Worlds of Darkness

This chapter examines the World[s] of Darkness’s most important gametexts within the context of the move from Gothic to cosmic horror. It utilizes literary and philosophical analysis of the Gothic, especially that of Fred Botting and Noël Carroll. Botting helps by posing a question of what sort of ‘spectral return’ we might see with a reinvigorated Gothic, while Carroll views ‘art-horror,’ or the horror derived from the genre of popular culture, as a key driver in how we have come to represent horror. This chapter works through the tensions of how a Lovecraftian-like cosmic horror displaced the Gothic yet acknowledges the Gothic’s persistence. It sees in the World[s] of Darkness’s TRPGs like Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse attempts at a renewed Gothicism. Yet, in the New Worlds of Darkness’s, the ‘God Machine’ emerges as a novel posthuman trope, one that hints at a machinic inscrutable entity far beyond any human understanding.

Ηθική ενίσχυση: Μια κριτική βασισμένη στην ωφελιμότητα;

Recent rapid advances in the field of life sciences such as medicine, biotechnology, genetics, biology and neurosciences alongside cognitive sciences raise serious moral concerns. Among the key issues is the one that concerns the way our genetic structure as well as our brain chemistry influences our behaviour. Questions are continually emerging, regarding the genetic basis of behaviour and its manipulation, leading eventually to the enhancement, moral, psychological, cognitive etc. of the human being through science. One of the most controversial issues in bioethics is the possibility of using our knowledge to biologically manipulate traits which have genetic basis as well as to strategically influence people's moral dispositions and behaviour by biomedical means in order to enhance moral behaviour. Therefore, in this article, Ι will try to evaluate the moral enhancement and its importance as set out in the article by Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson “Moral Enhancement, Free Will and the God Machine”, while at the same time exploring whether the implementation of such a challenge can be beneficial.

Betekent de monteerbare mens de antropologische heilstaat? Systematisch-theologische vragen

Developments in medical technology summon the image of a novel ‘bionic’ humanity of the cyborg. Is it possible to entirely reproduce human beings and retain their identity? This technological enhancement aims at improving the physical make-up of the human phenomenon as an individual. Mankind thus assumes control over their mental evolution, creating a techno-sapiens. This prompts the question whether religious faith, emotion, intention or responsibility are physiological reproducible. Experiments with a ‘God Machine’ seem to evoke religious impressions and to deny the individual meaning of God and the human mind. Hick’s dualism of mind and brain as dancing partners is unsuccessful by actually personalizing the brain. This article proposes to describe mental and brain functions as complementary instead of tracing their physiological origin. Then, religious faith is not reduced to fides quae, as merely physiological reproducible information, but remains an existential attitude to life, as fides qua, by itself within the context of a community of believers.