Declaring the Political: Can Cities Survive Probabilistic Governance? A Quantum Approach

Kurzfassung

Declaring the Political: Can Cities Survive Probabilistic Governance? This abstract examines whether the rise of probabilistic rationality—driven by quantum algorithms and computational governance—could fundamentally change or undermine the ethical foundations of the city, especially if we understand the city, following Aristotle, as a space of ethical and political thought. In Aristotle's political philosophy, the polis is not just a place where people live together, but a natural and necessary framework in which people can realize their capacity for judgment, reflection, and the pursuit of a good life. In this view, ethical action is inseparably linked to the political structures that enable active participation, pluralistic deliberation, and moral responsibility. In a certain sense, the city “is” the realization (in speech act theory: declaration) of the ethical and political. The city embodies the institutionalized form of its ethical and political structures—its lived rationality. This means that the ethical and political dimensions of urban life are not merely descriptive, but enacted and sustained through collective recognition and participation. The emergence of quantum technologies introduces a new form of rationality characterized by probabilistic calculations, predictive modeling, and non-intuitive algorithmic control. These developments challenge the Aristotelian conception of the city by replacing human judgment with optimization systems that operate beyond transparency and human understanding. As cities increasingly rely on such systems to make decisions about infrastructure, resource allocation, security, and even social welfare, the space for ethical reflection and collective political action may shrink which changes the fundament for the grown institutional reality. This abstract critically examines the tension between classical notions of ethical-political life and emerging technological infrastructures. Drawing on Aristotelian theory and contemporary thinkers such as John Searle, the lecture reflects on whether the city remains a space for ethical collectives—or whether it risks becoming a controlled environment optimized for efficiency, predictability, and control. The abstract argues that while the shift toward probabilistic rationality is promising in terms of efficiency and scalability, it requires a renewed examination of the ethical architecture of urban life. Without safeguarding the conditions for judgment, responsibility and pluralistic deliberation, the city may lose its character as a site of ethical negotiation—and its institutional reality may be transformed in ways that are both profound and unpredictable.