The paradox of the technical society

Abstract

The text discusses the paradox of technical society in the work of Paul Ricoeur, understood as the contradiction between the twofold progress of rationality and of the possibilities of perversion. It starts from the notion of paradox in the logical and philosophical tradition and follows Ricoeur's texts — The Political Paradox (1957), Universal Civilization and National Cultures (1961), the Postface to Temps de la responsabilité and Ethics and Philosophy of Biology in Hans Jonas (1991) — together with Love and Justice and The Course of Recognition. It examines the mutations of human action arising from the technical applications of the sciences in the environment, in the life sciences, in the media and in information technology, as well as the conflict between technical efficiency and the demand to succour the perishable in political life and in business management. The text holds that Ricoeur formulates, in dialogue with Hans Jonas and Lévinas, an ethics of responsibility and of otherness, in which the preservation of being, in relation to future humanity and to nature, becomes an ought and a moral obligation.