La société de l'amélioration: Le renversement de la perfectibilité humaine, de l'humanisme des Lumiéres à l'humain augmenté (2013)
Le Devedec, Nicolas (Author)
Université de Montréal (Canada)
Lafontaine, Celine
Larrère, Catherine
Hamel, Jacques
Larrère, Catherine
Baudouin, Jean
Hamel, Jacques
Edition Details: Advisor: Lafontaine, Céline, Baudouin, Jean; Committee Members: Hamel, Jacques, Larrére, Catherine.
Physical Details: 364 pp.
Language: French
Whether we speak of doping in sport, the use of psychoactive drugs to improve man's intellectual performance or better check his emotions, new reproductive technologies allowing more efficient birth control, or anti-aging medicine to erase the effects of time, there is no denying that enhancing humans through the use of technoscientific and biomedical means has grown more pervasive in our contemporary societies. This study questions today's quest for human enhancement under the light of the humanist and political ideal of perfectibility defined by 18th century Enlightenment philosophers, particularly in the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In contrast to the humanist and political model of perfectibility, which promotes the improvement of the human condition by and through society, at the core of the democratic ideal, today's enhancement society seems to champion a depoliticized model of perfectibility focused on human technoscientific adaptability and the transformation of life itself. Offering a journey through the history of social thought, the objective of this study is to understand how such a reversal and depoliticization of the concept of perfectibility may have been possible. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and Francis Galton, from postmodern thinkers to the transhumanist movement, this thesis presents a synthetic genealogy of the enhancement society we are entering, which allows for a critical analysis of social and technoscientific transformations that have too often been presented behind the mask of ineluctability. Keywords: Human perfectibility, human enhancement, posthuman, humanism, technosciences, biotechnologies, history of ideas, sociology, political philosophy.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 76/01(E), Jul 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1591001655. On the “quest for human enhancement under the light of the humanist and political ideal of perfectibility defined by 18th century Enlightenment philosophers, particularly ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”
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