What is transhumanism?

Prior to the technological age, there were two guiding assumptions about humans.[1]

First, there was a widespread consensus that humans, especially the human body, can’t change.

Second, there was widespread consensus that humans and technology were entirely separate entities.

Contemporary technologies are challenging these assumptions.[2]

What do transhumanists want? The philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh answers as follows:

Transhumanists want to enhance human beings (individuals) and the human (the species) by means of technology.[3]

What is the connection between transhumanism and the longing for immortality?

Consider the tech guru Bryan Johnson. He sold his payment processing company Braintree for millions of dollars in 2013. He has spent the last four years, and over 2 million dollars a year, seeking to reverse his biological age and avoid death by implementing an algorithm-based longevity protocol he calls “Blueprint.”

Bryan Johnson captures well the transhumanist hope and ideal: human enhancement and immortality, via technology.

Will we become transhuman?

Three reasons to be skeptical:

First, the transhumanist vision is built upon a faulty posture—the choosing-controlling posture/the Promethean Ideal—and wrongly thinks that human nature is pliable and capable of substantial change.

Second, their vision of immortality (for those transhumanists who seek it) can be challenged on philosophical, scientific, and theological grounds.

Finally, the sought for improvements often (ironically) erode our humanity.

To learn more about transhumanism, check out the website humanity+.

[1] Both assumptions are discussed in Mark Coeckelbergh, Introduction to Philosophy of Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 173.

[2] Ibid., 173–174.

[3] Coeckelbergh, Introduction to Philosophy of Technology, 176.