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Wisdom in the Virtual Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Jean-Michel Besnier
Jean-Michel Besnier*
Affiliation:
University of Compiègne

Extract

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There are at least two ways to dehumanize the world. The world can be dehumanized from the top or from the bottom. From the bottom up would mean letting a barbaric situation develop which would reduce us to an animal state. From the top down would mean striving to achieve and impose a wisdom appropriate to the angels. Two ways of ruining the sense of what is human. Neither angel nor animal, you will recognize there the ‘in-between’ which is the site of humanity and which it is tempting, when it is threatened, to assert, for in this dehumanizing process - whether this is meant from the top or the bottom - we are the losers in both scenarios. We lose what makes humanity itself, in other words moderation, the in-between, finiteness, chance, the propensity to communicate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 49 , Issue 195 , September 2002 , pp. 94 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2002

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