Humanism and its Discontents The Rise of Transhumanism and Posthumanism

This book explains that while posthumanism rose in opposition to the biblical contention that ‘Man was created in the image of God’, transhumanism ascertained the complementary view that ‘Man has been assigned dominion over all creatures’, further exploring a path that had been opened up by the Enlightenment’s notion of human perfectibility.

It explains also how posthumanism and transhumanism relate to deconstruction theory, and on a broader level to capitalism, libertarianism, and the fight against human extinction which may involve trespassing the boundary of the skin, achieving individual immortality or dematerialization of the Self and colonisation of distant planets and stars.

Two authors debate about truth and reason in today’s world, the notion of personhood and the legacy of the Nietzschean Superhuman in the current varieties of anti-humanism.

Introduction: Humanism and its Discontents - The Rise of Transhumanism and Posthumanism, Paul Jorion.- I. Humanism on the wane.- Strong Artificial Intelligence and theological anthropology: one problem, two solutions, Marius Dorobantu.- II. Complement and supplements.- On Prosthetic Existence: what differentiates deconstruction from transhumanism and posthumanism, Susanna Lindberg.- III. Boundaries and frontiers.- Discourse between Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Paul Jorion on Nietzsche, Fascism and Moving Beyond Humanism: From Friedrich Nietzsche to Stefan Sorgner: the short path leading from superhumanism to metahumanism, Paul Jorion.- Dignity, Personhood, and the Sacred, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner.- Truth? Still breathing!, Paul Jorion.- Enlightenment, Truths, and the Sciences, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner.- When skin and technology intertwine, Hélène Jeannin.- IV. The Enlightenment recovered.- On Max More’s extropianism, Salomé Bour.- Transhumanism and Advanced Capitalism: elitist logics and dangerous implications, Alexander Thomas.- V. The cunning of Reason.- Posthumanism, transhumanism, superhumanism and metahumanism from an adaptive standpoint, Paul Jorion,.- Ethics and Complexity: Why standard ethical frameworks cannot cope with socio-technological change, Clément Vidal & Francis Heylighen.

Paul Jorion, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at the Université Catholique de Lille, France. He trained as an anthropologist, sociologist and psychoanalyst. He taught at Cambridge University, UK, was a UCI Regents Lecturer and a member of the UCLA, USA, Human Complex Systems. He played a pioneering role in AI (British Telecom’s Connex project) and in developing financial algorithms.