This dissertation explores the role and significance of the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus in Western philosophy from Antiquity to today. Paying particular attention to its moral and existential meanings, an analysis of this in-depth investigation produces an overview of the exceptional array of the myth’s functions and themes. It demonstrates that the most significant functions of the Prometheus myth are its social, epistemic, ontological and moral functions and that the myth’s most significant themes are fire, rebellion, creation, human nature and ambiguity. The dissertation argues that this analysis brings to light meaningful information on two sides of a reference to the Prometheus myth: it reveals the nature, functions, themes and connotations of the myth, while information about these functions and themes provides access to fundamental meanings, moral statements and ontological concepts of the studied author. Based on its findings this work claims that, as in history, first, the Prometheus myth will still be meaningful in philosophy today; and second, that the analysis of the myth’s functions and themes will provide access to essential ideas underlying contemporary references to the myth. To prove the validity of these claims this thesis examines the contemporary debate on ‘human enhancement’. Advocates as well as opponents of enhancement make use of the Prometheus myth in order to support their arguments. Employing the acquired knowledge about the myth’s functions and themes, the dissertation analyses the references encountered. The results of this analysis confirm that the Prometheus myth still has a significant role in a contemporary philosophical context. They improve our understanding of the philosophical argument, ontological framework and ethics of the debate’s participants; and thus demonstrate that the information about the Prometheus myth acquired in this thesis is a useful means to reveal fundamental ideas and conceptualisations underlying contemporary (and possibly future) references to the myth.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2015-12-03T11:17:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 barbaranascimentoduarte.pdf: 2112433 bytes, checksum: fce94787e42900386c7986b66a5b6644 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T11:17:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 barbaranascimentoduarte.pdf: 2112433 bytes, checksum: fce94787e42900386c7986b66a5b6644 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-06 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O corpo humano está agora enredado numa trama muito particular, característica de nossa era tecnocientífica: seu valor e seu destino estão submetidos aos processos racionais e às novas técnicas que são continuamente desenvolvidas nos laboratórios. A partir de uma visão algo utópica, muito além de uma simples materialidade orgânica, as fronteiras da corporalidade estão assim sendo radicalmente questionadas e transformadas. E, neste passo, os conhecimentos científicos e sua mística transbordam seus campos estritos de aplicação, para alcançar e mobilizar o desejo e a vontade de indivíduos e do público em geral. Em nosso trabalho, buscamos investigar a relação entre as experiências de laboratório e aquilo que identificamos como o panorama underground de tecnologização do corpo. Procuramos assim circunscrever certas modificações corporais extremas, definidas como body hacktivism, body hacking ou pirataria do corpo, que se fundam numa perspectiva lúdica e exploratória, realizadas por amadores com o propósito de ampliar os limites sensoriais do homem. Tal reapropriação individual das tecnologias se converte, então, em inovações e em práticas inusitadas, por exemplo: implantes de microchips RFID, de magnetos, de vibradores genitais ou placas de titânio para substituir a pele, e mesmo próteses robóticas feitas com peças de Lego. A pesquisa de campo foi empreendida entre 2011 e 2013, em contato com vários praticantes selecionados na Europa, nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. A metodologia qualitativa privilegiou a aplicação de entrevistas semiestruturadas e visitas a lojas de tatuagem/piercing, hotéis, eventos e seminários. O objetivo desta tese é, portanto, compreender qual corpo os body hackers constroem para si e projetam para os outros, explorando assim suas concepções acerca do sujeito humano. O argumento principal é de que os body hackers, por suas palavras e suas práticas, reverberam a mesma ontologia radical do individualismo moderno, ao tomar o indivíduo como a unidade social básica e a apropriação de seu próprio corpo como a relação fundamental. A simbiose do corpo com artefatos variados, que as novas tecnologias possibilitam, faculta ao indivíduo percepções exclusivas, nas quais os elementos inorgânicos se tornam não apenas mediadores da experiência pessoal, mas uma extensão ou parte articulada de si mesmo. Em suma, a tecnologia inserida no corpo além de modificá-lo, também transforma a forma de perceber, de estar e de ser-no-mundo. A pirataria do corpo, enfim, chama a atenção para uma realidade insofismável: se um dia a natureza concedeu aos seres humanos um corpo, para tê-lo, atualmente, é preciso superar o simples evento biológico e buscar incansavelmente o seu aperfeiçoamento, a quimera extraordinária de uma perfeição e de uma imortalidade vindoura. / In the present technoscientific era, the body is involved in a particular scheme: its value is directly related to its rational and technical production in scientific laboratories, where a utopian vision of corporeality has been delineated. In these, its boundaries are radically challenged and transformed, moving beyond organic materiality. Nevertheless, scientific development goes beyond its pre-set field of action, and its resulting knowledge touches society in a singular way. In our investigation, we seek to discover the relationships between laboratory experiments and what we identify as the underground scene of body technologization. Within it, we circumscribe extreme body modifications, defined as body hacktivism and body hacking, which stand for a playful and exploratory perspective, performed by scientifically-inclined amateurs whose purpose consists of amplifying a person’s sensory limits. This individual reappropriation of technologies turns out in innovations, including RFID microchip and magnetic implants, genital vibrators, engineering of titanium skin interfaces, and even robotic prostheses made with Legos. Through an empirical study undertaken from 2011 through 2013, we conducted participant observations with a number of privileged proponents of these practices in Europe, in the United States and in Brazil. Our methodology was qualitative, notably through the application of semi-directive interviews. The research focused on tattoo/piercing shops, hotels, body modification events and seminars. Our problem is to understand which body the body hackers build and design, and to view the conception of the human subject. Our principal argument is that body hackers are on record for self-production in a radical individualism that has, as a privileged analytical unit, the individual (and its growing individualization) and the self-ownership of the body as its fundamental measures. Then, the symbiosis of the individual with the environment, through new technologies, creates a distinctive perception in which an inorganic element becomes the mediator of the experience of the self and of the other. Lastly, they come together in such a way that the individual becomes a unity with it. In short, these embedded technologies not only modify the body, but also change the way of perceiving, living, and being in the world. The body hacking draws our attention to the understanding of a scientific reality: if one day nature granted man a body, to have currently, it is fundamental to overcoming this biological event, endlessly seeking its improvement, until the day that man will attain the chimera of perfection and immortality.

La thèse présente une analyse du transhumanisme et de ses enjeux, en partant de l’examen de sa philosophie, l’extropianisme, ainsi que de son projet. La mission transhumaniste est d’élever la condition humaine en offrant à l’espèce humaine le pouvoir de vivre indéfiniment grâce aux progrès des technosciences, mais aussi de s’améliorer cognitivement pour devenir plus intelligente et plus heureuse. L’objectif de la thèse est de mettre au jour les fondements philosophiques qui constituent le socle de la rhétorique transhumaniste afin de comprendre son efficience et pour analyser les enjeux éthiques qui en découlent concernant notre rapport à la mort, à l'existence et au temps. Il s’agira également de revenir sur la façon dont les fondateurs du transhumanisme se sont positionnés au sujet de ces enjeux pour insister sur l’importance d’une connaissance approfondie des principes et des valeurs du transhumanisme et de sa complexité pour proposer une critique de son projet. / The thesis presents an analysis of transhumanism and its issues, starting from an examination of its philosophy, extropianism, and its project. The transhumanist mission is to elevate the human condition by giving the human species the power to live indefinitely thanks to the progress of technoscience, but also to improve cognitively to become smarter and happier. The aim of the thesis is to uncover the philosophical foundations of transhumanist rhetoric to understand its efficiency and to analyse the ethical issues that arise from it in relation to our relationship with death, existence and time. It will also be necessary to consider the way the founders of transhumanism have positioned themselves on these issues to insist on the importance of a thorough knowledge of the principles and values of transhumanism and its complexity to propose a critique of its project.

Du dopage sportif à l’usage de psychotropes pour accroître les capacités intellectuelles ou mieux contrôler les émotions, du recours aux nouvelles technologies reproductives permettant une maîtrise croissante des naissances, au développement d’une médecine anti-âge qui oeuvre à l’effacement de toute trace du vieillissement, jamais il n’a été autant question d’améliorer l’être humain et ses performances par le biais des avancées technoscientifiques et biomédicales contemporaines. Cette étude interroge cette aspiration à un humain augmenté à la lumière de l’idéal humaniste et politique de la perfectibilité humaine systématisé par les philosophes des Lumières au 18ème siècle, en particulier dans l’oeuvre et la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. À la différence du modèle politique et humaniste de la perfectibilité, qui valorise l’amélioration de la condition humaine dans et par la société, au coeur de l’imaginaire démocratique moderne, la société de l’amélioration contemporaine paraît, elle, promouvoir un modèle de perfectibilité dépolitisé, axé sur l’adaptabilité technoscientifique de l’être humain et la transformation de la vie en elle-même. À travers une excursion au sein l’histoire de la pensée sociale, l’objectif de cette étude est de comprendre comment un tel renversement et une telle dépolitisation de la perfectibilité ont pu avoir lieu. De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Karl Marx, de Auguste Comte à Francis Galton, despenseurs postmodernes au mouvement transhumaniste, cette thèse offre une généalogie synthétique de la société de l’amélioration dans laquelle nous entrons, seule à même d’éclairer de manière critique des transformations sociales et technoscientifiques trop souvent présentées sous le masque de l’inéluctabilité / Whether we speak of doping in sport, the use of psychoactive drugs to improve man’s intellectual performance or better check his emotions, new reproductive technologies allowing more efficient birth control, or anti-aging medicine to erase the effects of time, there is no denying that enhancing humans through the use of technoscientific and biomedical means has grown more pervasive in our contemporary societies. This study questions today’s quest for human enhancement under the light of the humanist and political ideal of perfectibility defined by 18th century Enlightenment philosophers, particularly in the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In contrast to the humanist andpolitical model of perfectibility, which promotes the improvement of the human condition by and through society, at the core of the democratic ideal, today’s enhancement society seems to champion a depoliticized model of perfectibility focused on human technoscientific adaptability and the transformation of life itself.Offering a journey through the history of social thought, the objective of this study is to understand how such a reversal and depoliticization of the concept of perfectibility may have been possible. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and Francis Galton, from postmodern thinkers to the transhumanist movement, this thesis presents a synthetic genealogy of the enhancement society we are entering, which allows for a critical analysis of socialand technoscientific transformations that have too often been presented behind the mask of ineluctability

A universal human dignity, conceived as an inherent and inalienable value or worth in all human beings, which ought to be recognised, respected and protected by others, has become one of the most prominent and widely promoted interpretations of human dignity, especially in international human rights law. Yet, it is also one of the most difficult interpretations of human dignity to justify and ground. The fundamental problem rests on how one can justify bestowing an equal high worth to all human lives, whilst also attributing to all human life a worth that is superior to all non-human animal life. To avoid the speciesist charge it seems necessary to provide further reasons, over and above species membership, for why all humans have a unique worth and dignity. However, intrinsic capacities, such as autonomy, intelligence or language use, are too demanding for many humans (including foetuses or the severely cognitively disabled) to meet the required minimum standard, whilst also being obtainable by some non-human animals, regardless of where the level is set. This thesis offers a solution to this problem by turning instead to the significance of the relational ties between individuals or groups that transcend individual capacities and abilities, and consequently does not require that all individuals in the group need meet the minimum required capacity for full moral status. Rather, it is argued that a universal human dignity could be grounded in our social nature, the interconnectedness and interdependence of human life and the morally considerable relationships that can and do arise from it, especially in regards to our shared vulnerability and dependence, and our ability to engage in caring relationships. Care represents the antithesis to the dehumanizing effects of humiliation, and other degrading and dehumanizing acts, and as a relational concept, human dignity is often best realised through our caring relationships. The way that individuals and groups treat each other has a fundamental role in determining both an individual’s sense of self-worth and well-being, as well as their perceived public value and worth. Thus, whilst species membership is not in itself morally fundamental or basic, it often shapes the nature of our social and moral relations. These relational ties between humans, it is argued, distinguish us most clearly from other non-human animals and accord human relationships a special moral significance or dignity.

Dans l’ère technoscientifique la valeur du corps est directement liée à sa production rationnelle produit dans les laboratoires scientifiques. Notre investigation empirique cherche à découvrir la relation entre les expériences de laboratoire et ce que nous délimitons comme body hacktivism, body hacking ou piratage du corps, qui sont basées sur une perspective ludique et exploratoire, réalisées par des amateurs scientifiquement inclinées, dont le but est d’amplifier les limites sensorielles de l’homme. Les body hackers sont dans le registre de la production de soi dans un individualisme radical qui a, en tant que unité d’analyse principal, l’individualisation croissante et la propriété de son corps comme des mesures fondamentales. Ensuite, la symbiose de l’individu avec l’environnement, grâce aux nouvelles technologies, a crée une perception unique dans laquelle un élément inorganique devient le médiateur de l’expérience de soi et le rapport à l’autre. Finalement, ils sont unis d’une manière telle que l’individu ne fait qu’un avec elle. / In the present technoscientific era, body value is directly related to its rational production in scientific laboratories. Our empirical investigatoin seeks to discover the relationships between laboratory experiments and what we identify as body hacktivism, body hacking, which stand for a playful and exploratory extreme body modification perspective, performed by scientifically-inclined amateurs whose purpose consists of amplifying a person’s sensory limits. Our principal argument is that body hackers are on record for self-production in a radical individualism that has, as a privileged analytical unit, the growing individualization and the self-ownership of the body as its fundamental measures. The body hacking draws our attention to the understanding of a scientific reality: if one day nature granted man a body, to have currently, it is fundamental to overcoming this biological event, endlessly seeking its improvement, until the day that man will attain the chimera of perfection and immortality. / O corpo humano está agora enredado numa trama muito particular, característica de nossa era tecnocientífica: seu valor e seu destino estão submetidos aos processos racionais e às novas técnicas que são continuamente desenvolvidas nos laboratórios. A partir de uma visão algo utópica, muito além de uma simples materialidade orgânica, as fronteiras da corporalidade estão assim sendo radicalmente questionadas e transformadas. E, neste passo, os conhecimentos científicos e sua mística transbordam seus campos estritos de aplicação, para alcançar e mobilizar o desejo e a vontade de indivíduos e do público em geral. Em nosso trabalho, buscamos investigar a relação entre as experiências de laboratório e aquilo que identificamos como o panorama underground de tecnologização do corpo. Procuramos assim circunscrever certas modificações corporais extremas, definidas como body hacktivism, body hacking ou pirataria do corpo, que se fundam numa perspectiva lúdica e exploratória, realizadas por amadores com o propósito de ampliar os limites sensoriais do homem. Tal reapropriação individual das tecnologias se converte, então, em inovações e em práticas inusitadas, por exemplo: implantes de microchips RFID, de magnetos, de vibradores genitais ou placas de titânio para substituir a pele, e mesmo próteses robóticas feitas com peças de Lego. A pesquisa de campo foi empreendida entre 2011 e 2013, em contato com vários praticantes selecionados na Europa, nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. A metodologia qualitativa privilegiou a aplicação de entrevistas semiestruturadas e visitas a lojas de tatuagem/piercing, hotéis, eventos e seminários. O objetivo desta tese é, portanto, compreender qual corpo os body hackers constroem para si e projetam para os outros, explorando assim suas concepções acerca do sujeito humano. O argumento principal é de que os body hackers, por suas palavras e suas práticas, reverberam a mesma ontologia radical do individualismo moderno, ao tomar o indivíduo como a unidade social básica e a apropriação de seu próprio corpo como a relação fundamental. A simbiose do corpo com artefatos variados, que as novas tecnologias possibilitam, faculta ao indivíduo percepções exclusivas, nas quais os elementos inorgânicos se tornam não apenas mediadores da experiência pessoal, mas uma extensão ou parte articulada de si mesmo. Em suma, a tecnologia inserida no corpo além de modificá-lo, também transforma a forma de perceber, de estar e de ser-no-mundo. A pirataria do corpo, enfim, chama a atenção para uma realidade insofismável: se um dia a natureza concedeu aos seres humanos um corpo, para tê-lo, atualmente, é preciso superar o simples evento biológico e buscar incansavelmente o seu aperfeiçoamento, a quimera extraordinária de uma perfeição e de uma imortalidade vindoura.

This article critically analyses transhumanism, an ideological movement that advocates the radical biomodification of the human body in order to overcome our deficiencies and progress towards our next phase in evolution. Following previous criticism against the depoliticization within transhumanism, the article will aim to highlight the difficulty within transhumanism to balance the respect for diversity against the imperative for human enhancement. This paper then turns to the political theory of Hannah Arendt as the theoretical lens to highlight the source of this tension as the ideology’s reductive view of politics. The paper concludes on the difficulties reconciling diversity with human enhancement, as well as raising awareness of the possibility of conscious action in concert related to the use of biomodification technologies advocated by transhumanists.

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. / Avhandlingen är ett bidrag till den bioetiska debatten om olika reproduktionstekniker som antingen nyligen blivit tillgängliga eller som kan komma att utvecklas i framtiden. Utgångspunkten är en intuition som många verkar dela, nämligen att användningen av sådana tekniker i syfte att välja icke-sjukdomsegenskaper – som kön och känslomässig stabilitet – hos framtida barn, är mer moraliskt problematiskt än både att forma sådana egenskaper hos redan existerande barn genom exempelvis utbildning och att använda teknikerna för att undvika att barn föds med svåra sjukdomar. Studien är ett försök att genom filosofisk analys begripliggöra denna intuition och avgöra om den är berättigad. Olika sätt på vilka man i den bioetiska debatten ofta gestaltar de moraliska problem som reproduktionstekniker ger upphov till kritiseras som otillräckliga för denna uppgift. I synnerhet framhålls att intuitionen inte helt kan förstås som en oro över att de barn som sådana tekniker sätter till världen kan komma till skada. Med avsikt att utveckla ett alternativ till detta konsekvensorienterade synsätt söker sig författaren till Martin Heideggers teknikfilosofi, Hans Jonas etik och Aristoteles praktiska filosofi, som den tolkats och utvecklats i den hermeneutiska traditionen. Med hjälp av dessa teorier betonas hur reproduktiva val, till skillnad från beslut gällande redan existerande barn, kännetecknas av en slags ensidighet. Det framtida barnet framstår för föräldrarna som föremål för beslut som är odelat deras, snarare än som en konkret andre som de måste interagera med på ett lyhört, noga avpassat sätt. Detta är problematiskt eftersom det innebär att sådana val inte kan ledsagas av det slags partikulära moraliska förståelse som bara uppnås i möten mellan människor. I synnerhet innebär det att valen lätt formas av, och i sin tur riskerar att underblåsa, olika för föräldraskapet karaktäristiska tendenser som ständigt riskerar förmå föräldrar att förhålla sig till sina barn på ett instrumentaliserande sätt. Men detta betyder inte att alla användningar av reproduktionstekniker är lika problematiska. Val som syftar till att undvika svåra sjukdomar kan undgå de faror som ensidigheten öppnar för genom att åberopa en gemensam mänsklig sjukdomserfarenhet. Avhandlingens slutsats är att intuitionen som diskuteras är berättigad, med vissa reservationer, om den förstås på detta sätt.

Du dopage sportif à l’usage de psychotropes pour accroître les capacités intellectuelles ou mieux contrôler les émotions, du recours aux nouvelles technologies reproductives permettant une maîtrise croissante des naissances, au développement d’une médecine anti-âge qui œuvre à l’effacement de toute trace du vieillissement, jamais il n’a été autant question d’améliorer l’être humain et ses performances par le biais des avancées technoscientifiques et biomédicales contemporaines. Cette étude interroge cette aspiration à un humain augmenté à la lumière de l’idéal humaniste et politique de la perfectibilité humaine systématisé par les philosophes des Lumières au 18ème siècle, en particulier dans l’œuvre et la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. À la différence du modèle politique et humaniste de la perfectibilité, qui valorise l’amélioration de la condition humaine dans et par la société, au cœur de l’imaginaire démocratique moderne, la société de l’amélioration contemporaine paraît, elle, promouvoir un modèle de perfectibilité dépolitisé, axé sur l’adaptabilité technoscientifique de l’être humain et la transformation de la vie en elle-même. À travers une excursion au sein l’histoire de la pensée sociale, l’objectif de cette étude est de comprendre comment un tel renversement et une telle dépolitisation de la perfectibilité ont pu avoir lieu. De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Karl Marx, de Auguste Comte à Francis Galton, des penseurs postmodernes au mouvement transhumaniste, cette thèse offre une généalogie synthétique de la société de l’amélioration dans laquelle nous entrons, seule à même d’éclairer de manière critique des transformations sociales et technoscientifiques trop souvent présentées sous le masque de l’inéluctabilité. / Whether we speak of doping in sport, the use of psychoactive drugs to improve man’s intellectual performance or better check his emotions, new reproductive technologies allowing more efficient birth control, or anti-aging medicine to erase the effects of time, there is no denying that enhancing humans through the use of technoscientific and biomedical means has grown more pervasive in our contemporary societies. This study questions today’s quest for human enhancement under the light of the humanist and political ideal of perfectibility defined by 18th century Enlightenment philosophers, particularly in the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In contrast to the humanist and political model of perfectibility, which promotes the improvement of the human condition by and through society, at the core of the democratic ideal, today’s enhancement society seems to champion a depoliticized model of perfectibility focused on human technoscientific adaptability and the transformation of life itself. Offering a journey through the history of social thought, the objective of this study is to understand how such a reversal and depoliticization of the concept of perfectibility may have been possible. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and Francis Galton, from postmodern thinkers to the transhumanist movement, this thesis presents a synthetic genealogy of the enhancement society we are entering, which allows for a critical analysis of social and technoscientific transformations that have too often been presented behind the mask of ineluctability. / Thèse réalisée en cotutelle, entre l'Université de Montréal, au Département de Sociologie, et l'Université de Rennes 1, à la Faculté de Droit et de Science Politique

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