ABSTRACT
The functionalism and nihilism in the age of technology may be linked to exploitation of the emotional, though biological, debt of centuries of deprivation. The myth of science paradoxically fosters widespread cultural impoverishment, in an increasingly media-oriented view of ‘culture’, seen as a secondary heritage. An ecology of medicine considers the need to change the mental horizons of doctors’ actions within science, taking account of a slow pace, that of the whole planet. It shows greater respect for the life of physis in preserving the individual’s life, encouraging comparisons between the two aspects of humankind’s vision of itself and of the use of science. Today the complex language of feeling is devalued by its spectacularization. The scientific establishment’s relativization of the ethics of conviction (Weber) may clash with a ‘principle hostile to life’ in science (Nietzsche). This is accompanied by nihilism of customs, relational impoverishment, moral indifference and disrespect for animals and the environment. In the global world any ethical positioning inevitably extends beyond the whole of humankind, as a self-critical singularity. Nothing will be able to escape the impersonal abyss of the market until the ancient container – the earth – ceases to appear infinite.
