Transhumanism's WEIRD Religion: On the Ontotheological Morality of the Posthuman
While transhumanism is a technoscientific cultural movement, it is also a cultural movement, intimately linked to some to a WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) social imaginary. As such, transhumanism is intimately tied to the morality and political economy of WEIRD societies. I...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | German |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2023
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| In: |
Philosophy, theology and the sciences
Year: 2023, Volume: 10, Issue: 2, Pages: 175-198 |
| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism NBE Anthropology ZB Sociology |
| Further subjects: | B
Technoscientific ontotheology
B Transhumanism B Technological mythology B Technoscientific religion B WEIRD religion |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | While transhumanism is a technoscientific cultural movement, it is also a cultural movement, intimately linked to some to a WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) social imaginary. As such, transhumanism is intimately tied to the morality and political economy of WEIRD societies. I also show that transhumanism also operates within a Nietzschean power ontology, and one might even say, following Heidegger, that transhumanism has an ontotheological structure. In this essay, I argue, following Bergson, it has a technoscientific mythological element, and as such, it becomes a religion, which is to say that it has a metaphysical-moral worldview. Transhumanism has its pieties, its dogmas, and an imaginary through which it takes up with reality. It has its moralities enacted by its social, political, and economic institutions. Drawing on Bergson, I argue that transhumanism is a fusion of the WEIRD static morality, with a mechanical understanding of all of being - including human moral being - and placed within the evolutionary meaning-structure, all in support of evolving the posthuman. Transhumanism is a static religion because it seeks to master human transformation into a posthuman god. |
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| ISSN: | 2197-2834 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Philosophy, theology and the sciences
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1628/ptsc-2023-0020 |