Home⇛PCS Review⇛vol. 17 no. 1 (2025)

Kapwa and Habermasian Human Dignity: Postcolonial Ontological Reflections on Identity Engineering

Michelle Anne N Sto. Tomas

Discipline: Cultural Studies

 

Abstract:

Humans now coexist with media in ways that expand the scope of freedom and self-authorship through what may be called identity engineering. In navigating mediasaturated environments, individuals gain the capacity to construct, alter, or delimit their identities. This essay advances a theoretical framework for evaluating whether such practices remain consistent with the dignity of human life. By placing identity engineering alongside genetic engineering, it exposes their shared moral tensions, particularly regarding human dignity and the moralizing autonomy of individuals in media-saturated societies. Grounded in Jürgen Habermas’ ethical reflections in The Future of Human Nature and reworked through the Filipino concept of kapwa, the framework now emphasizes human dignity as relational belonging. It concludes that identity engineering demands renewed ethical reflection, a task that awaits empirical validation but illuminates how we understand the ontological and moral conditions of being human.



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