ABSTRACT
The introduction of the book outlines how technologies like smart environments, imaging technologies and smart drugs increasingly shape who and what we are and influence who we ought to be. It stresses that properly understanding and critically challenging this development requires going beyond the persistent and stubborn inside-outside dualism and recognizing that what we consider our “inside” self is to a great extent shaped by our “outside” world. Against the backdrop of unsettling technological developments, a fundamental question is raised, which forms the main research question of this book: how can and should we form ourselves in a world that is being saturated with technologies that are profoundly intruding in the very fabric of our selfhood? The research question is broken apart into three sub-questions: (1) how should the “self” in “self-formation” be understood? (2) Are we able to form ourselves? (3) Assuming that self-formation is possible, in which direction should we form ourselves? This investigation culminates in the development of an alternative theoretical framework for understanding what “good self-formation” in a technological world entails, namely Technological Sublimation Theory (TST).
