Conclusion: In Search of Humanity 2.0’s Moral Horizon — Or, How to Suffer Smart in the 21^st Century

Abstract

The argument of this book’s concluding chapter takes literally the proposition that whatever else an ‘enhanced humanity’ might be, it somehow brings us closer to a divine standpoint — in the specific sense that our properties become more like those of the Abrahamic deity. Here I continue to draw implications from John Duns Scotus’ doctrine of ‘univocal predication’, first introduced in Chapter 2. The chapter is anchored in the traditional theological barrier to our comprehension of God’s ways, namely, the pervasiveness of suffering, often personified as ‘Evil’. I note that modern redistributivist approaches to justice, exemplified in welfare state capitalist and socialist regimes, are best seen as secular strategies for bridging humanity’s cognitive distance from God through collective action, specifically by alleviating, if not outright eliminating, suffering — and thereby possibly even completing creation. However, the strategy itself involves the recycling of evil as good, an ‘end justifies the means’ ethic in which both goods and harms are more equally distributed across society, in turn contributing to a sense of shared fate that otherwise might be lacking. In the third section, I explore the roots of this sensibility in the prophetic strain of the Abrahamic religions, which extols perseverance in the face of adversity. The sentiment remains even in Rev. Thomas Malthus’ population theory, the intellectual antecedent of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, in which all life forms — not least humans — are treated as rough drafts or experiments in the pursuit of some of higher order being that God struggles to shape out of recalcitrant matter.