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 Enlightenments 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 todays 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, Hélčne Jeannin.- IV. The Enlightenment recovered.-
On Max Mores 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 Telecoms Connex project) and in developing financial algorithms.
