Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

The Surprising Convergence of Transhumanism and Posthumanism

Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Biology
Keywords: Convergence, Convergent evolution, Posthuman, Posthumanism, Transhumanism

 

The topic of the relationship between transhumanism and posthumanism is one that has received very little attention over the years. These two quickly growing schools of thought display a rather odd combination of similarities and differences that can make them appear both as completely independent and unrelated, or as heavily connected variations of the same idea. However, only a few attempts have been made at examining how they really correlate to each other. As such, in this article I will attempt to provide an analysis of both transhumanism and posthumanism, as well as the ways in which they resemble each other and those in which they differ, in order to show that the best solution is to take a third, middle option, and consider them as something akin to a case of convergent evolution: two different schools of thought that developed along separate lines, but converge on the same topics and ideas.

The term ‘Posthuman’ literally means ‘something that comes after the human’; a fascinating, if vague, concept. But what exactly is a posthuman? For some, it means a superhuman, or perhaps a beyond-human, the next step in the evolution of mankind, gifted with capabilities that greatly surpass ours (“Transhumanist FAQ” n.d.); for others, the posthuman is instead closer to Nietzsche’s Übermensch (overman), the human who has abandoned traditional Christian values in favor of creating a new paradigm and new values (Tuncel 2014). Similarly, the posthuman can be understood not as a new being or a distinct evolutionary step, but rather as a new framework, a new way of interpreting and interacting with the world, created as a replacement for the human, itself a framework that is now seen as insufficient or incorrect (Tuncel 2014). Two rather different interpretations of the same word, connected to two equally different schools of thought: transhumanism and posthumanism. Transhumanism and posthumanism share a rather odd relationship: they are clearly and obviously…

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