About one and a half decades ago, two prominent reports were published in the United States which strongly influenced subsequent international discussions on the topic of human enhancement: a 2002 report on “converging technologies for improving human performance”, based on a workshop which was organised by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Commerce in December 2001, and the first report of US President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, published in October 2003 with (...) the title Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The 2002 report included a wide variety of contributions from academics in various fields of research, from representatives of US institutions, and from companies. Due primarily to the influence of the two NSF staff editing the report, it can be regarded as the first major instance of the influence of transhumanism, a techno-futurist ideology and movement, on the US technology and innovation discourse. The PCBE report, on the other hand, is a prime example of a conservative critique of the transhumanist notion of human enhancement. In this invited contribution, these two crucial publications are analysed mainly in order to point out the relevance of philosophical anthropology as developed since the 1920s by Helmuth Plessner and others. This remarkable school of thought is experiencing a revival in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and, to some extent, in the English-speaking world. In this article, it is argued that philosophical anthropology provides us with an important alternative to both anthropological essentialism and scientism, two approaches that are still highly relevant in current discourse on human enhancement. (shrink)

Most known technology serves to ingeniously adapt the world to the physical and mental limitations of human beings. Humankind has acquired awesome power with its rather limited means. Nanotechnological capabilities further this power. On some accounts, however, nanotechnological research will contribute to a rather different kind of technological development, namely one that changes human beings so as to remove or reduce their physical and mental limitations. The prospect of this technological development has inspired a fair amount of ethical (...) debate. Here, proponents and opponents of such visions of human enhancement are criticized alike for engaging in speculative ethics. This critique exposes a general pattern that extends to other nano-, bio-, or neuroethical debates. While it does not apply to all discussions of “enhancement technologies” it does apply to all ethical discourse that constructs and validates an incredible future which it only then proceeds to endorse or critique. This discourse violates conditions of intelligibility, squanders the scarce and valuable resource of ethical concern, and misleads by casting remote possibilities or philosophical thought-experiments as foresight about likely technical developments. In effect, it deflects consideration from the transformative technologies of the present. (shrink)

Individualist ethical analyses in the enhancement debate have often prioritised or only considered the interests and concerns of parents and the future child. The collectivist critique of the human enhancement debate argues that rather than pure individualism, a focus on collectivist, or group-level ethical considerations is needed for balanced ethical analysis of specific enhancement interventions. Here, I defend this argument for the insufficiency of pure individualism. However, existing collectivist analyses tend to take a negative approach that (...) hinders them from adequately contributing to balanced ethical analysis, and often leads to a prohibitive stance. I argue this is due to two common problems with collectivist analyses: inappropriate acceptance of individualist assumptions, and failure to appropriately weigh individual vs collective ethical considerations. To further develop the collectivist critique in the enhancement debate, I suggest we may look to collectivism in public health ethics, which avoids these problems. (shrink)

In popular lay discourse, objections to human biological enhancement technologies are sometimes expressed in terms of the charge that they are unnatural. This paper critiques the literal claim that seems to be presented here, namely that such technologies are in some ordinary sense ’unnatural' and that it follows from this they are immoral. Such a conceptual ’nature argument' is unsound. However, the paper contends that this does not mean that the charge of unnaturalness should be dismissed (...) out of hand. Rather, the charge of unnaturalness made by a non-philosophically trained public can be construed as expressive of a general attitude of conservative concern about enhancement technologies. Viewed in this way, the charge invites philosophers to take seriously the underlying empirical concerns that underpin these widespread lay reactions. (shrink)

Critiquer la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme du 10 décembre 1948 paraît relever de la provocation ou de l’inconscience. Ses contempteurs, qu’il s’agisse des marxistes ou des conservateurs, se sont déconsidérés. Nonobstant, c’est avec force courage que Hayek s’est attelé dès 1966 à une critique en règle de cette déclaration “constructiviste” dont l’objectif impossible était de fusionner les droits de la tradition libérale avec ceux de la conception marxiste. Le Prix Nobel démontre que les nouveaux droits ainsi proclamés ne (...) peuvent être traduits dans des lois contraignantes sans détruire incontinent l’ordre de liberté auquel tendent les droits “traditionnels” : la Déclaration constitue l’un de ces instruments qui oeuvrent à la dévalorisation du Droit et partant à la destruction de la Liberté. C’est par son prestige et par l’ignorance de ceux qui l’ont exploité que ce texte a pu prospérer. Son seul mérite est de mériter l’oubli.It might seem provocative or inconsistent to criticize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948. Its detractors, whether they be Marxists or Conservatives have fallen into discredit. Notwithstanding, Hayek has courageously tried to criticize this “constructivist” piece whose impossible goal was to unite rights in the liberal tradition with those pertaining to the Marxist conception. Hayek shows that the new rights which are proclaimed in this fashion cannot be translated into juridical constraints without destroying forthwith the liberal order cherished by “traditional” rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the tools which enhances the depreciation of Law and, by the way, the annihilation of Freedom. This text has flourished thanks to its prestige and to the ignorance of those who have employed it. Its unique merit is to deserve oblivion. (shrink)

This paper is based on the archives of Michel Foucault collected (since 2013) at the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Our investigation focuses in particular on the documents of the 1950s, in order to study the role of the reflection on anthropology and phenomenology at the beginning of Foucault’s philosophical path. This archival material allows us to discover the tremendous work that is at the basis of the relatively few works that Foucault published in the 1950s. (...) The access to the 1950s documents enables us at last to investigate the reasons for the seemingly sharp break that divides these works from the works published by Foucault in the 1960s and the 1970s, in which emerges the archaeological refusal of phenomenology and anthropology, as well as the strong criticism against any form of psychopathological discourse. (shrink)

Current discourse on human enhancement is strongly influenced by far-reaching, radical visions concerning the future of human corporeality and civilisation. These visions are most forcefully brought into the discussions by proponents of transhumanism, which constitutes both a worldview and a sociocultural movement that is increasingly influential in academia, industry and other sectors of society. Aiming to shed new light on our societies’ current fascination with human enhancement discourse, three narratives concerning the genesis of (...) transhumanism and the attractiveness of this worldview are presented. Such a historically interpretative approach may give rise to a new reflexive stance on current enhancement discourse. (shrink)

Examines key narratives animating the techno-progressive rhetoric of the human enhancement movement, arguing that enhancement and transhumanist discourse performs distinctly mythic functions. They cast a vision of a technological future involving enhanced posthumans, immortality, human merger with machines and space colonization.

This work provides a psychological perspective on globalization. It argues that multicultural experience may facilitate a merge of different cultural values, which forms a distinctively new state of mind. Experience with multicultural settings expands conceptual category boundaries, interrupts categorical thinking, and subsequently creates a new frame of thought. Studies identifying the important role of the multicultural experience in cognitive development and enhancement of creative abilities are presented to support this argument. The article questions the validity a of common critique (...) that globalization brings the world to the unified model of thought. It argues that this critique is an oversimplification of the matter caused by individuals' closed-mindedness and unreceptiveness to a new experience. (shrink)

This article examines some of the recent theological critiques of the movement of technological human enhancement known as ‘transhumanism’. Drawing on the comparisons between grace and technology often found in the theological discourse on transhumanism, this article argues that the Thomistic distinction between healing grace and elevating grace can not only supplement the theological analysis of transhumanism and its ethical implications, but also help Christian theologians and ethicists become more aware of how the phenomenon of technology (...) may have implicitly shaped the contemporary understanding of ‘grace’ as well as the task of theology as a spiritual and indeed ethical practice. (shrink)

I propose a method of assessing the degree of enlightenment of a society based on its discourses. My hypothesis is that the more objectivity prevails in a society’s spheres of discourse, the more enlightened it is; the more subjectivity dominates, the more unenlightened. This relationship can be made evident through the reconstruction of Kant’s Theory of Prejudice by taking into account the handwritten notes and fragments and the lectures on logic. First, I will discuss some key aspects of Kant’s (...) concept of prejudice. Secondly, I will address the epistemological function of the public sphere in order to show what conditions it must satisfy to fulfil its function. Thirdly, I will argue that not only Selbstdenken but also participatory reason, and therefore the public sphere itself, are both fundamental elements of enlightenment in that they function as counter-maxims against prejudice. (shrink)

This article assesses the exploration of the utopian paradigm within the context of technological advancement and its implications for human labor. It engages in this reflection, beginning with John Danaher’s reading of utopian perspectives related to the evolution of the labor domain, and then focusing on the significance of the social element and its dynamics in redefining labor and productive structures. It focuses on utopia as a regulatory ideal, valuing the conjectural contributions from theories throughout the history of utopian (...) thought. The analysis aims to understand how utopian theories arise in contexts of social dissatisfaction, prompting internal reflection on the structure. The article is organized into three sections: the first introduces the concept of utopia, tracing its historical and philosophical roots, with a focus on influential figures such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. Through the study of nineteenth-century social theories, the article explores their radical proposals for societal restructuring in response to the socio-economic upheavals of their time. The second section examines utopia as a form of social critique, emphasizing its critical function in assessing and guiding societal development, by engaging with Norbert Elias’s definitions of utopia. The third section evaluates the relevance of utopia in contemporary discourse on social change, emphasizing the critical examination of utopian visions in relation to the concept of the end of work and aiming to articulate clear parameters defining a utopian model as a social regulatory ideal. (shrink)

In this paper, the author aims to show that transhumanists are confused about their own conception of the posthuman: transhumanists anticipate radical transformation of the human through technology and at the same time assume that the criteria to determine what is “normal” and what is “enhanced” are univocal, both in our present time and in the future. Inspired by Nietzsche’s notion of the Overhuman, the author argues that the slightest “historical and phenomenological sense” discloses copious variations of criteria, both (...) diachronic and synchronic, for what can be considered “normal” and “enhanced.” Radical transformation through technology does not simply enable us to become “stronger,” “smarter,” or “healthier,” but it can and often will also change the very standard or yardstick with which we measure what counts as “stronger,” “smarter,” or “healthier.” Put yet differently: new and emerging technologies are not neutral means but often bring about different and, from our current perspective, foreign standards for determining what are “normal” and “enhanced” capacities. Since the qualitative meanings of these terms are themselves not fixed, it is unintelligible and too reassuring to simply predict that new technologies will enhance human beings. (shrink)

In his theory of history Gottfried von Herder presents a radical critique of the rationalist discourse of cosmopolitan human development advanced by the Enlightenment thinkers of his day. Herder's critique centers around his theory of history as the evolution of the Volk community. He opposed the way the rationalist perspective abstracts historical human development from all connection with the contingent elements of human historical linguistic and cultural practice in the creation of a unified, integrated world. Herder (...) looks instead to a world of infinite cultural diversity, where each historical culture is recognized as a distinct and unique manifestation of all that is rich and progressive in human life. There are some interesting parallels which can be drawn between Herder's relativistic conception of cultural community and the ideas on language and human cultural development presented in the writings of Franqois Lyotard. Both attack the Enlightenment paradigm of cultural knowledge, its pretensions to objectivity, and its claim of constituting a higher knowledge. There is a basic paradox in Herder's vision, for although Herder denies the validity of the universal claims of Enlightenment reason, his conception would appear to require the development of a form of universal rationality encompassing all national cultures. (shrink)

The cliché of the clergymen or the religious scholars battling against modern science oversimplifies the history of the encounter between modern science and religion, especially in the case of non-Western societies. Many religious scholars, Muslim and Christian, not only did not oppose modern science but used it instrumentally to propagate their religions. Marwa Elshakry, in her brilliant study of Darwin's opinions among the Arab World, concentrates more on Arab Christians and Sunni Muslims rather than on Shiite Muslims. Muḥammad-Riḍā Iṣfahānī, a (...) Shiite clergyman educated in Islamic theology in Najaf, composed A Critique of Darwin's Philosophy in 1912 as a review of the theory of evolution. However, even before the publication of this book, controversy concerning this topic had been raging in the Arab World for decades. Under the influence of Muslim scholars (Sunni and Shiite) to reconcile modern science with Islam, Iṣfahānī did his best to gather knowledge of modern biology. He applied his self-taught knowledge of modern biology to find new solutions to the difficulties of establishing a dialogue between Islam and modern science. Thanks to the rationalism of his premodern scientific education, Iṣfahānī was more sympathetic towards science than many of his Arab counterparts and able to deeply engage in these debates. Iṣfahānī believed that the theory of evolution in nonhumans did not contradict Islamic discourse nor experimental and rational facts. Nevertheless, he denied the theory of human evolution as a nonscientific hypothesis. He justified his opinion through a detailed refutation of Darwin's heuristic evidence for human evolution in the first chapter of Descent of Man, such as the similarities between anatomy, embryology, and vestigial organs in humans and other animals. He also referred to other Western evolutionists of his time, such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Rudolf Virchow, who also rejected human evolution, and added some other scientific refutations of his own. Undoubtedly, Iṣfahānī's final aim was to demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation between religion in general, and Islam in particular, with modern science. This article provides a detailed consideration of Iṣfahānī's opinions, identifying his Arabic sources and comparing them to the original non-Arabic sources. I also examine the scientific details of Iṣfahānī's achievements and the roots of his misunderstandings. (shrink)

Fleur Johns argues that the contraposition of a ‘bottom-up’ approach of politics of prototypical technique rather than the ‘top-down’ politics of the master plan or normative principle no longer seems as straightforwardly radical as it appeared when James C Scott posited the value of local knowledge or métis against grand plans of high modernization, just over 20 years ago. This paper seeks to follow Johns’ call, ‘to capture and probe some of the effects of sensibility, rationality or style widely reproduced (...) in the details of development work’. It draws upon fieldwork in Nairobi to open up a discussion of a shift in sensibility from a ‘bottom-up’ or ‘postliberal’ approach to a framing of open-ended encounter. The paper critiques this imaginary of relational encounter by engaging contemporary work in critical black studies. It suggests that the problem of critique is that it reproduces the problems of governing imaginaries, continually seeking to rework the human subject via adaptive capacities, sensitivities to difference and openness to alterity, while leaving intact the coloniality of being, the antiblack world. (shrink)

Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Mankind, published in 1755, is a vastly influential study of the foundations of human society, including the economic inequalities it tends to create. To date, however, there has been little philosophical analysis of the Discourse in the literature. In this book, Frederick Neuhouser offers a rich and incisive philosophical examination of the work. He clarifies Rousseau's arguments as to why social inequalities are so prevalent in human society and (...) why they pose fundamental dangers to human well-being, including unhappiness, loss of freedom, immorality, conflict, and alienation. He also reconstructs Rousseau's four criteria for assessing when inequalities are or are not legitimate, and why. His reconstruction and evaluation of Rousseau's arguments are accessible to both scholars and students, and will be of interest to a broad range of readers including philosophers, political theorists, cultural historians, sociologists, and economists. (shrink)

In contemporary discourse, inclusion has evolved into a core value, with inclusive societies being lauded as progressive and inherently positive. Conversely, exclusion and excluding practices are typically deemed undesirable. However, this paper questions the prevailing assumption that inclusion is always synonymous with societal progress. Could it be that exclusion, in certain contexts, serves as a more effective tool for advancing societal development? Is there a more intricate interconnection between these phenomena than conventionally acknowledged? This paper advocates moving beyond a (...) simplistic inclusion/exclusion dichotomy and puts forth two theses. First, it posits that exclusion can, at times, be a superior metric for gauging progress. Second, it contends that inclusion and exclusion are thoroughly entwined, challenging the notion of a clear demarcation between them. The underlying premise is that, much like inclusion, there can be meaningful value associated with exclusion. Furthermore, applying a rigid inclusion/exclusion dichotomy oversimplifies the discourse on societal progress, providing an artificial representation of what constitutes advancement. Such oversimplification hampers both contemporary research in the humanities and broader political discourse. The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a fresh perspective to the discourse surrounding societal progress. By challenging the fundamental conceptual framework, it seeks to add nuance to the ongoing debate, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities inherent in measuring progress within society. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to conceptualize and evaluate the transhumanist movement by applying a Nietzschean critique to its techno-progressive agenda of human enhancement. The investigation itself is divided into three distinctive, yet methodologically intertwined steps: first, I will present an exegetical approach by circumscribing the discussion concerning the alleged similarities and disparities between the transhumanist notion of transforming the human into a posthuman being and Nietzsche’s concept of education, understood as self-overcoming; secondly, in a more (...) practical and future-oriented manner, I will consider some of the major aporias for conceptualizing a ‘Nietzschean transhumanism’ by confronting the techno-progressive idea of morphological freedom with Nietzsche’s critical approach to the commerce- and consumer-oriented mentality of the non-creative modern individual; finally, I will employ Nietzsche’s complex treatment of nihilism in order to formulate a critical evaluation of transhumanism’s cultural implications. My fundamental conclusion will be that the techno-progressive agenda does not strive to overcome human limitations by coping with the tragic nature of life in a Nietzschean sense, but merely promotes the nihilistic dream of Zarathustra’s ‘last human’ to establish a common happiness by eradicating the Dionysian reality of all existence. (shrink)

Science and philosophy have discovered quite a lot about humans. The emergence and development of biology, psychology, anthropology, and cognate fields has substantially increased our knowledge about who we are and where we come from. The first half of this book provides an overview of key cutting-edge topics, from evolutionary psychology to contemporary critiques of essentialism, from genetic determinism to innateness. Nevertheless, these discoveries fall short of a full-blown theory of human nature. Why? Perhaps there is nothing there (...) to discover in the first place. Human nature, from this standpoint, is a myth and it is high time we dispose of it. This conclusion is misguided. The assumption of a shared human nature underlies some of the most pressing socio-political issues of our time. These are the subject matter of the second half of this book. From races to sex and gender, from medical therapy to disability, from biotechnological enhancement to transhumanism, all these hot debates - surveyed here in an accessible, concise, yet detailed fashion - presuppose a robust account of human nature that, however, science and philosophy are unable to provide. How do we get out of this conundrum? This study concludes that human nature is an epistemological indicator, a concept that sets out the agenda for much social, political, and normative discourse. Nevertheless, science cannot adequately capture it without thereby dissolving it. (shrink)

Habermas’s argument from human nature, which speaks in favour of holding back the use of human germline editing for purposes of enhancement, has lately received criticism anew. Prominent are objections to its supposedly genetic essentialist and determinist framework, which underestimates social impacts on human development. I argue that this criticism originates from an instrumentalist reading of Habermas’s argument, which wrongly focuses on empirical conditions and means-ends-relations. Drawing on Habermas’s distinction of a threefold use of practical reason, (...) I show how an alternative—the ethical—reading avoids essentialist and determinist objections by addressing an existential level of sense making. I present three reasons that speak in favour of the ethical reading and I demonstrate how it incorporates social aspects of character formation. Habermas’s account therefore offers exactly what the critics claim is missing. The paper concludes with a conceptual challenge that the ethical reading has to face within Habermas’s overall approach to genetic engineering. (shrink)

Abstract This paper compares Heidegger's conception of time with more prevalent physical and broadly psychological analyses of time. The ?vulgar? notion of time, as Heidegger understands it, is based on the assumption that time, regardless of whether it is identified with tense or not, is something that is essentially measurable by clocks. Heidegger maintains that the vulgar notion of time is a distortion of his own preferred conception of temporality. I show how temporality may be understood as the non?sequential tensed (...) structure underlying tensed discourse. I argue against any straightforward reduction of this tensed structure and the direction of time to physical occurrences. Nevertheless I argue that temporality can be distinguished from purely psychological analyses of temporal experience and from traditional conceptions of time as tensed experience. The selectiveness of demonstrative discourse provides the basis for Heidegger's critique and reconstruction of time understood as tensed discourse about things. Heidegger's scepticism about the interpretation of time as a sequence of nows that underlies the dominant interpretation of tense is due to his appropriation of the relativity of simultaneity from special relativity. But his interpretation of physical theory leads him to the thesis that time is pre?supposed but not completely analysed in physical theory. The meta?language of physical theory makes covert use of temporal notions, for entities can themselves only be understood in covertly temporal ways. I show how this claim may be understood and defended in the light of current physical theory. Heidegger's analysis gives us some basis for thinking that his own notion of temporality is built into an understanding of temporal experience. But I argue that Heidegger fails to make the case that physical time is ontologically dependent on human existence. (shrink)

Peter Singer's argument against ‘speciesism’ has served as the theoretical foundation for the modern animal rights movement. His argument is that the wrongs we do to animals are analogous to those committed against marginalized humans; that if we are opposed to one, then we should also be opposed to the other. Despite the argument's popularity, those historically oppressed groups to whom animals are compared have been critical of it, perceiving the analogy as dehumanizing. Animal activists have struggled to understand this (...) criticism, arguing that the analogy is only dehumanizing if one believes animals to be inferior in the first place – which is exactly what they dispute. What they fail to realize, I argue, is that the disagreement cannot be reduced to a difference in what one chooses to value. It is, instead, fundamentally conceptual. To be likened to an ‘Animal’ is something different for they who have never been regarded as ‘fully human’ in the first place. It is only after animal activists appreciate this – the singular character of human oppression, how it differs conceptually from the injustice that animals can be subject to – that the building of alliances and the work of collaboration can begin in earnest. (shrink)

A challenge confronting the human person in contemporary society is the abuse to his personality which constitutes a bane to his dignity and well-being which has continued to be on the increase despite various theoretical attempts at addressing the issue of abuse to human dignity. One of such theoretical attempts, which is atheistic humanism, has failed in its quest to enhancing the dignity of man because it has neglected the theistic background necessary for understanding, relating to and the (...) treatment of the human person. This paper therefore, aims at a critical analysis of atheistic humanism in its quest for human dignity with a view to showing its implications for the dignity and well-being of man. The paper employs the critical method of philosophy with a view to showing the inconsistencies and the implications of an atheistic humanistic understanding of man. The paper thereafter states that a theistic humanistic understanding and treatment of the human person better provides the ground for the pursuit and realization of human dignity and well-being. (shrink)

Recent discussions about moral enhancement presuppose and recommend sets of values that relate to both the Western tradition of moral philosophy and contemporary empirical results of natural and social sciences, including moral psychology. It is argued here that this is a typology of thought that requires a fundamental interrogation. Proponents of moral enhancement do not account for important critical analyses of moral discourse, beginning with that of Friedrich Nietzsche and continuing with more prominent twentieth century thinkers such (...) as the poststructuralist Michel Foucault, the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, and the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In this paper, such analyses are taken into account to highlight the need for more fundamental philosophical interrogation of the project of moral enhancement. (shrink)

Peter Singer's argument against ‘speciesism’ has served as the theoretical foundation for the modern animal rights movement. His argument is that the wrongs we do to animals are analogous to those committed against marginalized humans; that if we are opposed to one, then we should also be opposed to the other. Despite the argument's popularity, those historically oppressed groups to whom animals are compared have been critical of it, perceiving the analogy as dehumanizing. Animal activists have struggled to understand this (...) criticism, arguing that the analogy is only dehumanizing if one believes animals to be inferior in the first place – which is exactly what they dispute. What they fail to realize, I argue, is that the disagreement cannot be reduced to a difference in what one chooses to value. It is, instead, fundamentally conceptual. To be likened to an ‘Animal’ is something different for they who have never been regarded as ‘fully human’ in the first place. It is only after animal activists appreciate this – the singular character of human oppression, how it differs conceptually from the injustice that animals can be subject to – that the building of alliances and the work of collaboration can begin in earnest. (shrink)

En este artículo analizo ciertos problemas que se derivan de los principios que se utilizan en el discurso ético sobre la «mejora humana», y que guardan relación con el positivismo. Comienzo esbozando las dos posiciones principales que configuran el debate sobre la mejora humana: la posición creativa, post-humanista o pro-mejora frente a la postura bio-conservadora u orientada a la gratitud. Mi objetivo es mostrar, primero, que el debate ético sobre la mejora humana proviene, especialmente en el bando pro-mejora, de una (...) visión demasiado optimista, casi ingenua, de la ciencia y de la tecnología; y segundo, que este debate ha prestado poca atención a las cuestiones epistemológicas, sociales y políticas que están en juego. (shrink)

This paper provides a critique and re-evaluation of the way that ethics is understood and promoted within mainstream Human Resource Management (HRM) discourse. We argue that the ethics located within this discourse focuses on bolstering the relevance of HRM as a key contributor to organizational strategy, enhancing an organization's sense of moral legitimacy and augmenting organizational control over employee behaviour and subjectivity. We question this discourse in that it subordinates the ethics of the employment relationship to (...) managerial prerogative. In response, we suggest a different model of the relationship between ethics and HRM—one that finds the possibility of ethics in the contestation and destabilization of HRM. Such ethics arises through resistance to moral normalization and the constraint of freedom and difference. The contribution of our paper is in theorising the possibilities of a relationship between ethics and HRM that does not place HRM at its centre, as chief intermediary of the ethics of the employment relationship, but rather sees HRM as being a powerful player in a set of what Mouffe calls 'agonistic' socio-ethical relations. (shrink)

The ‘critique of intellectuals’ refers to a genre of normative discourse that holds intellectuals accountable for the consequences of their ideas. A curious feature of the contemporary, especially American, variant of this genre is its focus on intellectuals who were aligned with such world-historic losers as Hitler and Stalin. Why are Cold War US intellectuals not held to a similar standard of scrutiny, even though they turn out to have been aligned with the world-historic winners? In addressing this general (...) question, some self-serving tendencies of intellectual history are observed, in particular the asymmetry between the ease with which intellectuals are credited with the good consequences of their ideas and the difficulty with which they are blamed for the bad consequences. This asymmetry is particularly noted in Richard Rorty, whose pragmatism treats past ideas as a legacy intended for the (American) reader’s benefit. As a corrective, I advocate, in Paul Ricoeur’s terms, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ that treats intellectual life as fraught with danger, as our adoption of ideas always amounts to passing judgement over those who have borne them in the past. (shrink)

Mou Zongsan (牟宗三) extols Heidegger’s interpretation of human Dasein as “being-capable” and admits that he was inspired by Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant in many ways; however, although he, like Heidegger, emphasizes that human finitude is the basic premise of Kantian philosophy, he refuses to apply this premise to Kant’s philosophy as a whole. He argues, for Kant, “human beings are finite but can be infinite.” Moreover, he, on the one hand, criticizes Heidegger for withdrawing the dimension of (...) absolute spontaneity, infinitude, supersensibility and supratemporality from morality and, on the other hand, criticizes Kant for rejecting the possibility of a positive use of intellectual intuition. By the general insight of Chinese philosophy, which positively recognize the intellectual intuition, Mou believes that one can change the downside of Kantian philosophy and organically combine Western and Asian philosophy. (shrink)

This article delves into the examination of the similarities and disparities between education and enhancement, with a particular focus on enhancement within the realm of NBIC (Nano-Bio-Information Technology, Cognitive Science). After scrutinizing how proponents of enhancement have delineated the concept of education, our investigation unfolds along two primary dimensions: the anthropological underpinnings of education and enhancement discourse and their respective objectives. Through this analysis, we assert that education and enhancement exhibit distinct characteristics and objectives, (...) defying easy comparison for determining which approach is more conducive to human improvement, notwithstanding their superficially analogous theoretical frameworks and objectives. Furthermore, we aim to highlight the perceptual illusions that blur the demarcation lines between education and enhancement, in order to establish a clear and distinctive role for education amid the plethora of enhancement discourses. (shrink)

Since it is now broadly acknowledged that ethics should receive early consideration in discourse on emerging technologies, ethical debates tend to flourish even while new fields of technology are still in their infancy. Such debates often liberally mix existing applications with technologies in the pipeline and far-reaching visions. This paper analyses the problems associated with this use of ethics as “preparatory” research, taking discourse on human enhancement in general and on pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement in particular (...) as an example. The paper will outline and discuss the gap between the scientific and technological state of the art and the ethical debates, pointing out epistemic problems in this context. Furthermore, it will discuss the future role of genuine ethical reflection in discourse on human enhancement, arguing also that such discourse needs to include a technology assessment—in the broad sense of the term—which encompasses, inter alia, anthropological perspectives and aspects of social theory. (shrink)

D'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse, a once‐influential eighteenth‐century consideration of the utility of the humanities, is relevant to contemporary concerns about the declining importance of humanistic education. A sympathetic appraisal of d'Alembert's critique of humanistic erudition as largely useless can serve as a starting point for reconceiving of the humanities as studies that help train the professionals who administer the institutions of modern society to better understand their own commitments.

This work traces the development Paul Ricoeur's recent hermeneutic phenomenology since the late 1960's, and develops the critical element within Ricoeur's recent thought by examining his conceptions of ideology and utopia, and the relationship between hermeneutics and critical theory, in order to elaborate a critical and rationally justified interpretation of human action for the social sciences. Particular attention is paid to Ricoeur's works on metaphor, narrative, and ethics in the context of a critical theory of power, ideology and history. (...) Hermeneutics, if properly conceived, is, at the same time, a critical theory of society geared toward identifying ideological formations and utopian possibilities of liberation. The Habermas-Gadamer debate forms the backcloth for this study by functioning like a hidden dialogue partner that informs our reading of the development of Ricoeur's thought. I propose an extension of Ricoeur's conception of a critique of ideology in two directions, corresponding a phenomenology of the will, and a narrative theory of human action. The result of this extension, or interpolation, is to deepen and clarify a thought path begun by Ricoeur. The basis for a critique of ideological action is a conception of truth that incorporates a Husserlian notion of evidential experience, and a Habermasian notion of truth as consensus. The normative basis for critique is Ricoeur's conception of discourse ethics, which incorporates an Aristotelian conception of the good life, and a Kantian conception of autonomy and deontological moral norm. Ricoeur's model of interpretation and critique surpasses both Habermas and Gadamer, by integrating the Habermasian validity basis of discourse within a broader, phenomenologically grounded conception of human experience and action that emphasizes the creative and imaginative uses of language for interpretation, critique, practical reason, and self-reflection. (shrink)

The advent of the digital era brings with it the dream of ‘transcending the human’ through the most sophisticated AI / robot technologies. The Author argues that the concept and practices of ‘transcendence’ are deeply ambiguous, since on the one hand they simply aim to overcome the weaknesses, limits and fragility of the human, while on the other hand they modify the human by selecting its specific qualities and its causal properties in a way to generate beings (...) ‘other than human.’ As a matter of fact, post / trans-humanist ideologies, instead of strengthening the human, lead to its dehumanization because they imply the denial of the characteristics that are uniquely human and / or those that constitute human nature. To understand when new digital technologies enhance the human or distort it, it is necessary to analyze and evaluate social processes on the basis of a relational vision that shows us which human relationships emerge from the use of technologies. (shrink)

In this article I argue against the rights‐based framework defining the abortion debate, and do so by considering the views of Beth Singer, a philosopher whose work conveys a broadly pragmatist formulation of traditional rights‐based language. Although Singer's schema presents a fruitful vantage point from which to consider the abortion question through the discourse of rights, even Singer's use of the language of rights ultimately fails adequately to address the subject. I challenge Singer's view by taking up John Dewey's (...) concept of reflective morality, elucidated in his 1932 Ethics. (shrink)

The themes of will and willing form a central but so far largely overlooked level of discourse in Hartmann’s Gregorius. At the heart of this discourse is the opposition between human and divine will, which is negotiated in terms of the tension between controllability and uncontrollability. To this end, Hartmann’s legendary romance takes recourse to a narrative pattern characteristic of, among others, the Latin legend of St. Brendan. Structuring the text and plot of Gregorius, it serves to (...) present the protagonist’s voyages on the water as a surrender to the will of God. When the protagonist decides to leave the monastery island, however, the pattern is conspicuously deviated from. It is through this deviation that the second instance of incest emerges as a personally attributable result of the protagonist’s attitude toward his creaturely will – which requires correction – rather than as guilt in the moral-theological sense. In Hartmann, a quasi-mystical theology of the will is molded into a narrative. In clear contrast to its French source, his adaptation thus reflects on the limits of human self-determination and controllability from an immanent perspective, the relationship to the world, as well as a transcendental perspective, the relationship to God. The prologue and Gregorius’s tablet suggest that Hartmann’s legend also deals with uncontrollability on a meta-level, as it ponders the problem of how the transcendent can be represented through narrative. (shrink)

The article further elaborates on a project of phenomenological critique of ideology and reveals its potential for the discourse of literature. Since the paradigm of studying ideology as a ‘false consciousness’ set in classical Marxism run into several problems connected with the transition from being in ideology to performing its critique, a genuine way out of it became impossible due to the totality of a discursive structure common to them. The articulation of this paradox in Karl Mannheim, Louis Althusser, (...) Paul Ricœur, Michel Pecheux, and Mikel Dufrenne changed the way of statement of the question, shifting the emphasis from the content of ideology and its characteristic features to the status of a critic who is inevitably hypostatizing his thinking. The change of perspective, in turn, entailed a transformation of the method: while the previous tradition focused on finding a connection between the distorted representation of reality in ideological consciousness and the social position of its bearer, structuralist and phenomenological approaches tend to consider the contingent content of consciousness as an inevitable consequence of its structuring always-already-given horizon of meaning. Working with the latter, Mark Richir introduces the concept of a symbolic institution—the domain of meaning, which determines the human habitus, providing it with linguistic and cultural practices that have lost their phenomenological origin. In this framework, the criticism of ideology is understood as an exit from a symbolic institution, albeit temporary. Mark Richir thematizes this exit as an encounter between symbolic and phenomenological registers, i. e. a phenomenological challenge that assumes the agent of the reduction. Nevertheless, gaining a foothold 'outside' the symbolic institution is impossible: the overcome symbolic order undergoes recoding over time. Therefore, the phenomenological criticism of ideology cannot offer a normative program of a presumed non-ideological field to which the previous tradition aspired. The work hypothesizes that such critique is given as a trace of a once-perfect exit from a symbolic institution and is subject to interpretation as evidence. The development of this hypothesis is presented in the final, practical part of the work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARDS A 'MATERIALIST' CRITIQUE OF 'RELIGIOUS PLURALISM': A POLEMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE DISCOURSE OF JOHN lliCK AND WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH KENNETH SURIN Duke University Durham, North Oarolina HE FACT THAT thinkers of such different theologia.I persuasions as David Tracy and John Hick regard hemsel¥es as 'religious' and (or) 'theological pluralists ' serves to indicate that ' pluralism ' must itself be irreducibly 'plural.' In this paper I shall (...) confine my attentions to the version of ' pluralism ' advertised in the writings of John Hick and, to a lesser extent, in those of Wilfred Cantwell Smith. I am proposing, in other words, to make the assumption that what Hick and Cantwell Smith say, and assume tacitly, about 'pluralism ' will apply, mutatis mutandis, to other versions or manifestations of 'pluralism' which have features in common with the position espoused hy Hick and Cantwell Smith. I should perhaps conclude this prefatory section of my paper by saying that the thrust of my argument will :be polemical, an admission which will probably not excuse the aggressive tone of some of my remarks. John Hick has written movingly about the 'spiritual pilgrimage ' (his term) which.brought him to the kind of Christian self-understanding that came to he articulated in his 'Copernican theology of world religions,' a self-understanding in which a ' Christ-centered' picture of the universe of faiths has givcen 1way to one that is ' God-centered.' 1 It is Hick's con1 For Hick's account of his 'spiritual pilgrimage,' see God Has Many Names (London: Macmilla.n, 1980), pp. 1-5; and the essay 'Three Contro655 656 KENNETH SURIN tention that the diversity of l"eligious and cultural traditions necessitates '... a paradigm shift from a Christianity-centered or Jesus-centered to a God-centered model of the universe of faiths.' 2 In making this ' paradigm shift,' ' one... sees the great world religions as different human responses to the One divine Reality, embodying different perceptions which have been formed in diffe:vent historical and cultural circumstances.' 3 Given Hick's espousal of the autobiographical mode when prefacing his many presentations of the third ' Copernican revnlution,' it could plausibly be al"gued that these presentations are perhaps best seen as a kind of narrative, in this case a secondary narrative-one constituting an abstract second -order discourse-whose typical and primary function in this instance is that of a theological 'sense-making.' Hick's theology, we are suggesting, is a ' sense-making ' narrative which ranges over the more immediately personal, first-order narratives recounting his decisive encounter with the cultural and religious realities that prevailed in Birmingham when he went to live there a couple of decades ago. The themes, categories, al"guments, etc., of Hick's 'philosophy of world religions ' can thus,be said to constitute him as a narrative character, in this case a character who of course features in his own narratives. Now the emergence of narrative characters reversies ' which introduces his recently-published collection Tke Problem of Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 1-15..A similar 'Godcenteredness ' is evinced in Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Tke Meaning and End of Religion: A Revolutionary Approaak to tke Great Religious Traditions (London: SPCK, 1978), pp. 170-92. Note especially the remark which concludes the chapter titled "Faith": 'The traditions evolve. Men's faith varies. God endures ' (p. 192). The subtitle to this book is somewhat misleading, because there is nothing recognizably 'revolutionary' about it. Cantwell Smith's work is a tepid liberal corrective to the 'exclusionary' discourse sponsored by certain strands of Christianity and the hegemonic 'Western' culture in which these strands are socially legitimated. 2 God Has Many Names, p. 6. s Loa. ait..A similar emphasis on religious traditions as 'historical constructs ' is to be found in Cantwell Smith, Tke Meaning and Iilnd of Religion, pp. 154ff. RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 657 quires historical and social preconditions, and my purpose in this paper will be to conduct an examination of the particular historical and social preconditions that have to he assumed if the ' religious pluralist' in general, and John Hick in particular, are to emerge as narrative cha.racters.4 In his 'Author's Introduction' (1920) to the 'Collected Essays on the Sociology of... (shrink)

“Democratization” has recently become a popular trope in Western public discourses on medicine, where it refers to patient participation in the gathering and distribution of health-related data using various digital technologies, in order to improve healthcare technically and socially. We critically analyze the usage of the term from the perspective of the “politics of buzzwords.” Our claim is that the phrase works primarily to publicly justify the dramatic increase in the application of information and data technologies in healthcare and therefore (...) fosters the corresponding industry. As a buzzword, “democratizing healthcare” is characterized by vagueness, which is why it receives meaning only through a word collective—a group of words that provide it with a context and are often used together with it. We examine key terms associated with “democratization” in the healthcare discourse—participation, empowerment, and personalized medicine—and show that the buzzword receives rhetorical power through the ambiguous reference to these concepts. As a consequence, the idea of “democracy” becomes diluted into meaning merely “access to,” and “healthcare” is reduced to the notion of a preventive, nonacute, monitored form of medical care. (shrink)

Although Hume did not produce any major work in aesthetics, several of his essays, as well as numerous passages in A Treatise of Human Nature and in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, do address central debates in eighteenth-century aesthetics. In this dissertation I show that Hume made some interesting contributions to these debates that in fact changed the course of aesthetic inquiry. He was the first British thinker to apply systematically an empirical method to such aesthetic concepts (...) as the nature of beauty, the experience of the sublime, the pleasures of tragedy, and the standard of taste. His views on these concepts represent a significant departure from the classical emphasis on the formal features of aesthetic objects, and a new emphasis on the psychological processes by which the object is experienced. Hume's importance within the Anglo-aesthetic tradition is that his approach instigated a radical shift in aesthetic discourse from the study of beautiful things to the causal analysis of the emotional experiences of the percipient. Hume recognized the relativistic implications of the displacement of the aesthetic object by the experiencing subject, but he remained hopeful that a "science" of aesthetics based on principles of human nature could still be developed. This study aims to situate Hume's aesthetics within the context of his "science of man," and thereby to enhance understanding of his philosophical project as a whole. (shrink)

Whatever ethical stance one takes in the debate regarding the ethics of human enhancement, one or more reference points are required to assess its morality. Some have suggested looking at the bioethical notions of safety, justice, and/or autonomy to find such reference points. Others, arguing that those notions are limited with respect to assessing the morality of human enhancement, have turned to human nature, human authenticity, or human dignity as reference points, thereby introducing (...) some perfectionist assumptions into the debate. In this article, we ask which perfectionist assumptions should be used in this debate. After a critique of views that are problematic, we take a positive approach, suggesting some perfectionist elements that can lend guidance to the practice of human enhancement, based on the work of Martha Nussbaum's Capability Approach. We suggest that the central capabilities can be used to define the human aspect of human enhancement and thereby allow a moral evaluation of enhancement interventions. These central capabilities can be maximized harmoniously to postulate what an ideal human would look like. Ultimately, the aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to make explicit the perfectionist assumptions found in the debate and eliminate those that are problematic. Second, the paper clarifies an element that is often neglected in the debate about human enhancement, the view of the ideal human towards which human enhancement should strive. Here, we suggest that some central capabilities that are essential for an ideal human being can be maximized harmoniously and can therefore serve as possible reference points to guide human enhancement. (shrink)

The present context in Europe and in the West, as well as in many parts of the world, is marked by a devastating attack on the Humanities and, by extension, on the ideal of the university. These assaults are visible and manifest in numerous European countries today and their implications are also palpable in France. We shall begin by examining the nature of The present context in Europe and in the West, as well as in these attacks, as well as (...) how and why they afect the ideal of the university to the point of provoking an unparalleled devaluation, perhaps even a negation, of critical discourse. Although we will also and in a certain way engage in what we could call – after Derrida – a “deconstruction of critique”, our aim will always be to inspire and thus ofer a novel future for critical theory. (shrink)

This article reviews the 2017 English translation of Achille Mbembe’s book _Critique of Black Reason._ It suggests that a key to understanding the work concerns the theme of the double, for instance, the critique of the double discourse on Blackness which explains the title of the book. Despite some passages of the text being overly poetic and difficult to understand, Mbembe’s critical contribution in this work, to not only the philosophical debate on otherness but also critical race theory, is (...) the attempt to rethink the relation of the particular and the universal, or in this instance Africa and the world, in order to think more critically about the responsibility of repairing the dignity of humanity in thinking our shared world beyond race and racism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Unspoken Word: Negative Theology in Meister Eckhart's German SermonsOliver DaviesBruce Milem. The Unspoken Word: Negative Theology in Meister Eckhart's German Sermons. Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 192. Cloth, $44.95.Questions of meaning in Meister Eckhart's German sermons have prompted a series of recent studies by scholars interested in the dynamics of language and piety as they emerged in vernacular texts written (...) in Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages. Bruce Milem's book sits within this school of reflection and is to be distinguished by his decision to frame the discussion within the context of a theory of the image, as developed by Eckhart across a number of works. It is this hermeneutic which gives coherence to The Unspoken Word and which allows the author to build an understanding of the role of language in Eckhart's sermons that draws upon Brecht's theory of the Verfremdungseffekt. According to this, alienation of language, or the disruption of its ordinary meanings, acts as its objectification in such a way that the audience is prompted to reflect upon their own situatedness with respect to the meanings which are disclosed within it. Language, or narrative, of this kind acts as a hermeneutic of self-critique and enhanced self-understanding.Milem bases his argument concerning the image on a close reading of just four sermons: 52 (Beati pauperes spiritu), Sermon 2 (Intravit Iesus in quoddam castellum), Sermon 16B (Quasi vas auri solidum) and Sermon 6 (Iusti vivent in aeternum). In these texts, expressed in different ways, he discerns firstly a theoretical outworking of the image as something that is defined by virtue of its relation to its source. The classic discussion of this comes in Sermon 16B with its discourse on a reflection in a mirror, whereby the image is "at one" with its source. But Milem rightly extends this theory to mean that in so far as all created things are images, they can be defined with respect to their relation to their source in God, rather than that of which they are images. But created images can also be defined in terms of their dissimilarity to their source: their incompleteness and temporality. The particular place of the sermon is given with its capacity to enact this condition of the image in ways that make it explicit.Milem argues for the German sermon as "an event" which is at the same time a mode of self-knowing, whereby the self comes to a deeper realisation of its dependence upon the divine at every moment of its being and action. Being ourselves constituted as "image," we are conditioned by the dialectic of likeness and distinction which characterises the relation of all images to the Creator. In our case however this is a state which can be realised in an existential act of reflection as a possibility which is opened up for us by our entry into the very particular, disruptive linguistic world of the sermon. This is an advancement on Walter Haug's notion of the language of the sermon as "transformational" but it adds to it a nice distinction of the status of the human creature as "image" and therefore conditioned by dissimilarity as much as likeness.In The Unspoken Word, Bruce Milem offers us a careful and intelligent analysis of the four sermons as exemplifying a kind of linguistic alienation which serves the end of self-illumination, as we come into a new possession of ourselves as being both intensively "like" God and utterly distinct from Him. This is not merely a cognitive change in us but also an existential one, as Milem's analysis of the theme of justice and human action in Sermon 6 shows. To this extent, his use of the hermeneutic of the image as signaling both likeness and distinction at an existential level usefully opens up new avenues of understanding. To some extent however this trajectory would have been strengthened by taking into account the two areas of inquiry with which Milem chooses not to engage (15-18), namely the relation between the German and Latin works and the question of whether... (shrink)

It has been said that human dignity is a vacuous concept that should, therefore, be dismissed as an ethical category. This article seeks to defend the concept of human dignity by suggesting, first, that the flaw in the logic of those who claim that human dignity is a vacuous concept lies in an unjustifiable reductionism that results from the hermeneutic of suspicion that such authors apply to the concept. Second, that human dignity is not an either/or (...) concept, as these authors would suggest, but rather a both/and concept in which the contradictions that they would use for its dismissal are indeed where human dignity’s value as an ethical category lies. This is achieved by applying both a hermeneutic of suspicion and a hermeneutic of generosity to a reading of Gaudium et Spes. The result is a heuristic of human dignity in which dignity is shown to be something that all human beings all already have and, at the same time, still seek to acquire through morally good behaviour. The Component Dimensions of Dignity model addresses this tension in various aspects of the human condition: existential, behavioural, cognitive, and social. In so doing it provides a heuristic tool that can serve both a descriptive and a normative function in ethical discourse, because it can help us to see not only why people may engage in a particular course of action but also the extent to which this action really meets the proviso of the social component dimension of the model, namely, that my dignity is only ever fulfilled if the dignity of all others is brought to fulfilment. (shrink)

Human enhancement technologies raise serious ethical questions about health practices no longer content simply to treat disease, but which now also propose to “optimize” human beings’ physical, cognitive and psychological abilities. These technologies call for a reassessment of our relationship to health, the human body and the body's organic, identity and social functions. In nursing, such considerations are in their infancy. In this paper, we argue for the relevance of critical phenomenology as a way to better (...) understand the ethical issues related to human enhancement technologies (HET). In so doing, we seek to problematize HET and assess their influence on the future development of nursing science and practice. It is difficult to anticipate the concrete effects of HET, we suggest, because these practices reconfigure the meaning of normativity and disorient our conventional ethical landscape. In this context, we argue that the later work of Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault invites a critical perspective into how techno‐scientific discourses modify our relationship to care, to health and to our own social and corporeal identities. Despite the traditional philosophical opposition between phenomenology and critical theory, we maintain that a hybrid critical phenomenological approach opens new ways to assess the integration of technology and practice. Our analysis understands HET as a process of “hybridization” between technological objects and human subjects. Critical phenomenology thus effectively questions anthropocentric definitions of technology, challenges the dichotomy between curative treatment and enhancement and, finally, prompts valuable reflection on the implications of HET for nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

In the late 1970s, when Karel Vasak offered his concept of the three generations of rights, it was inclusive enough to embrace the whole spectrum of existing human rights. Forty years later, this paper explores the nature of contemporary human rights discourse and questions to what extent Vasak’s categorization is still relevant. Our work discusses the evolution of the concept of human rights, the changing dichotomies of national and international, individual and collective, and positive and negative (...) rights. This paper uses qualitative methods of content analysis and quantitative frequency analysis method to explore the nature of scholarly discourse presented in human rights journals. Our research findings highlight the dynamic evolution of contemporary human rights discourse. The paper specifically illustrates the increasing emphasis on collective and internationalist rights and the enhancement of human rights matters that are difficult to categorize using Vasak’s approach. In doing so, the paper calls for the clarification of the language of contemporary human rights. (shrink)

The concept of moral individualism is part of the foundational structure of most prominent modern moral philosophies. It rests on the assumption that moral obligations towards a respective individual are constituted solely by her or his capacities. Hence, these obligations are independent of any ἔθος, of any shared ethical sense and social significations. The moral agent and the individual with moral status are construed as subjects outside of any social relation or lifeworld significations. This assumption has been contested in the (...) last decades by diverse authors with very different approaches to moral philosophy. In the last years, an increasing number of philosophers like Cora Diamond and Alice Crary, but also phenomenologists like Paul Ricœur, Klaus Held, and Bernhard Waldenfels question the presupposition that individual capacities are the agent-neutral and context-neutral ground of moral considerations. This critique of moral individualism in different contemporary discourses shows a striking similarity between Wittgensteinian and phenomenological philosophers as their critical inquiry of prominent theories like the ones by Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, Peter Singer or Tom Regan is derived from mostly implicitly efficacious Aristotelian theorems. Telling examples are the ἔθος as pre-given normative infrastructure, the ἕξις as individual internalization of the ethos, the φρόνησις described as a specific practical know-how in contrast to scientific knowledge, and not at least the definition of the human being as ζῷον πολιτικόν. However, the Aristotelian sources of this movement have not yet been scrutinized systematically. This paper aims, first, to reveal the significance of these sources to make them visible and, second, to contribute to the notion of the topicality of Aristotelian philosophy in current debates on ethics. (shrink)