From Two Intentionalities To Two Ethics: Body, Technology And Ethics In The Perspective Of Phenomenology

According to Merleau-Ponty and Don Ihde, Body Intentionality and Technological Intentionality can be considered as the two main directions after Edmund Husserl.Because of these two intentionalities, we can deduce the mutual relations and effects between Technology and Body, then constitute two dimensions, which the author would like to call the bodilized technology and technologilized body. These two dimensions also corresponding two ethics: the Materializing Morality that based on the term of Technological Intentionality and technological mediation theory, and Ethics of the Body that based on the term of Body Intentionality and mediation theroy of the body.Materializing Morality emphasises the moralized design of technological artefacts, aims to guide people’s behavior that conforms to moral norms. Ethics of the Body comprehends Merleau-Ponty’s thought of “the lived body”, the ethics’ methodological basises are the Foucault’s ethics of “self-care”(epimeleia heautou) and Richard Shusterman’s thoughts of Somaesthetics.But the two ethics both have their defects. On one hand, because Materializing Morality over-emphasises the role of technological design and of technological mediation, the morality is technologilized, this ethics cannot manifest the fundamental difference between guiding people’s behavior that conforms to moral norms and developing people to be virtuous. Thus, the Materializing Morality should be corrected by Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics. On the other hand, because Ethics of the Body over-emphasises the aesthetic body and perceptual body, this ethics is easily to lose the functions of social criticism and practice. Therefore, Ethics of the Body not only difficult to provide the principle of moral responsibility for the contemporary technological era, but lacks the ethical dimensions of absolute responsibility for others,in this sense, Ethics of the Body should be corrected by Hans Jonas and Emmanuel Levinas’ theories of Responsibility Ethics.Hence, the contemporary technological era needs a comprehensive and complementary ethics. This ethics not only responds to the issues of technology-out-of-contorl and technology alienation, thereby promoting the technological design and practice more democratization, but also solves the problems of desire-stimulating and producting. In this sense, the Body can truly become the critical and practical power for alerting and reforming technology. In the end, the ethics of technological era can promote the harmonious relations between human, technology and the body.