Ethics and Nanotechnology: The Issue of Perfectionism

This paper aims at investigating perfectionism, as the project, shared by biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, of human enhancement. This project is commonly criticized (by Jean-Pierre Dupuy or Michael Sandel) as representing a kind of hyper-agency, a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes, and satisfy our desires. It should thus be addressed as a metaphysical or even theological problem. We would like to argue that this project is not so much Promethean as it is Pelagian. It does not aim so much at being as powerful as God, than at achieving individual, personal felicity, the way Pelagus argued that all men could achieve their own perfection. We argue that the claim of perfectionism is first an ethical one, since it pertains to what Sidgwick called 'egoist hedonism'. We then question this claim from a social point of view: What kind of social relationships is implied by the quest for individual perfectionism. This is an ethical as well as an epistemological question.