The Next Metaphysical Mutation

2020 ◽  
pp. 555-575
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Michel Houellebecq ◽  
French Author ◽  
The Will ◽  
Sexual Impulse ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter explores the influence of Schopenhauer on the contemporary French author Michel Houellebecq. After surveying some biographical similarities between the two authors, it considers the significance of Schopenhauer’s thought, both his metaphysics of the Will and his moral philosophy, for Houellebecq’s literature. It is shown how Houellebecq reaffirms Schopenhauer’s Buddhistic diagnosis of “life as suffering,” but goes further to imagine possible worlds where the human condition has been overcome by techno-scientific interventions. In doing so, Houellebecq carries out a devastating critique of the present age from the standpoint of various post-human futures. Another theme explored is the omnipresence of desire and the sexual impulse with which both Schopenhauer and Houellebecq are deeply preoccupied.

Technic Self-Determination

2014 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Franco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and a threat to human dignity and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. Contrarily, HET can be shown to constitute the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, this chapter elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination (i.e., control over the determining circumstances and conditions of our own selves and lives), which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, arguably, the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular as it is today and has been in the past. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity and characteristic that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

The Technoethical Ethos of Technic Self-Determination

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Francesco Albert Bosco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This paper addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. The paper argues contrarily that HET constitutes nothing less than one of the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, it elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies – and indeed even intensifies – our most human capacity and faculty: namely the desire for increased self-determination, which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, the paper argues that the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically-ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

Pecca Fortiter for the Sake of Morality?Making Sense of Wrong in Hegel’s System of Right

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-227
Author(s):  
Alexander T. Englert
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Similar Role ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Moral Point ◽  
Moral Point Of View ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to clarify the role ‘wrong’ plays in Hegel’s system of right, as both a form of freedom and the transition to morality. Two approaches will be examined to explore wrong in practical philosophical terms: First, one could take the transition to bedescriptivein nature. The transition describes wrong as a realized fact of the human condition that one inherits from the outset. Second, one could see it asprescriptive. Actual wrongdoing would be essential for the subject’s progression tobecoming moral. Though both are most likely the case, emphasis is given to the latter since it represents the actualization of potential. Furthermore, it will be suggested that wrong plays a similar role as that which alienation does in thePhenomenology of Spirit; both bridge the will as abstract personality with the moral point of view.

The Techoethical Ethos of Technic Self-Determination

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-104
Author(s):  
Francesco Albert Bosco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of human enhancement technologies (HET) will be dehumanizing and a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. The chapter argues contrarily that HET constitutes nothing less than one of the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, it elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination, which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, the chapter argues that the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

scholarly journals Liberal Failure

Anafora ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-164
Author(s):  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin ◽  
Sara Saei Dibavar
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Possible World ◽  
World Theory ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Counterfactual State ◽  
The Human Condition ◽  
Rabbit Tetralogy

John Updike’s Rabbit, Run addresses the human condition under the reign of capital in the context of a society in transition toward a neoliberal state. By depicting a protagonist preoccupied with desire and consciousness through recounting his immediate experiences, the narrative delineates the confusion inherent in the capitalistic state for the protagonist in search of a way out toward self-actualization. Through the application of possible world theory, it is argued that the imbalance between Rabbit’s counterfactual possible worlds and his actual world accounts for the failure he experiences in his quest. As such, the possible worlds’ disequilibrium, we argue, ultimately leads to Rabbit’s bitter failure in his search; too many possible worlds in their counterfactual state produce a kind of counter-reality where there are too many fantasy/wish worlds, but few obligation worlds, a situation that leads to all the inevitable consequences we witness at the end of Book One of the Rabbit tetralogy.

The Techoethical Ethos of Technic Self-Determination

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-100
Author(s):  
Francesco Albert Bosco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of human enhancement technologies (HET) will be dehumanizing and a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. The chapter argues contrarily that HET constitutes nothing less than one of the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, it elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination, which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, the chapter argues that the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

Existentialist Perception Of The Human Condition

1998 ◽  
pp. 31-34
Author(s):  
D.R. Bhandari
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Future ◽  
Complete Form ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Human Condition

Existentialism lays stress on the existence of humans; Sartre believed that human existence is the result of chance or accident. There is no meaning or purpose of our lives other than what our freedom creates, therefore, we must rely on our own resources. Sartre thought that existence manifests itself in the choice of actions, anxiety and freedom of the will. In this way the responsibility of building one's future is in one's hands, but the future is uncertain and so one has no escape from anxiety and despair. We are always under the shadow of anxiety; higher responsibility leads to higher anxiety. The pursuit of being leads to an awareness of nothingness, nothingness to an awareness of freedom, freedom to bad faith and bad faith to the being of consciousness which provides the condition for its own possibility. Concluding his thought, Sartre says that existentialism is not pessimism. He says that existentialism does not aim at plunging us into despair: its final goal is to prepare us through anguish, abandonment and despair for a genuine life, and it is basically concerned with the human condition as a complete form of choice. The fundamental issue, therefore, is an authentic meaning of life.

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