Atsakomybės subjekto steigtis technikos amžiuje: Hansas Jonas ir Bruno Latouras

Abstract

This article opposes the attempts to marginalize ethical issues and defend the thesis of technosphere as an autonomous phenomenon in the Anthropocene. The author points out that by evading the question of ethical perspective and responsibility, the technological activity and its trace are naturalised, and any ethical decision is therefore turned into a technical decision. The comparison of the positions of two philosophers of technology (Hans Jonas and Bruno Latour) enables us to reflect on how technology mediates the constitution of the subject of responsibility in the tension of global and local perspectives. The article shows that Jonas’ “heuristics of fear” leads to the conscious practice of asceticism and the collective control of technical power, while Latour leaves open a possibility of talking about the shared action of a multitude of hybrid actors, in which both the ethical solution is already “contaminated” with the technical and the technical solution retains the trace of the ethical. By using the example of the reverse vending machine, it is shown how ethical motivation is inscribed into technical media, which uses the technological accumulation to link global and local perspectives for environmental purposes.