Technique, Normativity and Supernatural: OntologyFor a World of Artifacts

Abstract

In this paper, the significance of the category of "super-nature" in Ortega y Gasset's thoughts on technology is discussed. The paper proposes to view Ortega y Gasset's Meditation on Technicsfrom some recent ideas on the ontology of artifacts: these are to be considered as having a realitydependent on the fact that they contribute to shape a normative space of agency for human beings.The world of the artificial has to be viewed as endowed with a dimension of normative intelligibility. I will argue that the category of "super-nature" does not finally help to place artifacts with inanappropriate ontological framework, because it falls prey of a traditional conception of technics: technics belongs to a realm that is placed out of that which provides value, that is, a pre-technical life project. Artifacts will be then thought as being at the service of this program and do not participate, throughhuman practical experience, in the task of creating a space of genuine normative demands.