Cecilia Lombard

For Aristotle, human beings are deeply social creatures, a trait that contributes to the meaningfulness of our lives. In more recent philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre similarly argued that our existence is informed by our unavoidable social relations, even as he also emphasized the quest for individual freedom. What happens when the “Other” in these relationships are artifacts, such as robots? Can robots liberate us from our existential dependence on other humans? Should they do so, in light of Aristotelian and Sartrean ethics? With recent technological advancements, an increasing amount of scholarly literature has emerged about the use, meaning, and limits of innovations such as sex- or love-robots. In this article, we will first explore the relevance of Aristotle’s virtue ethics in relation to romantic love (eros) and social technologies. We will then examine Sartre’s existentialism as in some respects a continuation of Aristotelian ethics and assess its applicability to eros in our technological age. Finally, we will conduct a case study on love-robots, reviewing recent scientific studies to evaluate their ethical and social implications from the perspectives of Aristotle and Sartre. We argue that neither Aristotle nor Sartre would endorse the view of love-robots as part of our social well-being.

Albert Camus and Rachel Bespaloff had an undeniable influence on the existential thought of the twentieth century. The former, by claiming the world to be silent to our search for meaning, based the concept of happiness in the inherent value of life. The latter grounded her happiness in music and transcendence rather than in the acceptance of the absurd human condition, though the two thinkers seem to agree on the importance of subjective contemplation. In this article, I will offer a reading of Camus’s works that emphasizes his view of happiness in awareness of the absurd. I will then argue for the ethical and political challenges that such happiness causes. Finally, by putting into dialogue the philosophies of Camus and Bespaloff, I wish to show that the two thinkers advocate for the possibility of happiness despite the suffering of the world, and show that this concept, understood as contemplation, can be rooted in the absurd as well as in transcendence.