Από την ανθρωπολογία στην ανθρωποτεχνική;

Abstract

What opposes anthropotechnic progress, according to the traditional philosophico- theological anthropology, is language, constitutive of the essence of man. Language embodies the anthropological difference that binds man with a super-nature and constitutes the point of his excellence over the rest of the animal world. Language is also nowadays considered proper to man, essential to humanity and its end. Language is the beginning, middle and end of a human Being. This assumption implies devaluation of technical and material work that does not promote the constitution of man as a rational and free being. It is also believed that technique does not concern man as man, does not foster human society and civilization. Thus, the anthropological idea that man accomplishes himself through reason supported even today by eminent philosophers is contrary to the idea of anthropotechnics and condemns any anthropotechnic project or enterprise. It is an anthropological axiom, susceptible, however, to exceptions in the field of medicine, that man per se is homo loquax and that he is homo faber in relation to the world; that he is first a creature and afterwards a creator. Of course there are indispensable but not absolute or necessary restrictions. The reaction against reproductive cloning, e.g., as an ‘anthropological confusion from the anthropotechnic possibility’ is explained in many ways but is also subject to philosophical criticism as is the dogma that man is creator of significants but not of cosmic reality. Research can and must continue at the level of reality with technonatural instruments that allow transcendence of boundaries rather than with symbolic ones. Anthropology should be combined with techno-science. Humanism lies between homo loquax and homo faber claiming ‘a science with conscience’. However, the philosophical question about the remote future of man is imperative, as is desirable the tranference of the debate between anthropology and anthropotechnics.