Laura Turarbekova, Gulzhikhan Nurysheva, Raushan Sartayeva, and Peeter Müürsepp
“My Little Cyborg”: Human, Machine, and the Philosophical Paradoxes of Difficult Humanism
ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 29, no. 2 (2024): 109–126.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11590/icon.2024.2.05
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between humanity, technology, and the modern humanities through the philosophical problem of cyborgisation. Starting from the Western European intellectual tradition and its contested ideas of the human, the authors address how modern technologies reopen fundamental questions about the essence of human beings, technics, and the boundaries between the living and the artificial.
The article considers philosophical, anthropological, and medical aspects of cyborgisation, from microchip implantation to artificial organs and the possible creation of bodily capacities that do not exist in nature. Through a philosophical analysis of European thinkers on technology, it explores whether the incorporation of technical objects into human bodies can produce a new cyborg ethics, or whether it risks replacing human beings with machines.