Abstract

This work unfolds the figures that Prometheus assumes in Günther Anders' The Obsolescence of Man, a work written under the shadow of the threat of nuclear power annihilation. His scope can still help us understand our present in its double atomic and digital dimension. In contrast to the arrogant figure of the romantic-industrial Prometheus, who has governed the imaginary of progress even up to the present, Anders models a new Prometheus, ashamed and humiliated before the perfection of the machines that he himself has produced. Under the Andersian concept of Promethean shame, the dialectical tension between pride and shame, progress and destruction is expressed, which explains our current extreme situation based on the human-machine relationship.