Perspective post-umaniste. Implicatii etice si tehnologice
Post-Humanist Perspectives. Implications for Ethics and Technology

Summary/Abstract: Review of the book: Jean-Michel Besnier, Demain les posthumains: Le futur a-t-il encore besoin de nous?, (Paris: Hachette, 2009). The explosive development of techno-sciences and nanotechnologies puts mankind face to face with unprecedented challenges, among which the redefining of humanity and its system of ethical and moral values under the conditions of a changed psychological reality - whose delimiting landmarks consist in alienation and in the increasingly conventional nature and robotic approach to human relations - is by far the most exciting. Progress, naturally recorded in the evolutionary trajectory of the human species as an aspiration and as a practical purpose, has paradoxically led to an accentuated “dehumanization” of the “classic” man who, giving up the very attributes of his specificity, is about to become, in contemporary society, a post-human: highly technological, increasingly dependent and increasingly controlled in both his everyday life and - maybe most worrying - in his inner essence, by the super-intelligent machines he himself created from a native and never truly fulfilled need of better. It is in this context that the post-humanist vision proposes the return of man to his primordial essence and its intrinsic values, within what Besnier defines as “extended humanity”, a concept that proposes a “reconstruction” of the human being, who is bound to harmoniously - and especially coherently - share its existential universe with the representatives of artificial intelligence.

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