Abstract
Prominent advocates of posthumanism such as Nick Bostrom and Ray Kurzweil make the case that a drastic increase in the human lifespan (or healthspan) would be intrinsically good. This question of the value of an extended lifespan has perhaps become more pressing as medical and scientific advances are seemingly bringing us closer and closer to being able to extend our lives in the way posthumanists envision. In this paper I intend to use Martin Heidegger’s work on death and freedom to develop a potential objection to the claim that an indefinite healthspan is intrinsically desirable. The basic plan will be to make the case that the structure of human agency is such that truly free action is possible only on the basis of the essential finitude of our existence. Assuming that we take this sort freedom to be an important good, we would lose something of crucial importance if we were to radically extend the human healthspan. I am not claiming to present an entirely conclusive argument against posthumanism, or even enhancing the human healthspan to posthuman proportions, but rather, I see my argument here as adding another currently valued dimension of human existence that could very well be lost if we move decisively in the posthumanist direction.
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Notes
I will use ‘healthspan’ and ‘lifespan’ synonomously throughout the paper. Whenever ‘lifespan’ is used, one can safely assume I am using it to mean ‘healthspan’.
There has been some philosophical debate in the last several decades over this question of the value of an extended lifespan, spurred by Williams (1973). I will delve into this literature a bit later in the paper when considering potential objections to the Heideggerian argument I develop here.
All citations from Being and Time will include the English translation page number listed first followed by the corresponding page number for the original German text.
Mark Wrathall (2015) is a recent example of someone who makes the case for interpreting Heidegger’s conception of authenticity in terms of autonomy, albeit in terms of a carefully circumscribed notion of autonomy.
Steven Crowell presents a more detailed comparison of Heidegger and Korsgaard in “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard on the Sources of Normativity,” (2007).
The focus on disposition and understanding leaves aside the vexing issue of whether Heidegger designates a third essential aspect of the self—either falling into an inauthentic understanding of oneself and the world or having language.
It would take more to provide a full argument for this claim, but I think it likely that Heidegger’s use of Befindlichkeit in Being and Time is his terminological update of Neigung (inclination) in his 1921–1922 lecture course, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research (2001). There, Heidegger makes it clear that a fundamental component of human existence is being inclined towards or solicited by the world around us. See especially pages 88–90.
Heidegger (1995) most explicitly deals with the difference between humans and other animals in his 1929/1930 lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. There he makes the claim that animals are world-poor, while humans are world-forming, meaning that we have the capability to open up a context of relationships of significance through our projection upon some for-the-sake-of-which. Humans have logōs, not in the sense of the ability to engage in rational deliberation as on Korsgaard’s view, but rather in having the ability to articulate a context of significance in which entities can appear as what they are.
For a more thorough discussion of this line of interpretation, see Dreyfus (1991: 94–96).
For a thorough and compelling discussion of this sort of claim, see Taylor (1985).
See Crowell (2007: 318–320) on this connection between practical identities and Heidegger’s “for-the-sake-of-which”.
Charles Guignon (2011) provides a recent interpretation of Heidegger’s understanding of freedom in terms of first-order and second-order commitments.
See Dreyfus (2005) for a good synopsis of some of the prominent attempts to make sense of Heidegger on this issue.
Taylor Carman provides a strong defense of this interpretation (2003: 276–284).
This feature of Heidegger’s analysis of being-towards-death has been much discussed. For a clear, more detailed account of the way in which being-towards-death creates the reflective distance required to choose our practical identities, see Young (1999).
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Pedersen, H. Heidegger and Korsgaard on Death and Freedom: The Implications for Posthumanism. Hum Stud 39, 269–287 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9370-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9370-4