This article focuses on Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive re-elaboration of the tradition of mechanicism, from the Cartesian animal–machine to contemporary scientism. It shows that Derrida does not counter this tradition by resorting to the metaphysical presupposition of Freedom – as sovereign independence from the machine – which secures the traditional oppositions of Man and the Machine and of the biological and the psychical. Rather, since his interpretation of the cybernetic concept of programme, he had been concerned with a conception of machines (...) that takes account of their hypercomplexity – that is, of the semiotic and grammatological element implicit in them. According to Derrida, this element provides us with the analogical and general code of the biological and the cultural and thus with the protocol for telling a nonhumanist and differential history of life. In particular, this article explains that the grammatological conception of the cybernetic programme undergirds the re-elaboration of the relation between the biological and the psychical as well as of the Cartesian legacy underpinning the modern thought of the Animal, which Derrida develops in his unpublished seminar La Vie la mort and in his late essays on animality, respectively. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente se le atribuye a Descartes la tesis del «animal-máquina». De acuerdo con ésta los animales carecen de capacidades cognitivas, emociones y, en general, de conciencia. Esta interpretación, que todavía sigue vigente, se apoya en los avances de la filosofía natural cartesiana, que rompió con la aristotélico-escolástica, de carácter cualitativo, proponiendo un modelo físico-matemático cuantitativo mucho más cercano al nuestro. Pero, la propuesta de Descartes en su vertiente fisiológica, que en el fondo supone una concepción del ser humano innovadora, dejaba (...) muchas cosas por fuera: como la vida, la salud, o los fines de la conducta. Sin embargo, tales elementos reaparecen en su tratamiento terapéutico y moral de las pasiones, al considerar al sujeto como unión primitiva de mente y cuerpo. Dicha solución cartesiana también puede alcanzar a los animales que, concluiremos, no necesariamente son frías y desapasionadas máquinas. (shrink)