Art and morality in the world of cyborgs

Abstract

The article attempts to apply Kant’s aesthetics and ethics to analyze how the sphere of values functions in the so-called posthumanist world. One vision of such a world can be found in Alex Proyas’s film I, Robot, scenes from which are frequently referenced in the article. The author raises two questions: one about morality, the other about art in the world of cyborgs. The answer to the first question is the simpler of the two, insofar as the posthumanist world is created through actions that are undertaken and performed. It is enough to assume that at least some of these actions are rational to some degree, and are directed toward specific ends, in order to set out on a path that may lead us toward the dominance of one morality or another. The character of this morality depends on the type of these ends and on the specific reasons for their importance. It is more difficult, however, to assess the significance of art in the posthumanist world, since that world appears to be free from traditional aesthetic needs. The absence of aesthetic art, and of the philosophy of art that accompanies it, will most likely be a significant feature of the posthumanist future. It seems that the philosophical patron of posthumanist life—and of the posthumanist art absent from it—will be Plato; by the same token, posthumanist life and the art absent from it will most likely turn out to be further footnotes to his brilliantly all-seeing and all-foreseeing philosophy. Since logic is the foundation of posthumanist life and the art absent from it, in the posthumanist world only that which is logical will be real. The only possible art in such a world will therefore be an art that, even within the world of art, has the courage not to be art. In this way, we return to the metaphysical dreams of conceptual art, in which, through every work of art—just as through every logical tautology—the absolute existence of truth is fulfilled, paradoxically, in a relation to its particular manifestations that is as free from sensuousness as possible.