ANDERS, SIMONDON AND THE BECOMING OF THE POSTHUMAN

Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies

A central task in understanding the theme of the posthuman involves relating it to the concept of the human. For some, there is continuity between the concepts of the human and the posthuman. This approach can be understood in the tradition of the great chain of being. Another approach posits a conceptual, and perhaps ontological, saltus (μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος). Here, the concept of the posthuman is taken to represent a radical departure from the realm of the human. After considering Lovejoy’s scheme of the great chain of being, Aristotle’s view of a conceptual saltus (μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος), and their historical significance, I will suggest how we might distinguish various concepts of the posthuman from the human by applying Rudolf Carnap’s approach to defining multiple concepts of space. We can thus create a linguistic convention that will assist in constructing useful conceptions of the human and posthuman – these can clarify the prospects of a posthuman future.

2013

As Rosi Braidotti in "Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming" (2002), puts it: Postmodernity is notoriously the age of proliferating differences. The devalued "others" which constituted the specular complement of the modern subjectwoman, the ethnic or racialized other and nature or 'earth-others'-return with a vengeance. They are the complement to the modern subject, who constructed himself as much through what he excluded. (174) Posthumanism may arise once the need for such a "vengeance" has been fulfilled, and the voices of subjectivities who have been historically reduced to the realm of the "Other", have been regained. Posthumanism is inextricably related to the Studies of the Differences, referring to the fields of research which developed out of the deconstruction of the "neutral subject" of Western onto-epistemologies 9. The deconstruction enacted, within the historical and philosophical frame of Postmodernism, by Feminist, Black, Gay and Lesbian, Postcolonial and Chicana theorists, together with differently abled activists and other outsiders, pointed out the partiality of the construction of the Discourse 10 , historically formulated by one specific subject, which finally appeared in its embodied vestiges, as: Western, white, male, heterosexual, propertied and abled, among other specific terms. In order to postulate a post-to the human, the differences which are constitutive to the human, and which have been historically erased by the self-claimed objectivity of hegemonic accounts, have to be taken into account. Posthumanism is indebted to the reflections developed out of the "margins" of such a centralized human subject, which emphasized the human as a process, more than as a given, inherently characterized by differences and shifting identities: Women's and Gender Studies, Gay 9 Such a genealogical location of the posthuman is already pointed out by William Spanos in his pioneer text "End Of Education: Toward Posthumanism", published in 1993. 10 Note that the notion of "Discourse" is intended here not only in the foucaultian use of the term as a way of constituting knowledge, social practices and power relations (Foucault 1976), but also as the phallogocentric logos (Irigaray 1974), and the symbolic order (Kristeva 1974).

The term " posthumanism " was used for the first time in the critical sense that entered then common language by Ihab Hassan in 1977. In its almost four decades of existence, posthuman theory has witnessed several evolutions, transformations and refinements, not least because this concept does not name an homogeneous and compact field, but is rather a " discourse " in the Foucauldian sense, a multiplicity of different streams, heterogeneous and fragmented, held together by a basic idea: the notion that old humanism is over. This issue of " Lo Sguardo " intends to attempt a sort of assessment of the last four decades, in order to analyse the limits and boundaries of the concept of posthuman. The leading thread of this issue is thus the question: what is still alive and topical, today, in the question of the posthuman? What themes and trends have progressively run out, and what instead have come to the foreground? How did the questions, and most importantly the answers, to the problem of the posthuman evolve? The question of technology, that is of the hybridization between human and machine, is still for many the most " showy " trait of the posthuman, both in popular culture and for the common understanding within academia; and yet the triumphalism of a certain posthumanism – and above all of its transhumanist deviations – alienated a number of scholars, starting precisely with one of the " mothers " of posthuman theory, Donna Haraway. The fact remains that the levels of technology's intimacy and intrusion into the human have, if anything, enormously increased sinceA Cyborg Manifesto (1983), and so have also the oppositions to it (Habermas, Fukuyama), and this keeps raising inexhaustible ontological, ethical and aesthetic questions (decisive are here Bostrom's reflexions).

Journal of Posthuman Studies

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 2022

To pose the question of posthumanist technology today, it is insufficient to reiterate the question as posed by Heidegger in the years immediately following the Second World War. In this chapter, it is argued that only by moving beyond the anthropocentric limits of Heidegger’s position, does it become possible to engage critically with both the place and the potential of technical ensembles within the giant cybernetic system we know as the Anthropocene. To do this, it is necessary first of all to analyze the process of instrumentalization as the deracinating essence of our technological modernity that seems hell-bent on global catastrophe. The coincidence of instrumentality and causality that begins with Aristotle determines just what can and, more importantly, cannot be counted as an entity deserving of ethical consideration. Indeed, the truism that posits the existence of an internal principle unique to biological organisms that governs the organization of living forms of matter still prevails to this day and remains fundamental as to how we think of ourselves as human beings today, a normative process of identification that is repeatedly fed back to us in the form of our worst collective nightmares. This principle, it is argued, serves an entirely ideological function, propping up an unfounded distinction between living and nonliving forms of organization on the basis that the organization of living beings retains as its condition the potential to be profoundly unpredictable. Whereas the metaphysical concept of life only ever drags us back to the impossibility of genetic origin and to the ghost in the machine that is all that remains of humanism, the potential for novelty definitive of metastable forms of organization – including all forms of living being – has no need of magical donations of vitality. And potential, above all else, is the primary concern of both the posthuman and the technological insofar as it concerns the chance of a future in the making.

2007

This essay aims to demonstrate that the philosophical anthropology of Michael Landmann provides important critical tools and resources for intervening in the debate over the posthuman and the turning point that humanity faces due to the advancing powers of technologies such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics. Landmann’s view of the human being, which emphasizes the correlative conditions of creativity and culturality, freedom and determinacy, and malleability and fixity, pro vides the grounds on which to critique the current structure of the debate over the posthuman and resituate it in terms of our historicity and self-images. The rhetorically charged trope of the posthuman, with its emphasis on a break or turning point, risks cutting us off from significant resources for understanding human nature, including the resources of philosophical anthropology, and does not advance our understanding of our current situation and the current dilemmas human being...

Posthumanism entails the idea of transcendence of the human being achieved through technology. The article begins by distinguishing perfection and change (or growth). It also attempts to show the anthropological premises of posthumanism itself and suggests that we can identify two roots: the liberal humanistic subject (autonomous and unrelated that simply realizes herself/himself through her/his own project) and the interpretation of thought as a computable process. Starting from these premises, many authors call for the loosening of the clear boundaries of one’s own subject in favour of blending with other beings. According to these theories, we should become post-human: if the human being is thought and thought is a computable process, whatever is able to process information broader and faster is better than the actual human being and has to be considered as the way towards the real completeness of the human being itself. The paper endeavours to discuss the adequacy of these premises highlighting the structural dependency of the human being, the role of the human body, the difference between thought and a computational process, the singularity of some useless and unexpected human acts. It also puts forward the need for axiological criteria to define growth as perfectionism.

2012

2019

Anyone who wants a glimpse of what a post-human future might look like should read Homer.

“Posthuman” has become an umbrella term to refer to a variety of different movements and schools of thought, including philosophical, cultural, and critical posthumanism; transhumanism (in its variations of extropianism, liberal and democratic transhumanism, among others); the feminist approach of new materialisms; and the heterogeneous landscape of antihumanism, metahumanism, metahumanities, and posthumanities. The struggle over the meaning of “posthuman” can be seen as a way of coping with an urgency for the integral redefinition of the notion of the human, following the onto-epistemological as well as scientific and bio-technological developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.