Abstract

Since the birth of cybernetics and molecular biology, the progress of science and technology seems to have taken a new face : from now on it appears possible for human beings not only to intervene on external nature, as they have done from the emergence of agriculture to the control of atomic energy, but also to intervene directly on themselves. Facing the extraordinary potentialities of new sciences and technics which may be foreseen since the end of world war II, the question raised is not only about the world humanity wants to live in, but also about the kind of persons human beings want to be in the future. But what do we mean by humanity ? A problem is raised from the simple fact that the term is polysemous. In the first place, it denotes a set of individuals presenting a certain number of common characteristics. This is humanity as mankind or human race. But " humanity " also holds for the concept which applies precisely to this set of characteristics ; it also designates the quality of being human. Humanity then is what is common to all human beings. This first attempt to reach a definition of humanity falls short immediately because of its circularity