Beyond Transhumanism: A Nietzschean Critique of the Cultural Implications of the Techno-Progressive Agenda

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to conceptualize and evaluate the transhumanist movement by applying a Nietzschean critique to its techno-progressive agenda of human enhancement. The investigation itself is divided into three distinctive, yet methodologically intertwined steps: first, I will present an exegetical approach by circumscribing the discussion concerning the alleged similarities and disparities between the transhumanist notion of transforming the human into a posthuman being and Nietzsche’s concept of education, understood as self-overcoming; secondly, in a more practical and future-oriented manner, I will consider some of the major aporias for conceptualizing a ‘Nietzschean transhumanism’ by confronting the techno-progressive idea of morphological freedom with Nietzsche’s critical approach to the commerce- and consumer-oriented mentality of the non-creative modern individual; finally, I will employ Nietzsche’s complex treatment of nihilism in order to formulate a critical evaluation of transhumanism’s cultural implications. My fundamental conclusion will be that the techno-progressive agenda does not strive to overcome human limitations by coping with the tragic nature of life in a Nietzschean sense, but merely promotes the nihilistic dream of Zarathustra’s ‘last human’ to establish a common happiness by eradicating the Dionysian reality of all existence.

KEYWORDS:

• Nietzsche
• transhumanism
• culture
• nihilism
• last human
• education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. As Peter Harrison and Joseph Wolyniak (Harrison and Wolyniak 2015, 465–466) were able to establish, Huxley (probably) made first use of the term in a 1951 lecture that was published in the journal Psychiatry in the very same year.

2. I deliberately refer to the terms ‘techno-progressivists’ (respectively, ‘techno-progressivism,’ ‘techno-progressive agenda’) and ‘transhumanists’ (respectively, ‘transhumanism’) as fairly synonymous concepts.

3. In this article I will deliberately refrain from discussing Nietzsche’s critique of the disparate concept of free will.

4. Currently functioning under the name Humanity+.

5. Whether such an employment of Nietzsche’s theory of rank would be a fatal misunderstanding of his social and political philosophy is not the decisive question within the discussed context.

6. I would like to emphasize that this risk is bilateral: while it seems to be in the transhumanist movement’s best interest to dissociate its agenda from any direct connotation with the term eugenics in general (‘liberal eugenics’ is a borderline-concept rarely employed by transhumanists themselves – hence the much preferred ‘enhancement’ and ‘augmentation’ rhetoric), Nietzsche-scholars, on the other hand, might have legitimate concerns that through the amalgamation with the techno-progressive, i.e. liberal-eugenic movement, the German philosopher’s intellectual output could once again be erroneously reassociated to concepts of quasi-racial segregations and social hierarchies.

7. I refer to the revised version from 2007.

8. The book, published originally in German, has been translated and published in 2020 by the Penn State University Press.

9. Nietzsche argues against the idea of a static and essential idea of humanness (HH §2).