Abstract

This paper aims to critically evaluate some impacts of the so-called “posthumanist turn” for philosophy of technology, with special reference to the problem of ontological status of artifacts. In the first place, we reconstruct the meaning and scope of posthumanist turn in social and human sciences, while we indicate in what sense this turn questions a group of traditional operative concepts for philosophy. Second, we propose to admit a “weak” version of posthumanism for philosophy of technology. In this sense, two lines of research compatible to this “weak” approach are pointed out. The first one consists in the exploration of immanent aspects of technical objects. The second one commits us to introduce the category of “hybridization” in order to account for the complex and multidimensional relationships between humans and environments.