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A medida e as coisas. Virtudes, responsabilidade e tecnologia
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Esta dissertação provê um quadro conceptual tributário da ética das virtudes que permita pensar uma fundamentação consentânea do agir vis-à-vis a tecnologia. A nossa pesquisa parte não só da constatação de que a multiplicidade e o ritmo da inovação tecnológica apresentam já questões suficientes para considerações éticas, mas de que tais mudanças anunciam um desafio para o próprio exercício reflexivo da ética, próprio à corrente crise epocal de origem antrópica. A tese compõe-se de cinco partes.
Na primeira parte apresentam-se os principais conceitos da ética aristotélica. Veremos como é concebido o progresso moral individual através do concurso das virtudes e de uma concepção teleológica da natureza humana. A distinção entre as virtudes dianoéticas da theoria, da techne e da phronesis é estabelecida no seu papel para providenciar o progresso moral. Estes conceitos são por sua vez criticamente recuperados e alargados por Alasdair MacIntyre para a contemporaneidade através da compreensão apologética da superioridade da ética aristotélica. Para este autor, não obstante condicionalismos vários que toldam o agir, a agência moral conserva aí ainda uma racionalidade prática concebida como tributária das raízes biológicas da espécie humana, da sua exposição à fragilidade e fortuna e de uma teleologia secundada a um bem socialmente definido.
A segunda parte decorre da insuficiência dos conceitos apresentados anteriormente para aferir a tecnologia nos seus próprios termos. As ausências conceptuais são várias: 1) desconsideração da tecnologia na forma como a mesma altera os fins da acção na praxis; 2) estruturação da natureza humana e do progresso moral pela própria técnica e pela exterioridade mais larga da natureza. Estes elementos deverão por sua vez ser complementados ainda pela noção de que o processo histórico da Modernidade correspondeu largamente à erosão do quadro aristotélico. Em termos breves, esse processo consistiu na aliança profícua entre a theoria e a techne para prover a humanidade de utilidades e de conveniência através do progresso científico e tecnológico; na ruína da teleologia presente na natureza e no progresso moral; na elisão da capacidade da phronesis para determinar o bem derradeiro; e na equiparação das leis que regem a dinâmica da sociedade à dinâmica da natureza, no pressuposto da exequibilidade de uma optimização.
Tal como Alasdair MacIntyre critica a Modernidade por esta ter falhado na sua tentativa de fundar a moralidade, percorreremos também o significado maior da separação entre factos e valores e o pressuposto de que o conhecimento científico, através da técnica, é suficiente para o progresso moral, noção que constitui a trave-mestra de vastas utopias modernas. Entre outros autores, o papel central desta segunda parte caberá a Hans Jonas devido à forma como não só complementa as referidas ausências conceptuais acerca da natureza humana, mas sobretudo como problematiza o posicionamento essencialmente pré-moderno da ética relativamente à técnica. É através do exame da obra deste autor que poderemos aceder a uma proposta crítica que tem em conta as consequências da própria tecnologia para a reflexividade ética e de um argumentário que ecoa a diferença entre a techne e a phronesis acerca da diferença entre progresso científico e tecnológico e progresso moral.
Na sua dinâmica formal, a técnica moderna caracteriza-se pela sua magnitude, escala eirreversibilidade dos seus efeitos. Estas características levam ao estabelecimento de um hiato epistemológico entre o poder de fazer e o poder de prever relativo a esse fazer, isto é, a uma dissociação entre a agência moral e as consequências da sua acção. Esta condição, designada por tecno-opacidade, é remediada por Hans Jonas através da heurística do medo, pela qual a imaginação moral tenta estabelecer cenários futuros realistas que acautelem a imprevisibilidade da acção tecnológica.
A terceira e a quarta partes desta tese lançam-nos directamente no debate contemporâneo em filosofia da tecnologia. Serão aqui estabelecidos os limites à descrição abrangente da dinâmica formal da tecnologia como um todo autónomo a cujas leis do movimento a humanidade está necessariamente subjugada. É através da análise do conteúdo substancial da tecnologias, i.e., como tecnologias concretas se instanciam em relações com os agentes, que se pode entender como são a percepção e a acção modificadas e como é que a agência moral pode ainda cumprir-se segundo a orientação da vida boa.
No seu todo, a terceira parte respeita assim ao confronto de autores cuja herança comum remonta à obra de Heidegger. Através da estrutura de revelação-ocultação da tecnologia comum a Don Ihde, a Albert Borgmann e à teoria da mediação, revisitaremos conceitos avançados por Hans Jonas, precisando como é a agência moral condicionada pela materialidade e, ao contrário de Bruno Latour, qual é nesse âmbito a diferença fundamental entre responsabilidade moral e responsabilidade causal. Através de uma leitura aristotélica da obra de Albert Borgmann, observaremos como o seu paradigma do dispositivo e a noção de coisas e práticas focais permitem vencer o hiato epistemológico e são em certa medida uma recuperação relativa à tecnologia segundo critérios objectivos do florescimento da natureza humana.
A quarta parte dá essencialmente conta da obra de Ivan Illich. A originalidade deste autor prende-se com a sua análise de vários sectores e instituições da sociedade industrial serem contraprodutivos, isto é, minarem a prossecução dos objectivos para os quais foram desenhados. Illich interpreta a industrialização como um capítulo actual da história da religião. A eclesiologia da sociedade industrial pretere a busca do bem interno às práticas vernaculares pela distribuição ecuménica de serviços e mercadorias eivadas de escassez. A alternativa de cunho aristotélico para Illich é o cultivo de práticas ascéticas através das quais tecnologias conviviais podem participar do florescimento humano dando conta da finitude da natureza humana e do seu enraizamento social, material e natural.
Na última parte pretende-se concretizar o quadro de recursos conceptuais desenvolvidos num estudo de caso. Ao longo de dois capítulos, examinaremos a possibilidade de estabelecer práticas para uma ética alimentar no contexto de um sistema alimentar industrial em que a tecnologia está amplamente presente. O acto alimentar será aquele que, tendo em conta o hiato epistemológico que atravessa os produtos alimentares, é precedido de uma deliberação segundo a concepção de um bem que actualize a natureza humana nas suas componentes material, social e ambiental.
This thesis provides a virtue ethics approach for building a conceptual framework that allows one to think of a rationale for action vis-à-vis technology in the context of the current environmental crisis. Our research acknowledges and departs from the observation that the multiplicity and rhythm of technological innovation already demands an appropriate ethical consideration in vast areas of human life. Nevertheless, such changes also announce a challenge for the reflective exercise of ethics itself. The thesis comprises five parts. The first part presents the main concepts of Aristotelian ethics. Individual moral progress is conceived through the role of the virtues and a teleological conception of human nature. The distinction between the intellectual virtues of theory, techne and phronesis is established through their role in affording and assisting moral progress. These concepts are in turn critically recovered and extended by Alasdair MacIntyre to contemporary ethical thought through the apologetic understanding of the superiority of Aristotelian ethics. To this author and in spite of various constraints that overshadow moral agency, action still and should retain a rationality rooted in the biological roots of the human species, its frailty, exposure to fortune and a teleology secondary to a socially defined good. The second part stems from the insufficiency of the previously presented concepts to account for technology in its own terms. There are several conceptual absences: 1) the disregard of technology in the way it alters the ends of action in praxis; 2) the structuring of human nature and of moral progress by technology itself through the wider exteriority of nature. These elements should in turn be complemented by the notion that the historical process of Modernity largely corresponds to the erosion of the Aristotelian framework. Briefly, this process consisted 1) in the fruitful alliance between theory and techne to provide humanity with the use and convenience of nature through scientific and technological progress; 2) in the ruin of teleology in nature and in moral progress; 3) in the avoidance of the ability of phronesis to determine the ultimate good; 4) and in the equivalence between the laws governing society and the ones governing nature, on the assumption of the feasibility of an optimization. Just as Alasdair MacIntyre criticize Modernity for the failure of its attempt to rationally justify morality, we will also assess the greater meaning of the separation between facts and values and the close related assumption that scientific knowledge, through technology, is sufficient for moral progress, a notion that constitutes the keystone of several modern utopias. Among other authors, the central role of this second part belongs to Hans Jonas. His oeuvre not only complements the referred conceptual absences about human nature, but above all he questions the essentially pre-modern positioning of ethics in relation to technology. Through the examination of his main theses we can start accounting for a critical proposal that takes into account the consequences of technology itself for ethical reflexivity and an argument that echoes the difference between techne and phronesis about the difference between scientific and technological progress and moral progress. In its formal dynamics, modern technology is characterized by the magnitude, scale and irreversibility of its effects. These features lead to the establishment of an epistemological gap between the power to do and the power to forecast in relation to that same doing. Shortly, that is, to a dissociation between moral agency and the consequences of its action. This condition, called techno-opacity, is remedied by Hans Jonas through the heuristics of fear, through which the moral imagination attempts to establish realistic future scenarios that safeguard the unpredictability of technological action. The third and fourth parts launch us directly into the contemporary debate in philosophy of technology. Generally, limits are settled regarding the comprehensiveness of the formal dynamic’s description of technology as an autonomous force to whose laws of motion humanity is necessarily bound in compliance. It is through the analysis of the substantial content of technologies, i.e., how concrete technologies are instantiated in relationships with agents, that one can understand how perception and action are modified and how moral agency can still be fulfilled according to the orientation of the good life. On the whole, the third part thus concerns the confrontation of authors whose common heritage goes back to the work of Heidegger. Through the revelation-occultation structure of technology common to Don Ihde, Albert Borgmann and mediation theory, we will revisit concepts advanced by Hans Jonas, specifying how moral agency is conditioned by materiality and, contrary to Bruno Latour, what is the fundamental difference between moral responsibility and causal responsibility. Through an Aristotelian reading of Albert Borgmann's work, we will observe how his device paradigm and the notion of focal things and practices allow us to overcome the epistemological gap. We consider that his work is to some extent a recovery vis-à-vis technology of flourishment, according to objective criteria of human nature. The fourth part essentially deals with the work of Ivan Illich. The novelty of this author relates to his analysis of various divisions and institutions of industrial society as being essentially counterproductive, that is, undermining the pursuit of the objectives for which they were designed. Illich reads industrialization as a current chapter in the history of religion. The ecclesiology of industrial society largely neglects the search for the goods internal to vernacular practices, favoring the ecumenical distribution of services and commodities that are plagued by scarcity. The neo-Aristotelian alternative for Illich is the cultivation of ascetic practices through which convivial technologies can participate in human flowering by realizing the finiteness of human nature and its social, material and natural roots. In the last part we intend to apply the developed framework of conceptual resources to a case study. We will examine the possibility of establishing a food ethics in the context of the current industrial food system in which technology is widely present. The act of eating should account for the epistemological gap that crosses food production. Eating should be a matter of deliberation according to the conception of a good that favors human flourishment in its material, social and environmental components.
This thesis provides a virtue ethics approach for building a conceptual framework that allows one to think of a rationale for action vis-à-vis technology in the context of the current environmental crisis. Our research acknowledges and departs from the observation that the multiplicity and rhythm of technological innovation already demands an appropriate ethical consideration in vast areas of human life. Nevertheless, such changes also announce a challenge for the reflective exercise of ethics itself. The thesis comprises five parts. The first part presents the main concepts of Aristotelian ethics. Individual moral progress is conceived through the role of the virtues and a teleological conception of human nature. The distinction between the intellectual virtues of theory, techne and phronesis is established through their role in affording and assisting moral progress. These concepts are in turn critically recovered and extended by Alasdair MacIntyre to contemporary ethical thought through the apologetic understanding of the superiority of Aristotelian ethics. To this author and in spite of various constraints that overshadow moral agency, action still and should retain a rationality rooted in the biological roots of the human species, its frailty, exposure to fortune and a teleology secondary to a socially defined good. The second part stems from the insufficiency of the previously presented concepts to account for technology in its own terms. There are several conceptual absences: 1) the disregard of technology in the way it alters the ends of action in praxis; 2) the structuring of human nature and of moral progress by technology itself through the wider exteriority of nature. These elements should in turn be complemented by the notion that the historical process of Modernity largely corresponds to the erosion of the Aristotelian framework. Briefly, this process consisted 1) in the fruitful alliance between theory and techne to provide humanity with the use and convenience of nature through scientific and technological progress; 2) in the ruin of teleology in nature and in moral progress; 3) in the avoidance of the ability of phronesis to determine the ultimate good; 4) and in the equivalence between the laws governing society and the ones governing nature, on the assumption of the feasibility of an optimization. Just as Alasdair MacIntyre criticize Modernity for the failure of its attempt to rationally justify morality, we will also assess the greater meaning of the separation between facts and values and the close related assumption that scientific knowledge, through technology, is sufficient for moral progress, a notion that constitutes the keystone of several modern utopias. Among other authors, the central role of this second part belongs to Hans Jonas. His oeuvre not only complements the referred conceptual absences about human nature, but above all he questions the essentially pre-modern positioning of ethics in relation to technology. Through the examination of his main theses we can start accounting for a critical proposal that takes into account the consequences of technology itself for ethical reflexivity and an argument that echoes the difference between techne and phronesis about the difference between scientific and technological progress and moral progress. In its formal dynamics, modern technology is characterized by the magnitude, scale and irreversibility of its effects. These features lead to the establishment of an epistemological gap between the power to do and the power to forecast in relation to that same doing. Shortly, that is, to a dissociation between moral agency and the consequences of its action. This condition, called techno-opacity, is remedied by Hans Jonas through the heuristics of fear, through which the moral imagination attempts to establish realistic future scenarios that safeguard the unpredictability of technological action. The third and fourth parts launch us directly into the contemporary debate in philosophy of technology. Generally, limits are settled regarding the comprehensiveness of the formal dynamic’s description of technology as an autonomous force to whose laws of motion humanity is necessarily bound in compliance. It is through the analysis of the substantial content of technologies, i.e., how concrete technologies are instantiated in relationships with agents, that one can understand how perception and action are modified and how moral agency can still be fulfilled according to the orientation of the good life. On the whole, the third part thus concerns the confrontation of authors whose common heritage goes back to the work of Heidegger. Through the revelation-occultation structure of technology common to Don Ihde, Albert Borgmann and mediation theory, we will revisit concepts advanced by Hans Jonas, specifying how moral agency is conditioned by materiality and, contrary to Bruno Latour, what is the fundamental difference between moral responsibility and causal responsibility. Through an Aristotelian reading of Albert Borgmann's work, we will observe how his device paradigm and the notion of focal things and practices allow us to overcome the epistemological gap. We consider that his work is to some extent a recovery vis-à-vis technology of flourishment, according to objective criteria of human nature. The fourth part essentially deals with the work of Ivan Illich. The novelty of this author relates to his analysis of various divisions and institutions of industrial society as being essentially counterproductive, that is, undermining the pursuit of the objectives for which they were designed. Illich reads industrialization as a current chapter in the history of religion. The ecclesiology of industrial society largely neglects the search for the goods internal to vernacular practices, favoring the ecumenical distribution of services and commodities that are plagued by scarcity. The neo-Aristotelian alternative for Illich is the cultivation of ascetic practices through which convivial technologies can participate in human flowering by realizing the finiteness of human nature and its social, material and natural roots. In the last part we intend to apply the developed framework of conceptual resources to a case study. We will examine the possibility of establishing a food ethics in the context of the current industrial food system in which technology is widely present. The act of eating should account for the epistemological gap that crosses food production. Eating should be a matter of deliberation according to the conception of a good that favors human flourishment in its material, social and environmental components.
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Palavras-chave
ética filosofia da tecnologia virtudes responsabilidade agência moral fortuna utopia ethics philosophy of technology virtues responsibility moral agency fortune utopia