On Posthuman Ethical Issues In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara And The Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 Nobel laureate in Literature.His latest work Klara and the Sun depicts a posthuman era featured by technologies of artificial intelligence and genetic modification.The novel reveals various interactions and conflicts between posthumans and natural humans,and gives a profound ethical warning.This thesis adopts posthuman ethics as its theoretical perspective in an attempt to explore two posthuman ethical issues probed in the novel: the individual predicament and the ethical crisis of group relations.The main body of this thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One focuses on the outset of posthuman ethical issues.Two new types of posthumans and the implementation of the Artificial Life plan result in ethical disorder and relevant ethical issues because of the redefinition of the notion of “living entity” and the threat to the survival of natural humans.Chapter Two analyzes three individual ethical predicaments.It argues that individuals fall into ethical predicaments when making choices of life forms,adapting to a new identity,and measuring their life value.This is because that individuals,influenced by the alternation of old and new ethical views,have yet to develop a set of ethical guidelines to regulate their behaviors and choices.Chapter Three explores two ethical crises of group relations,covering family relations and intergroup relations.One is about marital breakdown and parent-child estrangement.Another is manifested in the antagonism between the natural human group and two types of posthuman groups.It also contends that the anomie of traditional relational ethics is indicated and new norms of relational ethics are urgently needed.The conclusion reviews the posthuman ethical chaos,reveals the root cause of posthuman ethical issues that lies in the collision of technology and ethics,and offers a practical solution.This thesis is not only an extension of ethical issues beyond the limits of traditional ethical study but also a combination of the reality of ethics and future possibilities,indicating the practical significance of the study of posthuman ethical issues – how to handle the relationship between ethics and technology.