The Sophoclean Philoctetes: A Tragedy of Usefulness in the Posthuman Age

What does the transformation of the human being in the posthuman age mean? Perhaps it begins not when machines start thinking like humans, but when human beings begin to evaluate one another according to the criteria of a machine: performance, efficiency, and usefulness.

This presentation proposes a new interpretive reading of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, arguing that the play can be understood as a tragedy of usefulness. Philoctetes is not abandoned because he has lost his human value, but because he has lost his usefulness to the war effort. Ten years later, the same people return, not to make amends of injustice they have committed, but because they once again need his bow. Philoctetes himself has not changed; what has changed is the value that others attribute to him.

From this perspective, the tragedy does not merely recount the story of an abandoned hero; it also exposes the enduring danger of a society that transforms the human being from a person into a means to an end. This presemtation argues that Philoctetes engages in a profound dialogue with the ethical dilemmas of the posthuman age, reminding us that humanity’s future will be determined not only by the new technologies it creates, but also by the criteria through which it chooses to value human beings themselves.