Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after
humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term
with at least seven definitions according
to philosopher Francesca Ferrando:
Antihumanism: any theory that is critical
of traditional humanism and traditional ideas
about humanity and the human condition.
Cultural posthumanism: a branch of cultural
theory critical of the foundational assumptions
of humanism and its legacy that examines and
questions the historical notions of "human"
and "human nature", often challenging typical
notions of human subjectivity and embodiment
and strives to move beyond archaic concepts
of "human nature" to develop ones which constantly
adapt to contemporary technoscientific knowledge.
Philosophical posthumanism: a philosophical
direction which draws on cultural posthumanism,
the philosophical strand examines the ethical
implications of expanding the circle of moral
concern and extending subjectivities beyond
the human species
Posthuman condition: the deconstruction of
the human condition by critical theorists.
Transhumanism: an ideology and movement which
seeks to develop and make available technologies
that eliminate aging and greatly enhance human
intellectual, physical, and psychological
capacities, in order to achieve a "posthuman
future".
AI takeover: A more pessimistic alternative
to transhumanism in which humans will not
be enhanced, but rather eventually replaced
by artificial intelligences.
Some philosophers, including Nick Land, promote
the view that humans should embrace and accept
their eventual demise.
This is related to the view of "cosmism" which
supports the building of strong artificial
intelligence even if it may entail the end
of humanity as in their view it "would be
a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution
at the puny human level".
Voluntary Human Extinction, which seeks a
"posthuman future" that in this case is a
future without humans.
== Philosophical posthumanism ==
Philosopher Ted Schatzki suggests there are
two varieties of posthumanism of the philosophical
kind:One, which he calls 'objectivism', tries
to counter the overemphasis of the subjective
or intersubjective that pervades humanism,
and emphasises the role of the nonhuman agents,
whether they be animals and plants, or computers
or other things.A second prioritizes practices,
especially social practices, over individuals
(or individual subjects) which, they say,
constitute the individual.There may be a third
kind of posthumanism, propounded by the philosopher
Herman Dooyeweerd.
Though he did not label it as 'posthumanism',
he made an extensive and penetrating immanent
critique of Humanism, and then constructed
a philosophy that presupposed neither Humanist,
nor Scholastic, nor Greek thought but started
with a different religious ground motive.
Dooyeweerd prioritized law and meaningfulness
as that which enables humanity and all else
to exist, behave, live, occur, etc.
"Meaning is the being of all that has been
created," Dooyeweerd wrote, "and the nature
even of our selfhood."
Both human and nonhuman alike function subject
to a common 'law-side', which is diverse,
composed of a number of distinct law-spheres
or aspects.
The temporal being of both human and non-human
is multi-aspectual; for example, both plants
and humans are bodies, functioning in the
biotic aspect, and both computers and humans
function in the formative and lingual aspect,
but humans function in the aesthetic, juridical,
ethical and faith aspects too.
The Dooyeweerdian version is able to incorporate
and integrate both the objectivist version
and the practices version, because it allows
nonhuman agents their own subject-functioning
in various aspects and places emphasis on
aspectual functioning.
== Emergence of philosophical posthumanism
==
Ihab Hassan, theorist in the academic study
of literature, once stated:
Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism
transforms itself into something one must
helplessly call posthumanism.
This view predates most currents of posthumanism
which have developed over the late 20th century
in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains
of thought and practice.
For example, Hassan is a known scholar whose
theoretical writings expressly address postmodernity
in society.
Beyond postmodernist studies, posthumanism
has been developed and deployed by various
cultural theorists, often in reaction to problematic
inherent assumptions within humanistic and
enlightenment thought.Theorists who both complement
and contrast Hassan include Michel Foucault,
Judith Butler, cyberneticists such as Gregory
Bateson, Warren McCullouch, Norbert Wiener,
Bruno Latour, Cary Wolfe, Elaine Graham, N.
Katherine Hayles, Benjamin H. Bratton, Donna
Haraway, Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner,
Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, Humberto
Maturana and Douglas Kellner.
Among the theorists are philosophers, such
as Robert Pepperell, who have written about
a "posthuman condition", which is often substituted
for the term "posthumanism".Posthumanism differs
from classical humanism by relegating humanity
back to one of many natural species, thereby
rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric
dominance.
According to this claim, humans have no inherent
rights to destroy nature or set themselves
above it in ethical considerations a priori.
Human knowledge is also reduced to a less
controlling position, previously seen as the
defining aspect of the world.
Human rights exist on a spectrum with animal
rights and posthuman rights.
The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence
are confessed, even though it does not imply
abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.Proponents
of a posthuman discourse, suggest that innovative
advancements and emerging technologies have
transcended the traditional model of the human,
as proposed by Descartes among others associated
with philosophy of the Enlightenment period.
In contrast to humanism, the discourse of
posthumanism seeks to redefine the boundaries
surrounding modern philosophical understanding
of the human.
Posthumanism represents an evolution of thought
beyond that of the contemporary social boundaries
and is predicated on the seeking of truth
within a postmodern context.
In so doing, it rejects previous attempts
to establish 'anthropological universals'
that are imbued with anthropocentric assumptions.The
philosopher Michel Foucault placed posthumanism
within a context that differentiated humanism
from enlightenment thought.
According to Foucault, the two existed in
a state of tension: as humanism sought to
establish norms while Enlightenment thought
attempted to transcend all that is material,
including the boundaries that are constructed
by humanistic thought.
Drawing on the Enlightenment’s challenges
to the boundaries of humanism, posthumanism
rejects the various assumptions of human dogmas
(anthropological, political, scientific) and
takes the next step by attempting to change
the nature of thought about what it means
to be human.
This requires not only decentering the human
in multiple discourses (evolutionary, ecological,
technological) but also examining those discourses
to uncover inherent humanistic, anthropocentric,
normative notions of humanness and the concept
of the human.
== Contemporary posthuman discourse ==
Posthumanistic discourse aims to open up spaces
to examine what it means to be human and critically
question the concept of "the human" in light
of current cultural and historical contexts
In her book How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine
Hayles, writes about the struggle between
different versions of the posthuman as it
continually co-evolves alongside intelligent
machines.
Such coevolution, according to some strands
of the posthuman discourse, allows one to
extend their subjective understandings of
real experiences beyond the boundaries of
embodied existence.
According to Hayles's view of posthuman, often
referred to as technological posthumanism,
visual perception and digital representations
thus paradoxically become ever more salient.
Even as one seeks to extend knowledge by deconstructing
perceived boundaries, it is these same boundaries
that make knowledge acquisition possible.
The use of technology in a contemporary society
is thought to complicate this relationship.
Hayles discusses the translation of human
bodies into information (as suggested by Hans
Moravec) in order to illuminate how the boundaries
of our embodied reality have been compromised
in the current age and how narrow definitions
of humanness no longer apply.
Because of this, according to Hayles, posthumanism
is characterized by a loss of subjectivity
based on bodily boundaries.
This strand of posthumanism, including the
changing notion of subjectivity and the disruption
of ideas concerning what it means to be human,
is often associated with Donna Haraway’s
concept of the cyborg.
However, Haraway has distanced herself from
posthumanistic discourse due to other theorists’
use of the term to promote utopian views of
technological innovation to extend the human
biological capacity (even though these notions
would more correctly fall into the realm of
transhumanism).
While posthumanism is a broad and complex
ideology, it has relevant implications today
and for the future.
It attempts to redefine social structures
without inherently humanly or even biological
origins, but rather in terms of social and
psychological systems where consciousness
and communication could potentially exist
as unique disembodied entities.
Questions subsequently emerge with respect
to the current use and the future of technology
in shaping human existence, as do new concerns
with regards to language, symbolism, subjectivity,
phenomenology, ethics, justice and creativity.
== Relationship with transhumanism ==
Sociologist James Hughes comments that there
is considerable confusion between the two
terms.
In the introduction to their book on post-
and transhumanism, Robert Ranisch and Stefan
Sorgner address the source of this confusion,
stating that posthumanism is often used as
an umbrella term that includes both transhumanism
and critical posthumanism.Although both subjects
relate to the future of humanity, they differ
in their view of anthropocentrism.
Pramod Nayar, author of Posthumanism, states
that posthumanism has two main branches: ontological
and critical.
Ontological posthumanism is synonymous with
transhumanism.
The subject is regarded as “an intensification
of humanism.”
Transhumanism retains humanism’s focus on
the homo sapien as the center of the world
but also considers technology to be an integral
aid to human progression.
Critical posthumanism, however, is opposed
to these views.
Critical posthumanism “rejects both human
exceptionalism (the idea that humans are unique
creatures) and human instrumentalism (that
humans have a right to control the natural
world).”
These contrasting views on the importance
of human beings are the main distinctions
between the two subjects.
Transhumanism is also more ingrained in popular
culture than critical posthumanism, especially
in science fiction.
The term is referred to by Pramod Nayar as
"the pop posthumanism of cinema and pop culture."
== Criticism ==
Some critics have argued that all forms of
posthumanism, including transhumanism, have
more in common than their respective proponents
realize.
Linking these different approaches, Paul James
suggests that 'the key political problem is
that, in effect, the position allows the human
as a category of being to flow down the plughole
of history':
However, some posthumanists in the humanities
and the arts are critical of transhumanism
(the brunt of Paul James's criticism), in
part, because they argue that it incorporates
and extends many of the values of Enlightenment
humanism and classical liberalism, namely
scientism, according to performance philosopher
Shannon Bell:
While many modern leaders of thought are accepting
of nature of ideologies described by posthumanism,
some are more skeptical of the term.
Donna Haraway, the author of A Cyborg Manifesto,
has outspokenly rejected the term, though
acknowledges a philosophical alignment with
posthumanism.
Haraway opts instead for the term of companion
species, referring to nonhuman entities with
which humans coexist.Questions of race, some
argue, are suspiciously elided within the
"turn" to posthumanism.
Noting that the terms "post" and "human" are
already loaded with racial meaning, critical
theorist Zakiyyah Iman Jackson argues that
the impulse to move "beyond" the human within
posthumanism too often ignores "praxes of
humanity and critiques produced by black people",
including Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire to
Hortense Spillers and Fred Moten.
Interrogating the conceptual grounds in which
such a mode of “beyond” is rendered legible
and viable, Jackson argues that it is important
to observe that "blackness conditions and
constitutes the very nonhuman disruption and/or
disruption" which posthumanists invite.
In other words, given that race in general
and blackness in particular constitutes the
very terms through which human/nonhuman distinctions
are made, for example in enduring legacies
of scientific racism, a gesture toward a “beyond”
actually “returns us to a Eurocentric transcendentalism
long challenged”.
== See also ==
Antihumanism
Metahuman
Posthuman
Posthumanization
