2010/06/01 by Tom Slevin · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Digital Media and Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1386/fiin.8.2.49
openalex publication_date 2010/06/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
This journal article explores the notion of ethics, technology, and ‘Other’ in relation to a number of ideas, from the socio-political context of the Soviet Union in which Stanislaw Lem’s book and Andrei Tarkovsky’s film was made to exploring the philosophy of technology of that period. It uses a number of twentieth-century philosophers – Blanchot, Derrida, Heidegger, Lingis, Nancy, Patocka, Sartre, and Žižek – to think through Solaris in particular relation to technocentrism and ethical consideration of the ‘Other’. The article also focuses on a number of themes along the lines of ethics and technology, such as the notion of science-fiction as a vehicle to discuss socio-political issues within censorship, the comparison of technocratic orders to humanistic ones, the importance of images, cultural prosthesis and memory, and the historical context of Russian literature (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) that provide profound characteristics to Tarkovsky’s film.