Abstract
The new generations of bioenhancement technologies and traditional Virtue Theory both try to make a meaningful connection between the improvement of human states and characteristics on one hand, and attainment to the good life, on the other. Considering the main elements of virtuousness in Farabi’s thought—namely rational inquiry and deliberative insights, alongside volitional discipline within various social contexts, one can conclude that although the trajectories of enhancement technologies—be they in the field of genetic engineering, neurostimulation technologies, or pharmacology—do not in themselves satisfy the constitutive determinants of virtuousness, they function as having both mediative and amplificative/reductive roles in a life which is dedicated to the pursuit of happiness in the light of the cultivation of virtue.
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Notes
For more information about Fārābī and his philosophy, see Galston Miriam (1990) Politics and Excellence or Netton Ian (1992) Al-Fārābī and His School.
Giving primacy to virtuous practice is one of the areas in which the influence of Islamic thought can be felt in Fārābī. The prominence of concepts such as ‘the greater struggle’ (al-jihād al-akbar), which is ‘the struggle against the lower self’ (jihād al-nafs), the soul which incites to evil (al-nafs al-ammāra) and the self-reproaching soul (al-nafs al-lawwāma) in the Islamic tradition have led Fārābī not to diminish the value of the practical aspects of virtuousness relative to the value of theoretical reflection.
Phrases such as “The doer of the good act is better than the good [itself]; and the doer of the wicked act is worse than the wickedness [itself]” (Al-Rādī 1414:474); and “The bad deed which upsets you is better [for you] than the good deed which instills smugness and pride in you” (Āmadī 1410:402); which occur in the Islamic tradition readily lend themselves to being interpreted as falling within the virtue ethics approach.
Fārābī’s sustained pleasures refer to intellectual and spiritual pleasures, but can also be interpreted to include the pleasures which are to obtain in the hereafter, given Fārābī’s religious beliefs; although the two categories are not necessarily distinct.
One of the best illustrations of this particular experience of pleasure can be found in Tolstoy's writings. The heroes of Tolstoy's novels, such as the nobleman Nekhlyudov in his The Resurrection are usually engaged in an inner struggle between the two different accounts of pleasure.
Peters characterizes the reductionist explanation of free will as an example of what Whitehead called the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’; that is, the attempt to clarify tangible facts by means of constructs which are more abstract than the explicanda.
Post-phenomenologists have challenged the monolithic views on technology using these two concepts. For instance, Verbeek challenges Borgman's ‘device paradigm’ theory using these two notions (Verbeek 2005: 189); and Aydin likewise criticizes Max Weber's Disenchantment Theory using the same method, and demonstrates that whereas science and technology disenchant the world from one perspective, that at the same time, they maintain and mediate the experience of enchantment and transcendence from some other perspective (Aydin 2015).
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Taebnia, V., Taqavi, M. The enhanced human vs. the virtuous human: a post-phenomenological perspective. AI & Soc 36, 1057–1068 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01082-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01082-z