The anthropology of innovations

Innovations are considered now as a new kind of symbol of the spirit. Innovative achievements measure the effectiveness and social significance of various fields of activity. One of the most important trends today is the innovative race, the competition of innovations; their production is a modern trend. The bet on innovation generates a situation of euphoria in relation to them. Innovation is a stable element of economic, management, political and technical (engineering) discourses; innovations have been quite clearly defined in the relevant fields of science. At the same time, the value of innovation is self-sufficient, and the immediate goals and objectives of innovation are closed within the framework of the activity and pragmatic approaches, in which the “logic of things” dominates. The scheme of the innovation process - from investment and development to obtaining “additional value”, quality growth - does not take into account the ultimate goal and general meaning of this process; it does not represent the “human dimension” of innovation. There is a problematic situation, the content of which is determined by the existing contradiction: on the one hand, innovations are viewed as the main and universal means of progressing; on the other hand, innovations have not yet received a universal comprehension commensurate to their value; being an object of a “calculating thinking”, they have not yet become an object of a “reflective thinking” or a philosophical reflection. Meanwhile, innovative products, ideas and technologies increasingly claim not only to transform the external world of people, but also their nature. Therefore, ideas, projects and programs of innovative development, transhumanism, of supporters of a posthuman future, of wide application of NBIC technologies need a philosophical “expert examination”. The aim of this article is to substantiate the necessity and possibility of a philosophical reflection, to comprehend innovations in the context of people's individual and shared existence. This context determines the subject area of the anthropology of innovation, in which they are considered in their ontological, axiological, humanistic, social and cultural aspects. On the basis of the method of abduction, using the methodological and theoretical resources of philosophical anthropology, the authors make a humanitarian and humanistic interpretation of innovations, in which the axiological and semantic orientation of a person is emphasised, and the question “What is a human?” is again updated in the face of innovations. Based on the ideas of representatives of classical and non-classical philosophy and science, and of modern researchers, the authors take the definition of innovation beyond the scope of scientific and technical rationality, and thus its reduced interpretation is overcome. The conceptual theoretical conclusions of the anthropology of innovation, which is preoccupied with the future in the interests of the present, determine the special significance and responsibility of the sphere of education as a sphere of “cultivation of a human”, in which a balance must be found between the values of change and the values of preservation.

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