourites being the articulation of our increasingly interconnected world as containing messengers which lack corporality: angels and computational communication might not be so different after all. To Serres, the angel is an intermediary, a messenger through which other information flows:
"The interchanger provides a key for us to pass between two worlds, and we now possess a whole bunch or keyboard of them: semiconductor materials, for inert matter; in our thousand-and-one advanced technologies we have interchangers and microprocessors; among biological beings, coitus, whether hermaphroditic or amphibian; in languages, dictionaries and translators; in politics, ambassadors; in the sciences, interfaces and interferences; in the sphere of law and religion, adoption. ..."
Yet the interchanger itself might corrupt the message, might seek to impose itself upon the information being conveyed; this is a direct critique of the way authors themselves corrupt their work and their messaging with extraneous material, making something glorious into a narcissistic fixation or a quest for external recognition. I like this articulation of the creative process itself as linking to some other-worldly realm to which you are the messenger.
Serres extends this claim to go beyond the activity of writing and into the realm of philosophy or theory. He articulates a vision of the theorist as a Hermes-like figure, never producing for themselves anything original but rather serving as a conduit, a connection, a node in a network:
"Before anything at all is produced, the palette, the invisible spirit or the hidden object here take on a role as that thing through which I pass in order to enter into relation with everything and everyone: a universal mediator--philosophy is always a procuress--a Hermes, an intermediary, a medium, an actor, or rather mime, a double who accompanies me, or a Horla who is first outside of me. I have to feed it so that it can finally make me live and think-a dancer, a parasite, a hermaphrodite, a guardian angel."
Another central theme is the problem of evil and the wretched of the Earth: Serres is writing in 1994 and therefore heavily interacting with the high liberalism of that time. There's heavy dialogue about science as a double edged sword, both revealing and clarifying the miracle of the natural world while also wreaking destruction a la Hiroshima.
An outcome of our increased interconnection is our increased obligation to understand the sheer amount of suffering that happens while we are alive, a difficult notion to confront even on the best of days. Serres describes this far away suffering as "the wretched of the earth." He ultimately concludes that only through accounting for this suffering and driving science forward with full knowledge of this can we truly understand the world (and historical positionality) in which we reside:
"It is the wretched of the earth who make the humanity of the universe, Pantope, and they are more numerous than travelers. They constitute, above all else, an eternity of which history never spoke; in no way do those who produce time blend with them."
Finally, there is heavy discourse on the notion of love. Maybe this is what I loved so much about this book, precisely how much love you could feel emanating off every page, such a deep and thoughtful and earnest engagement in a world where cynicism and irony are so heavily rewarded. Theory particularly is quite an unemotive realm so this integration of affect made everything feel so resonant:
"Would you say that you have had enough ideas? Yes, sometimes a new wind has blown on my face.... So you are fulfilled, satisfied. You may pass.... No, no, I am still hungry, and always will be. Mendicant, supplicant, thirsty, I have not yet begun to live. Insatiable as if I had never tasted anything. Have you given enough love? I haven't had enough love, I've hardly begun to love; even though my whole life was devoted to it, I have barely even begun to be loved. Allow me to live for just a while longer-ten hours, four minutes, twenty seconds.... I have, again and again, to make love, now, in new ways, inexhaustibly, the only unfulfillable urgency between the hour of my death and the drawing up, today, of this little will."
To Serres, it is only through love that we can even draw meaning to philosophy or theory or any of our creative or scientific endeavours. It is what connects our being to our understanding:
"There is no vitality except through love; no strong and constructive adult except for love; no old age and wisdom except in relation to love; no goodness or creativity, the only virtues that are worth anything, except through it, with it and in it."
There is almost an inversion of greatness and humanity happening here; while artistic achievement is often seen as a means of attaining immortality, Serres goes the other direction, viewing such desire born of a success drive to be more base than that driven by love:
"In other words, we are men inasmuch and in so far as we are not the best, or because we manage to pursue another aim rather than that of being the best. Classification and competition concern us a little. That's why eugenics, for example, is inhuman: if you set yourself a project of designing the best of men, you'll end up creating a sick monkey or a weedy lettuce."
This is further reiterated in the realm of the love we feel for the particular individuals in our life:
"'No,' he says. 'The reason I love you is not because I think you're the best, the most beautiful, the richest, perched at the top of some stupid ladder; I love you for your singularity."
I think, though, the passage which fully encapsulates both what this book is about and why I adore it so much is one of the most parsimonious: "love is the sum of all philosophy."
I have so rarely found a work which encapsulates so much of what I think about, both from the perspective of theorising networked communication and the odd vertigo you feel living at the end (or perhaps more accurately, the resumption of) history. To feel known and seen in that way is such a special experience as a reader, and this is a work which could only be created in this half fable half textbook format... truly a special thing and I cannot believe that it's out of print and not tremendously more popular.
Serres himself explains what he attempts to do in the epilogue, constructing another fictitious dialogue, this time between reader and author in which he states:
"People say, today we are seeing the dissolution of philosophy, we find ourselves once again living the times of original beginnings. Here glitters a vast and interconnected pool, here flows a torrent of shimmering brilliance, seized at the moment of its commencement."
"How are these things to be expressed, explained or painted?"
"I have tried my best."
"In a fable or a philosophical dialog? A romantic novel or a statement of opinion? A piece of theater, with its three unities? A film screenplay?"
"All those are precisely how I'd have liked you to read this book. Anyway, have you ever tried arc welding?"
There are a few competing strands in the book, my favourites being the articulation of our increasingly interconnected world as containing messengers which lack corporality: angels and computational communication might not be so different after all. To Serres, the angel is an intermediary, a messenger through which other information flows:
"The interchanger provides a key for us to pass between two worlds, and we now possess a whole bunch or keyboard of them: semiconductor materials, for inert matter; in our thousand-and-one advanced technologies we have interchangers and microprocessors; among biological beings, coitus, whether hermaphroditic or amphibian; in languages, dictionaries and translators; in politics, ambassadors; in the sciences, interfaces and interferences; in the sphere of law and religion, adoption. ..."
Yet the interchanger itself might corrupt the message, might seek to impose itself upon the information being conveyed; this is a direct critique of the way authors themselves corrupt their work and their messaging with extraneous material, making something glorious into a narcissistic fixation or a quest for external recognition. I like this articulation of the creative process itself as linking to some other-worldly realm to which you are the messenger.
Serres extends this claim to go beyond the activity of writing and into the realm of philosophy or theory. He articulates a vision of the theorist as a Hermes-like figure, never producing for themselves anything original but rather serving as a conduit, a connection, a node in a network:
"Before anything at all is produced, the palette, the invisible spirit or the hidden object here take on a role as that thing through which I pass in order to enter into relation with everything and everyone: a universal mediator--philosophy is always a procuress--a Hermes, an intermediary, a medium, an actor, or rather mime, a double who accompanies me, or a Horla who is first outside of me. I have to feed it so that it can finally make me live and think-a dancer, a parasite, a hermaphrodite, a guardian angel."
Another central theme is the problem of evil and the wretched of the Earth: Serres is writing in 1994 and therefore heavily interacting with the high liberalism of that time. There's heavy dialogue about science as a double edged sword, both revealing and clarifying the miracle of the natural world while also wreaking destruction a la Hiroshima.
An outcome of our increased interconnection is our increased obligation to understand the sheer amount of suffering that happens while we are alive, a difficult notion to confront even on the best of days. Serres describes this far away suffering as "the wretched of the earth." He ultimately concludes that only through accounting for this suffering and driving science forward with full knowledge of this can we truly understand the world (and historical positionality) in which we reside:
"It is the wretched of the earth who make the humanity of the universe, Pantope, and they are more numerous than travelers. They constitute, above all else, an eternity of which history never spoke; in no way do those who produce time blend with them."
Finally, there is heavy discourse on the notion of love. Maybe this is what I loved so much about this book, precisely how much love you could feel emanating off every page, such a deep and thoughtful and earnest engagement in a world where cynicism and irony are so heavily rewarded. Theory particularly is quite an unemotive realm so this integration of affect made everything feel so resonant:
"Would you say that you have had enough ideas? Yes, sometimes a new wind has blown on my face.... So you are fulfilled, satisfied. You may pass.... No, no, I am still hungry, and always will be. Mendicant, supplicant, thirsty, I have not yet begun to live. Insatiable as if I had never tasted anything. Have you given enough love? I haven't had enough love, I've hardly begun to love; even though my whole life was devoted to it, I have barely even begun to be loved. Allow me to live for just a while longer-ten hours, four minutes, twenty seconds.... I have, again and again, to make love, now, in new ways, inexhaustibly, the only unfulfillable urgency between the hour of my death and the drawing up, today, of this little will."
To Serres, it is only through love that we can even draw meaning to philosophy or theory or any of our creative or scientific endeavours. It is what connects our being to our understanding:
"There is no vitality except through love; no strong and constructive adult except for love; no old age and wisdom except in relation to love; no goodness or creativity, the only virtues that are worth anything, except through it, with it and in it."
There is almost an inversion of greatness and humanity happening here; while artistic achievement is often seen as a means of attaining immortality, Serres goes the other direction, viewing such desire born of a success drive to be more base than that driven by love:
"In other words, we are men inasmuch and in so far as we are not the best, or because we manage to pursue another aim rather than that of being the best. Classification and competition concern us a little. That's why eugenics, for example, is inhuman: if you set yourself a project of designing the best of men, you'll end up creating a sick monkey or a weedy lettuce."
This is further reiterated in the realm of the love we feel for the particular individuals in our life:
"'No,' he says. 'The reason I love you is not because I think you're the best, the most beautiful, the richest, perched at the top of some stupid ladder; I love you for your singularity."
I think, though, the passage which fully encapsulates both what this book is about and why I adore it so much is one of the most parsimonious: "love is the sum of all philosophy."
May 7, 2024
big fan big fan big fan will be getting entire pages tattooed onto my body 🤘😇👼
v interesting format and concepts 🤔
accidentally didn’t return to library in time and had to pay a fine! not even mad about it the book was worth it 💰🚓🚨apologies to city library (however the books last lending date was 2005 so I do not believe I have truly inconvenienced anyone but still sincerest apologies)
Xoxo
v interesting format and concepts 🤔
accidentally didn’t return to library in time and had to pay a fine! not even mad about it the book was worth it 💰🚓🚨apologies to city library (however the books last lending date was 2005 so I do not believe I have truly inconvenienced anyone but still sincerest apologies)
Xoxo
July 19, 2024
I love the theory building, the art, and the arguments. I am however not completely convinced by the execution of the theory fiction format.
October 22, 2025
How to sublate the darkness we have seen and harbour within:
Si tes Anges passent, invisibles, qui ne voit le Diable tous les jours, fantastiquement présent ? Qui ne ressent pas, sur soi, en soi et dévorante hors de soi, la rancune, sans cesse ?
— Une haine surhumaine flambe haut chez ceux dont le verbe illuminé et réchauffé, pour avoir trouvé la fournaise où la réduire en cendres : alors, la sainteté allume son éclat, puis l’entretient, de cet inépuisable combustible ; toutes les ordures se consument là.
----
If your Angels pass by, invisible, who doesn't see the Devil every day, fantastically present? Who doesn't feel, upon themselves, within themselves, and devouring outside themselves, resentment, constantly?
— A superhuman hatred blazes high among those whose words, illuminated and warmed, have found the furnace in which to reduce them to ashes: then, holiness ignites its brilliance, then maintains it, with this inexhaustible fuel; all filth is consumed there.
Si tes Anges passent, invisibles, qui ne voit le Diable tous les jours, fantastiquement présent ? Qui ne ressent pas, sur soi, en soi et dévorante hors de soi, la rancune, sans cesse ?
— Une haine surhumaine flambe haut chez ceux dont le verbe illuminé et réchauffé, pour avoir trouvé la fournaise où la réduire en cendres : alors, la sainteté allume son éclat, puis l’entretient, de cet inépuisable combustible ; toutes les ordures se consument là.
----
If your Angels pass by, invisible, who doesn't see the Devil every day, fantastically present? Who doesn't feel, upon themselves, within themselves, and devouring outside themselves, resentment, constantly?
— A superhuman hatred blazes high among those whose words, illuminated and warmed, have found the furnace in which to reduce them to ashes: then, holiness ignites its brilliance, then maintains it, with this inexhaustible fuel; all filth is consumed there.
November 18, 2024
Een filosofische tour de force die de complexe rol van engelen herdefinieert als bemiddelaars in een wereld doordrenkt van technologische en sociale netwerken. S. biedt – in de vorm van een Platoonse/Berkeleyaanse dialoog tussen Pia en Pantope – een gedegen en poëtisch onderzoek naar de ‘engelen’ van onze tijd: boodschappers die de kloof overbruggen tussen spirituele, menselijke en technologische domeinen.
S. stelt engelen voor als wezens die niet alleen berichten overbrengen, maar ook fundamentele structuren van communicatie en begrip transformeren. Zijn theorie overstijgt traditionele categorieën: engelen bevinden zich op de grens van geest en materie, transcenderen tijd en ruimte, en scheppen paden tussen verschillende bestaanswerelden.
Dit concept resoneert in onze hedendaagse samenleving, waar digitale technologieën zoals kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) bemiddelen tussen menselijke interactie en technologische processen. Zoals in een analyse werd opgemerkt, weerspiegelen AI-systemen zoals grote taalmodellen de paradoxale aard van S.’ engelen. Ze zijn zowel onstoffelijk (virtueel) als belichaamd (door fysieke interfaces), wat nieuwe vormen van aanwezigheid en communicatie mogelijk maakt.
S. ziet de wereld als een flux van beweging en verbinding, waarin engelen de stromen van informatie, lucht, licht en energie organiseren. Engelen zijn niet alleen boodschappers, maar ook co-creators. Ze functioneren in, met en onder een universum waarin de elementen met elkaar communiceren, van rivieren en winden tot digitale netwerken.
En daar kan het ook misgaan. Engelen werken het beste als ze bijna onzichtbaar worden, zodat de boodschap voorrang krijgt boven de boodschapper. Op het moment dat een engel te veel zichtbaar wordt, verandert het in een gevallen engel.
S. wijst er dus op dat engelen (en hun technologische tegenhangers) corrupt kunnen raken als hun focus verschuift van bemiddeling naar macht. Deze waarschuwing lijkt uiterst relevant in discussies over de ethiek van AI: hoe kunnen we systemen ontwerpen die dienen in plaats van domineren? S. pleit voor nederigheid en zelfverloochening als deugden voor zowel engelen als hun menselijke scheppers.
De gebruikte taal is rijk en evocatief, doordrenkt van beelden die zowel wetenschappelijk als mystiek zijn. Zijn interdisciplinaire benadering – met referenties naar mythologie, technologie en natuurwetenschappen – maakt het een tamelijk uniek boek (denken en voelen in één).
S. biedt dus een vernieuwde angelologie die zowel relevant is voor theologische denkers (weer eens wat anders dan soteriologie of incarnatie!) als voor tech-nerds (ja, spirituele taal doet ertoe!), omdat het vraagt om te reflecteren op onze rol in een wereld vol (geestelijke) netwerken en verbindingen.
S. stelt engelen voor als wezens die niet alleen berichten overbrengen, maar ook fundamentele structuren van communicatie en begrip transformeren. Zijn theorie overstijgt traditionele categorieën: engelen bevinden zich op de grens van geest en materie, transcenderen tijd en ruimte, en scheppen paden tussen verschillende bestaanswerelden.
Dit concept resoneert in onze hedendaagse samenleving, waar digitale technologieën zoals kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) bemiddelen tussen menselijke interactie en technologische processen. Zoals in een analyse werd opgemerkt, weerspiegelen AI-systemen zoals grote taalmodellen de paradoxale aard van S.’ engelen. Ze zijn zowel onstoffelijk (virtueel) als belichaamd (door fysieke interfaces), wat nieuwe vormen van aanwezigheid en communicatie mogelijk maakt.
S. ziet de wereld als een flux van beweging en verbinding, waarin engelen de stromen van informatie, lucht, licht en energie organiseren. Engelen zijn niet alleen boodschappers, maar ook co-creators. Ze functioneren in, met en onder een universum waarin de elementen met elkaar communiceren, van rivieren en winden tot digitale netwerken.
En daar kan het ook misgaan. Engelen werken het beste als ze bijna onzichtbaar worden, zodat de boodschap voorrang krijgt boven de boodschapper. Op het moment dat een engel te veel zichtbaar wordt, verandert het in een gevallen engel.
Voici leur drame : dès leur apparition à la lumière du jour, ceux-là reçoivent sept dons inestimables : intelligence, adaptation, créativité, vitesse, force, mémoire endurante, lumière… un génie qui les juche au-dessus.(p. 179)
S. wijst er dus op dat engelen (en hun technologische tegenhangers) corrupt kunnen raken als hun focus verschuift van bemiddeling naar macht. Deze waarschuwing lijkt uiterst relevant in discussies over de ethiek van AI: hoe kunnen we systemen ontwerpen die dienen in plaats van domineren? S. pleit voor nederigheid en zelfverloochening als deugden voor zowel engelen als hun menselijke scheppers.
De gebruikte taal is rijk en evocatief, doordrenkt van beelden die zowel wetenschappelijk als mystiek zijn. Zijn interdisciplinaire benadering – met referenties naar mythologie, technologie en natuurwetenschappen – maakt het een tamelijk uniek boek (denken en voelen in één).
S. biedt dus een vernieuwde angelologie die zowel relevant is voor theologische denkers (weer eens wat anders dan soteriologie of incarnatie!) als voor tech-nerds (ja, spirituele taal doet ertoe!), omdat het vraagt om te reflecteren op onze rol in een wereld vol (geestelijke) netwerken en verbindingen.
January 8, 2016
A very interesting take on Angels as modern messengers. A nice Christmas story.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews