Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human

by David Roden

We imagine posthumans as humans made superhumanly intelligent or resilient by future advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Many argue that these enhanced people might live better lives; others fear that tinkering with our nature will undermine our sense of our own humanity. Whoever is right, it is assumed that our technological successor will be an upgraded or degraded version of Human 2.0.

Posthuman Life argues that the enhancement debate projects a human face onto an empty screen. We do not know what will happen and, not being posthuman, cannot anticipate how posthumans will assess the world. If a posthuman future will not necessarily be informed by our kind of subjectivity or morality the limits of our current knowledge must inform any ethical or political assessment of that future. Posthuman Life develops a critical metaphysics of posthuman succession and argues that only a truly speculative posthumanism can support an ethics that meets the challenge of the transformative potential of technology.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Michael Greer]

While reading this book I had a sudden apperception of the agony involved in writing it. There is no joy conveyed, no relief from stress. The burden this author endured is unimaginable. In fact it recalls an experience I had earlier in my life when the illness suffered by a colleague struck me as something like "a wall of separation caused by an unremitting agony." At that time, I realized we are each doomed and we must suffer in terms of our own unique condition.

[Erica]

I struggled through this because the content was important to me. I have an understanding of the philosophies and philosophers and the technologies discussed. I’m less familiar with the authors of secondary sources (critiques of philosophers) and found it hard to follow who stood for what from section to section. This book needed a better structure, a better mind map, and a better editor. As someone familiar with the basic concepts, I thought they were ill defined. Speculative post-humanism (SP) is defined in opposition to something without first well defining the thing it’s in opposition to. Then the author launches into critiques of critiques and what SP is and is not in a maddening dash (dance? mental gymnastics?) that keeps zigging and zagging and looping back over itself. Too many references throughout to sections before and later on, and, worse, when you turn back to the section you can’t seem to find the thing being referenced. I love a good meander in a philosophy text or a good chain-of-thought argument. But this was like reading a poorly knit and roughly treated quilt.

[Swarm Feral]

[review to come]

[Karl M.]

Philosophically confused, at best speculatively far fetched and mediocrely conceived.

[Yuxi Liu]

Not very fun to read, but still, it is somewhat rigorous in terms of philosophy.

More usefully, it describes lucidly how phenomenology and transcendental humanism works, which is quite valuable.

[Koolkas]

Introduction was interesting but became too complex right after. Not really my taste.