Posthumanism and Animality

2018

The aim of this report, thus, is to investigate two Posthumanism’s movements — transhumanism and posthumanism — in order to understand the meaning of transhumanism and posthumanism by identifying similarities and differences between two branches of thought, and to explore the trends of the two terms. Specifically, this report tries to answer the following questions: What do transhumanism or posthumanism shares? What are their differences? What are the examples about their trends in society?

The Humanist and the transhumanist propose different methods for cultivating human capacities. The transhumanist claims that traditional techniques favoured by the humanist run up against the limits of our biology. She believes that prospective technologies could further the humanist cause by improving our nature. However, the transhumanist faces a difficulty. Her policies could produce posthumans. Evaluating posthuman lives might be impossible for us. But discounting them is not an option because she will share responsibility for their creation. I argue that one way through this impasse is for the transhumanist to produce posthumans or to become posthuman.

Science, Art and Religion

In connection with human beings and humanity, we speak of humanism (from the Latin homo, humanus: human). The terms transhumanism and posthumanism emerge from the framework of the term humanism either in the ethical sense or in the ontic and ontological sense. In the ethical sense, transhumanism would mean being on the other side of ethics and morality, which could mean the moral transcendence of humans, that is, being ethically and morally more perfect, and this would bring him spiritually closer to a higher transcendent being, God. But one could think in other categories of morality, such as opposing and rejecting existing moral norms (immoralism), and one can talk The concept of humans is an old topic of Greek philosophy, above all of the so-called anthropological period of Greek philosophy when the center of interest is moved from cosmological problems to anthropological ones. Anthropos (ἄνθρωπος) becomes the main topic of the doctrine of human beings (anthropology). From then until today, the topic of human beings is one of the predominant topics of philosophy and other fields of science. Since humans are natural, social, and spiritual beings, there are different aspects of observing humans, so in this sense, there are different types of anthropology: philosophical, theological, social, medical, etc. Each of them observes humans under a certain aspect without, in principle, entering into other aspects of human beings. When we say human and nonhuman, we mean first of all the ontological aspect of human being, and then the negation of human is denoted as nonhuman, that is, a being that by its essence would not belong to what human is. At the same time, a distinction must be made between the term's nonhuman and inhuman, whereby the latter term denotes a moralethical category; that is, it means not being a moral human but a problematic human. Although the ethical and moral aspect of transhumanism and posthumanism is very important, the ontological component of the possibility of transforming a human into ontological negation stands out here.

Scientific and technological advances have questioned predominant doctrines concerning the human condition. Transhumanism and posthumanism are among the most recent and prominent manifestations of this phenomenon. Debates on trans- and posthumanism have not only gained a considerable amount of academic and popular attention recently, but have also created a widespread conceptual confusion. This is no surprise, considering their recent dates of origin, their conceptual similarities, and their engagements with similar questions, topics, and motifs. Furthermore, trans- as well as posthumanism frequently question their relationship to humanism and reconsider what it means to be human. In this regard both movements are streaming beyond humanism. What this means, however, is far from clear and shall be subject of discussion in this volume.

Human Studies, DOI 10.1007/s10746-015-9354-4, 2015

Future Human Image, 2020

The article discusses the mechanisms of improving the human organism presented in past centuries’ culture and analogous phenomena present in contemporary cultural texts. On this basis, theoretical and speculative aspects of posthumanism and transhumanism are described, their literary realizations, and finally, their cultural consequences are presented. Ideas, movements and ideologies, or even philosophies of posthumanism and transhumanism, although affecting the common problematic area, still cause confusion because of their mutual confusion with each other. The article tries to find arguments for the position that posthumanism and transhumanism stand in one house, but the latter is less suitable for understanding the radically changing world that we experience in such a painful way.

Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences,, 2022

Posthumanism and transhumanism are often identified. However, modern researchers indicate the fundamental difference between these intellectual schools. The fundamental idea of posthumanism is the rejection of biological, ethical, and ontological anthropocentrism. Transhumanism focuses on changing and improving natural human characteristics through biological, technological, and cognitive modifications. While posthumanism draws attention to the crisis of humanism, transhumanism is the latter's heir. Scientific and ethical consequences of posthumanism, as well as the sociocultural potential of transhumanism, are considered in this article. Posthumanism carries risks of shifting the value focus from man to other objects, which in the long term can lead to a critical decrease in the value status of man. Transhumanism has the potential to preserve man as an effective economic and cognizing agent. It is suggested that Russian society has a sociocultural potential for moving towards "technological humanism."

Kilden Journal of Gender Research Published by the Centre for Gender Research in Norway, Vol. 2, July 2014, pp. 168-172., 2014

Posthumanism is a theoretical frame, as well as an empirical one, which can apply to any field of enquiry, starting from our location as a species, to the individual gaze. Posthumanism addresses the question “who am I?” in conjunction with other related questions, such as: “what am I?” and “where and when are we?”. The existential aspects are not disjunct to political and spatiotemporal elements. On one side, such an approach has a festive element: the loneliness of the Western subject is lost in the recognition of the others as interconnected to the self. On the other side, the awareness of distributed agency in the evolving body of spacetime becomes infinitely resonant, as does each existential performance: there is no absolute “otherness”; we exist in a material net in which everything is actually connected and potentially intra-acting. Such an awareness generates theoretical as well as pragmatic considerations. In the 21st century the impact of anthropocentric habits on earth has become so massive that geologists are addressing the present era as the Anthropocene, in which human actions are seriously affecting the ecosystem. In the past, humans were not recognized as agents directly causing climate changes. It is now common knowledge that the earth is collapsing under the massive quantity of non-recycled garbage produced daily, the high emission of atmospheric greenhouse gases and the level of pollution introduced into the natural environment. The way the majority of current human societies are performing their material interacting in this world is based on anthropocentric premises, which are leading to a point of non-return in ecological and sustainable terms. Since everything is connected, this damaged balance is also directly affecting human well-being: an example can be seen in the alarming global rise on cancer rates. Humanism may not be of help in changing such a direction; posthumanism, on the other hand, can be the turning point, by bringing to the discussion crucial notions such as speciesism, entanglement and non-human agency, among others.

Journal of Evolution and Technology (JET), 2015

As post- and transhumanism have become ever-hotter topics over the past decade or so, their boundaries have become muddled by misappropriations and misunderstandings of what defines them, and especially what distinguishes them from each other. This edition of essays by various experts, edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner, goes a long way to resolve these issues. The introductory essay by the two editors – both of whom are philosophers – is alone worth the book’s purchase price. They give a very straightforward and understandable synopsis of what defines posthumanism, transhumanism, and the posthuman; and they also give thumbnail sketches of the major differences between them. Basically, transhumanists believe in improving the human species by using any and every form of emerging technology. Technology is meant in the broad sense here: it includes everything from pharmaceuticals to digital technology, genetic modification to nanotechnology. The posthuman is the state that transhumans aspire to: a state in which our species is both morally and physically improved, and maybe immortal – a species improved to the point where we perhaps become a different (and thus “posthuman”) species altogether.

Medical Enhancements and Posthumanity, 2007