Monday, February 18, 2019

The transhuman being as means, not end

"By th[is] characterization of excellence in terms of [(sur le mode de)] power, the transhumanist being connects up with the superman of Nietzsche.  But this is nearly all the [two] have in common.  For the aspiration to the transhuman is anything but [(tout sauf)] the cult of the genius whose spontaneous [(primesautière)] superiority impresses his will on the ages of the human epoque.  The transhuman is in large part a product of the human.  The technological [imperative of] improvement [(perfectionnement)] that determines its contours does not come from nowhere.  It is the result of a human action.  Now, the instrumental[izing] thought that presides over its conception cuts into its autonomy.  One is [here] far from the Kantian dignity of a quality that pertains to a being who can never be considered as a pure means, but always also as an end in itself.  The transhuman being is the means of the realization of a certain concept of the human [(un certain concept humain)] in a beyond-the-human subject [(au subject d’un au-delà de l’humain)], a fabricated being (whatever the euphoria of progress and pathos of self-surpassment that one puts into its fabrication).  In this sense, transhumanism poses the same basic problems as every selection [made] prior to the conception—as much ideal as biological—of a human being."

     Otto Schäfer, “Travail de construction ou de sape?  Le chantier humain du transhumanisme,” Foi et vie 114, no. 4 (décembre 2014):  87-88 (80-94).  I'm not entirely comfortable with his endorsement of Teilhard de Chardin, though (93-94).

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