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An Analysis of Francis Fukuyama's Arguments Exemplified on Contemporary Dystopian Cultural Production
Šinaľ, Martin ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
In this thesis I analyze and problematize Francis Fukuyama's position on posthumanism, largely expressed in his 2002 book Our Posthuman Future. In it he warns against the likely negative outcome of a potential biotechnological revolution, which could enable easy access to interfering with human genome via practices such as genetic modification or human cloning. Fukuyama's major assumption is that all members of society must meet some limited standards of humanity in order to be equal, because if people acquire different levels of artificially altered "human natures," the outcome will be stratification, irrecuperable inequality and perhaps even class warfare. For this reason, Fukuyama calls for a pre-emptive regulation of genetic manipulation so as to avoid a "posthuman future." I contrast this theory with a selection of transhumanist and feminist theorists as well as with examples from fiction, namely the trilogy Lilith's Brood (1987-1989) by Octavia Butler and the novel Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro. Drawing on these sources I conclude that Fukuyama's position is harmfully exclusionary and divisive; and also counter- productive in the sense that in his pursuit of securing freedom and equality he renders potential posthuman subjects fundamentally inferior, thus principally defeating his...
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The invisible hand of market: Adam Smith and G. W. F. Hegel
Krištofóry, Tomáš ; Pavlík, Ján (advisor) ; Lipka, David (referee)
Hayek's interpretation of Smith's invisible hand as a metaphor for the theory of spontaneous order still holds as the only authentic interpretation of that famous phrase, despite all criticism. Although not many authors noticed it, Hegel was a theorist of spontaneous order, namely also a theorist of the spontaneous order of market economy. There is evidence that Hegel followed here Adam Smith's teachings about the invisible hand. The invisible hand is present in Hegel's writings as an element, from what sprang his theory of spirit. That means that his theory of spirit is a general theory of spontaneous order, although written in metaphysical manner. However, being a theorist of spontaneous order didn't prevent him from being an interventionist. He was led to interventionism by his synoptic fallacy of mind. He never tried to apply this fallacy on the studies of the market economy. Marxists did that. Some of recent scholars (Sciabarra, Johnson, and Cristi) identified Hegel's theory of spontaneous order, but their interpretation wasn't perfectly in accordance with Hegel's texts. How these authors denied Popper's and Hayek's incorrect opinion that Hegel was a totalitarian, thus it is needed to enrich studies of mentioned current scholars. Here it is taken into account only what Hegel wrote, not later authors about him. This thesis is also an attempt to evaluate the history of economic thought from the standpoint of Smith's and Hegel's methodology.
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