1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910438333503321

Autore

Coeckelbergh Mark

Titolo

Human being @ risk : enhancement, technology, and the evaluation of vulnerability transformations / / by Mark  Coeckelbergh

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Dordrecht, : Springer, 2013

ISBN

1-299-40837-0

94-007-6025-6

Edizione

[1st ed. 2013.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (225 p.)

Collana

Philosophy of engineering and technology, , 1879-7202 ; ; 12

Disciplina

303.48301

601

Soggetti

Phenomenology

Technology - Philosophy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Part I Descriptive Anthropology of Vulnerability -- Chapter 1. The Transhumanist Challenge -- Chapter 2. An Anthropology of Vulnerability -- Chapter 3. Cultures and Transformations of Vulnerability -- Part II Normative Anthropology of Vulnerability -- Chapter 4. Ethics of Vulnerability (1): Implications for ethics of technology -- Chapter 5. Ethics of Vulnerability (2): Imagining the Posthuman future -- Chapter 6. Ethics of Vulnerability (3): Vulnerability in the Information Age -- Chapter 7. Politics of Vulnerability: Freedom, Justice, and the Public/Private distinction -- Chapter 8. Normative Aesthetics of Vulnerability: The Art of Coping with Vulnerability -- Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

Whereas standard approaches to risk and vulnerability presuppose a strict separation between humans and their world, this book develops an existential-phenomenological approach according to which we are always already beings-at-risk. Moreover, it is argued that in our struggle against vulnerability, we create new vulnerabilities and thereby transform ourselves as much as we transform the world. Responding to the discussion about human enhancement and information technologies, the book then shows that this dynamic-relational approach has important implications for the evaluation of new



technologies and their risks. It calls for a normative anthropology of vulnerability that does not ask which objective risks are acceptable, how we can become invulnerable, or which technologies threaten human nature, but which vulnerability transformations we want. To the extent that we can steer the growth of new technologies at all, this tragic and sometimes comic project should therefore be guided by what we want to become.