Hola, Dr. Riva:
Espero que esté muy bien. Siento la tardanza para escribir, pero aquí vamos: me quedaron varias dudas acerca del sentido común moral (del que no alcanzamos a hablar) y del transhumanismo.
1. ¿Este sentido común moral es lo mismo que propone Habermas como "common sense" ilustrado y democrático?
2. Si es así, ¿en qué medida se relaciona con la propuesta transhumanista? ¿Como algo que necesariamente hará obrar a la persona "correctamente" o como una superación de la pregunta por el bien y el mal?
También me gustaría saber su opinión acerca del texto de Habermas:
3. ¿Cree usted que la propuesta de Habermas es viable en un mundo como el que vivimos y siendo los seres humanos como somos?
Le agradezco su tiempo y le mando un saludo
Isabel
Suscribirse a:
Enviar comentarios (Atom)
1 comentario:
Dear friends:
I'll try to answer if not all, at least most of your excellent questions, in one single entry. I hope I'll succeed. If you are not entirely satisfied (I might miss some of your individual concerns) I'll be glad to elaborate further. Here we go:
“Only if we realize what secularization means in our own postsecular societies can we be far-sighted in our response to the risks involved in a secularization miscarrying in other parts of the world.” (Habermas)
Habermas situates his (post 9/11) thoughts within the framework of “secularization,” as an alternative to the “clash of (religious) civilizations.” Retaliation (even if guided by a realpolitik strategy) has an Old Testament ring to it. What is the alternative? Is dialogue possible when we are faced, on all sides, with fundamentalisms? How to work out a “common language”? Does this “common language” necessarily imply a “common moral sense” or “wisdom”? How can we “translate” (in the etymological meaning of the word) our often incompatible values into each other’s systems of belief? Translating here should encompass Benjamin’s perspective (highlighted by Bori in his book): to allow a language to be powerfully affected by another (foreign) language.
The expression “common sense” has several facets: “sense” is not to be understood here as (just) linguistic “meaning”. Yet, the linguistic dimension of “truth” (as a language game, re. Wittgenstein) is crucial to any real dialogue and understanding. The issue is: what is the nature of our “ethical” statements (our linguistic formulation of values)?
Are “axioms” or “degnità,” in Vico’s terms (what is worth thinking), simply linguistic formulations? They are certainly based on a philological, that is a cultural-linguistic understanding of human culture. Yet, what is their “truth” value?
Are values based exclusively on “archaic emotions,” the sediment of a long genealogy of the “human” in different cultures? Can they be based, instead, on a rational “common sense”? If this rational common sense (what is worth thinking) is to be based only on a “scientific” worldview, how can it accomodate (the remnants of) “archaic emotions”? Are a rational and a religious point of view really “incommensurable”?
In short, I see a fundamental link between Habermas’ concern for the “meaning” of secularization in our postsecular societies and the issue of a “post-humanist” ethics, as I drafted in relation to Pico's original thought.
Dignity: if (as the Univ. Decl. HR posits) it is an axiom based on a universal value, how does it relate to our “archaic emotions”? How can dignity be the fundamental axiom of a common moral sense?
What kind of meaning does “dignity” have, or better, how are we to understand its rational-emotional "sense"? Vico invites us to think of “dignity” not as a posited, albeit fundamental, value, but as the very “essence” of what is worth thinking. As such (as a transcendental principle of his New Science) it is more than an archaic emotion (based on honor or the excellence of the human being) or a rational conviction: it is the self-understanding of the “human being.” As such, dignity is an open concept, an open task.
The key, in my opinion, is in the way we conceive a “common sense” or “wisdom” (understading of principles) based on dignity. Can there be such a thing? Can a common sense or wisdom be construed out of a plurality of often competing and clashing beliefs about the identity, nature and (pre)destination of the human being?
Can common sense be conceived just as a linguistic construction – a “rational” agreement or compromise among competing views? This seems to be too weak a position for something which should be binding – too weak even in the pregnant formulation provided by Habermas: “democratic common sense remains osmotically open to both sides, science and religion, without reliquishing its independence” (p. 105).
Dignity as a post-human value (axiom, common sense) must find a definition independent of an exclusively scientific or religious authority: “No science will relieve common sense, even if scientifically informed, of the task of forming a judgement, for instance, on how we should deal with prepersonal human life under descriptions of molecular biology that make genetic interventions possible” (p. 108). On the other hand, within this democratic framework, “citizens committed to religious beliefs...have to translate their religious belief into a secular language before their arguments have any chance of gaining majority support.”
This is a way of reformulating the issue of “bilingualism,” linking it to that of translation: if, within a secular/democratic framework, neither the language of science nor the language of religion (metaphysics) can prevail as such, we need a third language, capable of translating one into the other (and affecting one with the other). “Common sense” is based first of all on the axiom of “translatability,” as what is eminently worth thinking: its “value” is based on more than belief or “archaic emotion,” and more than logically formulated or validated “reason.”
In conclusion, translating Pico into our “post-humanist” frame of mind: the self-understanding of the human being is based not on a priviledged link/identity between man and God (man as the image of God), which implies the “extraordinary” position and role of man in the world, but on the indeterminate, proteic nature of the human being, a being that does have a definite genetic makeup, yet is able to reshape itself through technology and culture.
This formulation, however, does not imply an absolute freedom to reshape ourselves and the world along with us, ad libitum.
The fundamental issue ultimately is how to determine the responsibility of man as a self-understanding microcosm, understanding him/herself as a being of indeterminate nature – a trans-lator par excellence.
Habermas rightly points out that “we still lack an adequate concept for the semantic difference between what is morally wrong and what is profoundly evil.” Enoch-Metatron is a janus-faced metaphor and its symmetric opposite is our own image as the “fallen angels:” “There is no devil – writes Habermas – but the fallen archangel [man] still wreaks havoc – in the perverted good of the monstrous deed...” (p. 110). The poetic logic of monsters is still in us! If we are Proteus, we are the monster! This is also part of our self-understanding! (I am translating my own thoughts, here...)
From the point of view of Habermas, Pico’s thought (and to some extent Vico’s as well) belong to that symbiosis of religion and metaphysics that Kant broke up (p. 111). Yet, a post-Kantian approach does not seem able to propose a more than formalistic solution to the issue of bilingualism. We need a third language as the active, effective and affective trans-lation which is also an expression of our (indeterminate) nature and therefore our dignity, what is eminently worth thinking.
Publicar un comentario