Technoscience, irony and care

Abstract

This paper has three sections. Firstly, I explore what the term technoscience does mean. I justify the relevance of the term on both a) the empirical evidence that social studies of science bring up, and b) the philosophical redescription that Heidegger offers on the relationship between science and technique. Secondly, I show up the irony that emerge when we consider technoscience as [the] «factor of modernity». This irony arises, according to Gianni Vattimo, from «the transformation of the world in a place in where there are not facts anymore but interpretations. From this circumstance follows the transformation of the potential for domination of technoscience, which has occupied the critical work of the Frankfurters, into the normative ideal of reducing violence. Finally, I show how this ideal should be understood: the ideal of reducing violence must be understood as care. Following Agnes Heller, I explain how care, to be real, implies a double moral duty: responsibility before others and resurrection of nature. I insist that both the responsibility to others and the resurrection of nature can only be genuine if the Others and the Other (nature) constitute not an xteeriority, but a pta rof who we are.