HOMO ARTEFACTUS AND PROMETHEAN SHAME: REFLECTIONS ON JOSEF ČAPEK, FUTURISM, TRANSHUMANISM, POST-HUMANISM, AND THE OBVIOUS

• Authors: Odorčák Juraj
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper is focused on an analysis of Josef Čapek ’s notion of technology and his scrutiny of the conflicting nature of the avant-garde movement of Futurism in relation to the contemporary assumptions of the processual philosophies of transhumanism and post-humanism. The analysis is reconstructed in the narrative setting of the technological and methodological hybridization of the categories of the human and post-human (Homo artefactus) and is inspired by Josef Čapek’s approach to a specific philosophical question: Why would anyone want to create a post-human, a “robot Picasso”? It is argued that Josef Čapek projected that some of the motivational assumptions about the creation of post-humans would be built upon the inconsistent stigmatization of the human by humans that envy the hypothetical superiority of post-humans (i.e., Promethean shame).

Keywords

EN

JOSEF ČAPEK; FUTURISM; TRANSHUMANISM; POST-HUMANISM; ROBOT; HOMO ARTEFACTUS

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 68 - 80

Contributors

author

Odorčák Juraj

• Centre for Bioethics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Nám. J. Herdu 2, 917 01 Trnava, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6510-9304

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.1.6