The Techno Human Condition

A provocative analysis of what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change. In The Techno-Human Condition, Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz explore what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change. They argue that if we are to have any prospect of managing that complexity, we will need to escape the shackles of current assumptions about rationality, progress, and certainty, even as we maintain a commitment to fundamental human values. Humans have been co-evolving with their technologies since the dawn of prehistory. What is different now is that we have moved beyond external technological interventions to transform ourselves from the inside out—even as we also remake the Earth system itself. Coping with this new reality, say Allenby and Sarewitz, means liberating ourselves from such categories as “human,” “technological,” and “natural” to embrace a new techno-human relationship. Contributors Boris Barbour, Mario Biagioli, Paul S. Brookes, Finn Brunton, Alex Csiszar, Alessandro Delfanti, Emmanuel Didier, Sarah de Rijcke, Daniele Fanelli, Yves Gingras, James R. Griesemer, Catherine Guaspare, Marie-Andrée Jacob, Barbara M. Kehm, Cyril Labbé, Jennifer Lin, Alexandra Lippman, Burkhard Morganstern, Ivan Oransky, Michael Power, Sergio Sismondo, Brandon Stell, Tereza Stöckelová, Elizabeth Wager, Paul Wouters

In Homo Faber Paolo Benanti seeks to provide a philosophical and theological understanding of the technological phenomenon by casting light contemporaneously on the ethical dimensions connected to it. In constructing a holistic vision of technique-technology, he asks himself how to look at the technological artifacts, how it was possible that the West has undergone an incomparable technological development in respect to any other human culture and what this reveals and means for technology and what is the context in which technology is implemented and understood today. As a result of his journey Benanti shows how Technology is not a simple human activity, but human nature is a techno-human condition.

This book brings together a philosophical analysis of life, politics, and technology with a biopolitical critique of the way genetic enhancement technologies have been dealt with in liberal moral and political philosophy. Inspired by the work of Heidegger, Arendt, and Stiegler, the author outlines a responsible biopolitics of genetic technologies.

On the Human Condition is an invigorating and fascinating exploration of where the idea of the human stands today.

CHOICE 1998 Outstanding Academic Books This book argues that standard forms of bioethics support the technological utopian quest of medicine: to eliminate suffering and bring the body under the rule of our choices and desires. This quest raises urgent ethical questions rarely addressed in the dominant approaches to bioethics. McKenny puts forth an alternative agenda, arguing that the task of bioethics is to explore the moral significance of the body as it is expressed in the discourse and practice of moral and religious traditions.

An interdisciplinary exploration of whether modern genetics and bioengineering are leading us to a posthuman future.

The potential to clone, augment, and repair human beings is pushing the very concept of the human to its limit. Fantasies and metaphors of a supposedly monstrous and inhuman future increasingly dominate films, art and popular culture. On the Human Condition is an invigorating and fascinating exploration of where the idea of the human stands today. Given the damage human beings have inflicted on each other and their environment throughout history, should we embrace humanism or try and overcome it? Dominique Janicaud explores these urgent questions and more. He argues that whilst we need to avoid apocalyptic talk of a post human condition, as embodied in technology such as cloning, we should neither fall back on a conservative humanism nor become technophobic. Drawing on illuminating examples such as genetic engineering, the novel Frankenstein, the legendary debate between Sartre and Heidegger over humanism, and the work of Primo Levi, Domnique Janicaud also explores the role of fantasy in understanding the human condition and asks where the line lies between the human, inhuman and the superhuman.