Abstract
This chapter investigates transhumanism’s alleged continuity with humanism, a claim that transhumanists frequently make in order to take their “rightful” place among the various schools of thought engaging more or less critically with different forms of humanism. This has resulted in a somewhat problematic image of transhumanism; while it may initially seem fallacious to establish a continuity with humanism, in reality there are certain valid reasons for considering transhumanism as its fulfilment. Notwithstanding the uncertainties shrouding the issue, the fact remains that the transhumanists’ claim that they are the continuers and heirs of the Enlightenment and humanism does have a certain legitimacy.
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Notes
- 1.
From now on, by the term posthuman I mean the theories of the posthuman, an expression that will sometimes be used in its entirety for a better understanding of the text. The same term in italics without further specification, posthuman, I will use to identify an anthropological category: the human being of the future, however we may want to understand it.
- 2.
A further explanation can be found in a famous quotation by Kant: “The fact that the human being can have the ‘I’ in his representations raises him infinitely above all other living beings on Earth. Because of this he is a person, and by virtue of the unity of consciousness through all changes that happen to him, one and the same person—i.e., through rank and dignity an entirely different being from things, such as irrational animals, with which one can do as one likes” (Kant, 2006, 15).
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Adorno, F.P. (2021). Transhumanism Between Humanism and the Posthuman. In: The Transhumanist Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82423-5_3
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