Should posthuman be (human)-enhancement based? The posthuman project in the age of climate change and space travelling

Abstract

Trans-humanism and post-humanism converge on the importance of promoting the birth of the post-human, an individual with capacities “greatly exceeding the maximum attainable by any current human being without recourse to new technological means”. A project of this type indeed has nothing therapeutic about it, so it does not concern the field of medicine. However, this does not mean it cannot be a morally acceptable project. If we consider the use of biotechnologies approvable when their purposes are therapeutic, then we should all the more accept (or see as mandatory) the use of these technologies for the purposes of improvement, in that at times only enhancement allows the quality of life to be improved. Even if we agree with Stefan Lorenz Sorgner that plans for human enhancement cannot be considered intrinsically immoral, we intend to demonstrate that enhancing human skills is not the only reason that can justify a programme to replan human nature and promote the ‘posthuman’. In our opinion, a more coherent posthuman plan should take into account the possibility of overcoming the traditional conception of the human more radically than we have thus far done.