Abstract
Throughout the history of political modernity, the process of legitimation of Western society has been portrayed through the lens of human conflict. This, however, is not the only possible way of telling the story. The hypothesis set forth here is that reframing the narrative is possible and, at present, even necessary, as the impact of computing and the spread of information and communication technologies invite us to reconsider the foundations of the information society. We are being called on to revisit the nature of modern conflict and the statute of their participants, breaking away from a traditional anthropocentric view of society to embrace a new perspective that challenges human narcissism. From this perspective, we are forced to envisage a new social or natural contract for the globalized, networked information society, one that acknowledges a relevant ‘third’ perspective: namely, that of nature (Serres) or the infosphere (Floridi).
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Notes
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As will be seen in the next chapter, Floridi’s critical examination of political modernity is also based on historical reflections divided into three parts. The convergence between the two philosophers is interesting and noteworthy, since they come from different philosophical backgrounds.
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In this sense, it does not matter whether they contribute in terms of semantic or environmental information (on this point see Chap. 10). For a model of trust for networked cooperation you may see Durante, 2008.
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For instance, we cannot be held responsible for the whole chain of consequences that stems from our action. There must be a point at which the chain of (moral or legal) responsibility is interrupted; otherwise, our ethical and legal commitments or responsibilities would be unbearably supererogatory. The point at which the chain of (moral or legal) responsibility is interrupted, i.e. delimited, is the result of our free, collective choice (which is not necessarily arbitrary, but often guided by reasons and/or values), through which we give a shared (moral or legal) meaning to both freedom and responsibility.
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We have also spoken, elsewhere, of a relation of mutual implication (Durante 2011).
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We will say more on this point in the following chapter. Contrary to a longstanding tradition throughout almost all of modernity, Floridi believes that norms of coordination are not only required in a conflicting society and that even a society of angels would need adopting norms, in order to coordinate their positive intentions and behaviours (Floridi 2014a, b). Almost in the same sense, Emmanuel Levinas proposed what has been defined by Miguel Abensour as an “extravagant hypothesis” (Abensour 2006), namely, the idea that the political and legal order of a society is not based on and deduced from the hypothesis of original violence (as, for instance, in Hobbes’ political theory) but that it is based on and deduced from the hypothesis of original inclination towards justice, which humans beings attempt to translate into reality and realize (even if they can do this always only in part).Whilst the hypothesis of original violence turns out to be an implicit justification for the existing political and legal order (because the latter is by definition less violent than the former is supposed to be), the hypothesis of an original inclination towards justice requires the existing political and legal order to be more justified and to tend towards this normative dimension. For Levinas’ extravagant hypothesis, see Levinas 1969 and 1990. For a commentary about this hypothesis and its political and legal implications, see Durante 2002.
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Durante, M. (2017). Ontic Trust and the Foundation of the Information Society. In: Ethics, Law and the Politics of Information . The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1150-8_8
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