Tertium datur? Remarks on Aesthetics and Anthropology of Media

Abstract

The identification of the specific character of the human condition seems to be suspended between two equally unsatisfactory alternatives: on the one hand, the idea that the human being is a metaphysical exception, a being endowed – unlike all others – with absolute creativity and freedom; on the other hand, the idea that the human mode of being is not really different to that of animals, plants or machines. This article aims to propose a third alternative, starting with the problem of technics. The text is divided into three parts. The first part provides a critical analysis of the main forms of humanism, naturalism and technicism in the debate on so-called “human nature”. In the second part, the problem of technology is analyzed, and a distinction between technology and metatechnology is proposed. This distinction makes it possible to identify the metatechnological dimension (and not simply technicity) as a fundamental trait of the human mode of being. Finally, in the third part, an interpretation of the technical phenomenon from the standpoint of aesthetics is proposed.