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Posthumanist Selfhood: Challenges to Being a Conglomerate

Thomas PHILBECK 1

1

ABSTRACT

This article drafts an overview of transhumanist and posthumanist ontologies, as well as provides grounds for their historical distinction based on their relationship to enlightenment humanism. By exploring their relationship and challenge to the dualistic metaphysics of enlightenment humanism, the essay makes clear that these two movements have distinctly different philosophical foundations. Transhumanism is critiqued for its reliance and intensification of dualistic attributes as virtues for its conceived ends, while posthumanism is shown to argue for a redeployment of ontological frameworks but without a complete or convincing response to the problematic dualisms that have been a part of the philosophical tradition since antiquity. Importantly, focus is placed on the role of technology in the makeup of both transhumanism and posthumanism. Technology holds a central place in each movement, but for very different reasons. Thus, the article pays attention to detailing technology’s relationship to the manner in which both movements construct notions of the human being as an ontological entity. By focusing on the notion of the human as a concept and by placing these movements in context, while revealing their philosophical groundwork, the article outlines the challenges facing each movement and the paradoxical byproducts that each generate. Through a philosophical lens, these movements are assessed along with their contemporary attempts to provide new, and simultaneously reinforce old, ontological paradigms.

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