This article was automatically translated from the original Turkish version.
The totality of tools and possibilities that have emerged in the age of artificial intelligence as objects of technical use has transformed the way modern subjectivity acquires knowledge in a remarkably intriguing manner. In this essay, I will attempt to demonstrate, through several examples concerning the anthropology of knowing, that artificial intelligence has generated a new habitus that reshapes subjectivity. I will introduce the practice of i’tikāf as an antidote to this process of reconfiguration.
Imagine that a loved one is lying in a hospital bed. If a doctor comes and says the patient has only three months to live, you would not immediately wonder why their lifespan has become a matter of calculation.1 At the most innocent level, you would assume the doctor, even if not formally assigned this role, is trying to psychologically prepare you. If we were to ask Merleau-Ponty, he would say that the condition of this calculative knowledge is like that of geography in the face of a landscape that first teaches us what a forest, a meadow, or a river is.2 When we take one step further, the picture we encounter is that the way of knowing the patient, through the tools the doctor uses and the embodied sensitivities these tools generate, molds the patient into a specific bodily and psychological character. Can a change in the mode of knowing truly alter character to this extent?
In the Middle Ages, Christian monks regarded the transcription of manuscript texts as a form of spiritual discipline akin to fasting, one that purified the individual.3 This practice shaped the body into one suited to monastic life, allowing certain virtues to take root within the person. In the pre-modern era, when the process of knowing was understood as a process of being, such practices aimed to transform the individual by enabling them to acquire specific virtues. Thus, knowledge was not merely a matter of recording information or confined to the epistemological category; rather, it occupied an ontological and ethical position. In this sense, the Christian process of knowing coincided with the process of becoming Christian.
It should not be surprising to encounter a similar situation in Ghazali’s thought. Ghazali’s model of subjectivity, which centers on a particular mode of existence and seeks the formation of a virtuous self oriented toward God and His creation through continuous tension, highlights the transitional relationship between knowledge and virtue through practical activity.4 Precisely for this reason, the Islamic process of knowing sustains the formation of Muslim subjectivity within tradition, beyond legal documentation.
In such a form of knowing, conditioned by practice, knowledge corresponds to virtue as one and the same thing, as in the Socratic account. Practice, despite its tedious nature, demands persistence and ultimately leads the individual to the intended state of consciousness. In this sense, knowledge is not a matter of possessing a dataset; rather, it is the state of consciousness formed by the continuous and renewed orientation of subjectivity toward a goal, along with the bodily and spiritual virtues it imparts to the person.
Taşköprülüzâde Ahmed Efendi, who believed that sitting with scholars, listening to their life stories, and transcribing them into manuscripts was a purifying process,5 raises in our minds the question of why the introduction of the printing press to Ottoman lands disturbed copyists and calligraphers: If we reproduce the texts we hold in our hands using a photocopier instead of paper and pen, would we still be performing an act that purifies us?
The reason the printing press disturbed Ottoman copyists and calligraphers is analogous to why ChatGPT should disturb us. The epistemic foundation of the Ottoman discomfort with the printing press lies in the fact that practical activity generates knowledge as virtue and shapes character. The printing press would overturn the way these individuals acquired knowledge and consequently produce a different virtue and character. An examination of the kind of virtue and character the printing press produced requires us to step slightly away from our own experience. Therefore, we must focus on how contemporary artificial intelligence tools are shaping virtue and character, and how they are transforming our daily practices.
At this point, I wish to briefly address the transformation of the way sacred texts are read. For believers, the Qur’an is accepted as the word of God, and its recitation is inseparable from the training of body and soul to listen attentively to its voice. In this sense, the Qur’an is not merely read as a text. Rather, it is a sacred book that is recited from memory—not merely for its informative content, but as a vocal act of engagement within a holistic relationship with God.6 It must not be overlooked that the mass-produced mushafs disseminated with the printing press have led Muslim subjectivities to relate to the Qur’an in a manner akin to how one relates to a textual object of study. Moreover, today the Qur’an is increasingly introduced to artificial intelligence tools, which then mediate access to it for readers. In fact, these AI tools answer questions posed by readers, informing them on religious matters. We cannot expect that such a radical transformation in the mode of knowing will leave untouched the relationship between the sacred text and its reader. This topic, of course, requires much longer analysis, but these questions alone are sufficient to unsettle us: Has the reader of the sacred text, accessing it through artificial intelligence, now been registered as reading it like an AI? Does becoming familiar with its informative content truly mean having read a book that must be read within a holistic relationship with God? What bodily and psychological virtues does the new habitus reshaped by this transformation of sacred knowing anticipate in the reader?
Of course, the issue is not confined to the religious domain. When we feed any text to artificial intelligence, it quickly delivers to us its main theses and supporting claims—this is almost effortless. Yet we cannot expect this tool to lead us beyond the text’s claims to its deeper, transcendent meaning. The practice of reading a text is distinct from its content. We can illustrate this with a more everyday example: the practice of eating. It is possible to obtain the necessary nutrients by injecting the components of food directly into the bloodstream. But in this case, we would have lost the practice of eating. If this lost practice were merely an isolated activity devoid of the capacity to generate knowledge as virtue, to design bodily and psychological states, and to shape character, our lives would be considerably easier.
Similarly, the idea that a video we watch can be fast-forwarded or sped up inevitably leads to a different bodily technique and psychological structure, thereby reshaping our embodied moral sensitivities. The possibility of consuming a video faster than it was filmed, or receiving immediate answers to questions posed to AI tools, gradually erodes patience—the indispensable condition for any process of virtue acquisition—as well as its social counterpart: tolerance and forbearance. Yet the ancient virtue of “care of the self” demands the continuous and patient reworking of subjectivity along the axes of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The speed-oriented mode of knowing leads subjectivity to comprehend its relationship with itself, with others, and with the external world in terms of speed and immediate results, making individual and social anxiety easily triggered. The subjectivities transformed by artificial intelligence into speed-dependent entities, consuming dozens of contents in seconds and merely swiping past others’ stories, forget the attentiveness and labor required to achieve genuine focus and meaningful relationships with others—in the mildest terms. In this sense, the secularization of suffering also transforms the virtue of bodily sacrifice into the act of forfeiting one’s internet data allowance, thereby discrediting the practice of elbowing one’s way through. Thus, the living body is now being mediated by artificial intelligence’s envisioned mode of knowing, undergoing the formation of an entirely new character.
In religious literature, i’tikāf means performing a specific ritual in a particular manner in order to draw near to the Divine. Fundamentally, it is the continuous practice of “standing before God” (el-ikâme me‘allâh).7 In i’tikāf, the subject seeks to distance itself from everyday preoccupations, free itself from mundane anxieties, and redirect its focus toward the Divine, rather than engaging with the agendas of others.8
Typically performed during the last ten days of Ramadan by secluding oneself in a mosque for a period of time, i’tikāf is not a passive experience but an active practice of standing still that cultivates desire, passion, and intention. It is only undertaken after twenty days of sustained fasting. This active practice of standing still presupposes resistance to haste, impatience, intolerance, and lack of forbearance. I’tikāf aims to reorient bodily and psychological capacities within the habitus reshaped by artificial intelligence’s mode of knowing and knowledge acquisition, through the experience of turning inward and self-accountability. In this light, the virtue of “care of the self” and the internal dynamic of sociality—both of which are foundational to authentic human subjectivity—demand attentiveness, persistence, patience, forbearance, and mindfulness. These virtues continuously call subjectivities immersed in the speed- and data-driven logic of artificial intelligence to engage in perpetual i’tikāf.
The question “Can artificial intelligence know as we do?” is irrelevant here; the factual reality is that we have begun to know like artificial intelligence. The problem is not that artificial intelligence lacks a subjectivity capable of acquiring a certain character, but that human beings possess precisely such a subjectivity. I’tikāf may be precisely the opportunity that enables us to recognize the consequences of artificial intelligence’s mode of knowing and to discern the kind of action a subjectivity oriented toward virtue must take in response.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect KÜME’s editorial policy.
Forms of Knowing, Forms of Being
What Did the Printing Press Change, and What Is Artificial Intelligence Changing?
The Antidote: I’tikāf
