Bioethics interrogating literature in the field of anthropology: the hermeneutics of a literary author on technocracy.

Abstract

The article is aimed at delineating the epistemological foundations of technique, to set them within the immediately antecedent period to the birth of bioethics as a discipline sensu stricto and, finally, to outline the consequences that technology has had on anthropology in the contemporary age. The advent of technology is considered as one of the historical roots of Bioethics. In fact, the new technological possibilities offered by science pose new questions that urgently necessitate an ethical answer. These possibilities do not only threaten health, human life and the survival of the whole planet, but can even radically alter the very essence of man and his anthropological makeup. Consequently, technology, which should be a means, becomes a purpose and changes into technocracy.

On the basis of the conception that literature, like science, is an instrument of knowledge, the authors, in order to make evident the relationship man-technology, used some texts of the Italian writer Paolo Volponi in which he clearly denounces all anthropological reductionism present in the technological field. Further, this work is aimed at underlining the importance and realisation of dialogue between different disciplines: the discourse on the ethical significance of technology fluctuates from the more established and deep ethics of bioethics to the humanistic and anthropological ethics present in literature, and vice versa.