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After the Human: A Philosophy for the Future
The world is on fire and time for avoiding impending disaster is rapidly running out. This catastrophe has deeply entrenched a belief in human exceptionalism and human mastery over the Earth. Accelerating technological changes ranging from genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology to biobots, neuroprosthetics, and artificial intelligence are creating new worlds in which human beings will either be radically transformed or become extinct.
After the Human is an ambitious and audacious grand synthesis that weaves together philosophy, theology, quantum mechanics, relativity theory, information theory, ecology, plant and animal cognition, and artificial intelligence to forge a new philosophical vision for the future. Mark C. Taylor calls for replacing human exceptionalism with a theory of radical relationalism, an account of the world in which everything is interrelated and codependent. People, in this telling, are not isolated individuals separated from each other and set apart from the complex world they are destined to dominate but integral parts of a vital web, where differences enrich each other and nourish the greater whole. Ranging from the grounded worlds of dirt and soil to the most abstract realms of quantum ecology, After the Human reveals the alternative intelligences and transformative possibilities that provide hope for life beyond our perilous moment.
After the Human is an ambitious and audacious grand synthesis that weaves together philosophy, theology, quantum mechanics, relativity theory, information theory, ecology, plant and animal cognition, and artificial intelligence to forge a new philosophical vision for the future. Mark C. Taylor calls for replacing human exceptionalism with a theory of radical relationalism, an account of the world in which everything is interrelated and codependent. People, in this telling, are not isolated individuals separated from each other and set apart from the complex world they are destined to dominate but integral parts of a vital web, where differences enrich each other and nourish the greater whole. Ranging from the grounded worlds of dirt and soil to the most abstract realms of quantum ecology, After the Human reveals the alternative intelligences and transformative possibilities that provide hope for life beyond our perilous moment.
- GenresNonfictionPhilosophy
Kindle Edition
Published February 18, 2025
14 people are currently reading
155 people want to read
About the author
Mark C. Taylor
53 books35 followersMark C. Taylor, Ph.D. (Religious Studies, Harvard University, 1973; B.A., Wesleyan University, 1968), is a philosopher of religion who chaired the Department of Religion at Columbia University 2007–2015. Previously, he was Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts), where he began his teaching career in 1973.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 7, 2025
The publisher sent me an advanced copy of this book.
If you're a hardcore philosopher who enjoys reading academic books about the subject, you'll give this 5 stars.
The layman will find this 342-page book too highbrow.
Mark Taylor is an 80-year-old Harvard philosopher who has taught courses on religion at Williams College and Columbia.
I majored in Religion at Amherst College and got my masters from Harvard, so I can understand his background.
He owns and has read 8,500 books in New York.
This book may be his final opus, where he assembles a lifetime of work and thought.
He talks about Kant, quantum mechanics, Bohr, Nietzsche, Hegel, co-emergence, co-dependence, quantum entanglement, human genomes, antigens, antibodies, plant intelligence, and more.
The book is disjointed.
Simple graphics and diagrams attempt to illustrate what the words try to say.
None of it is clear.
You'll be wishing Professor Taylor would talk you through some of his illustrations because they are confusing.
He concludes that humans will merge with tech in a symbiotic relationship.
Neuroprosthetics, biobots, synthetic biology, and organic-relational AI are in our future, according to Taylor.
The book's final 50 pages are fascinating and readable because he spends less time philosophizing and more time talking about technological innovations.
It's an OK book, but not a great one. Hence, 3 stars.
If you're a hardcore philosopher who enjoys reading academic books about the subject, you'll give this 5 stars.
The layman will find this 342-page book too highbrow.
Mark Taylor is an 80-year-old Harvard philosopher who has taught courses on religion at Williams College and Columbia.
I majored in Religion at Amherst College and got my masters from Harvard, so I can understand his background.
He owns and has read 8,500 books in New York.
This book may be his final opus, where he assembles a lifetime of work and thought.
He talks about Kant, quantum mechanics, Bohr, Nietzsche, Hegel, co-emergence, co-dependence, quantum entanglement, human genomes, antigens, antibodies, plant intelligence, and more.
The book is disjointed.
Simple graphics and diagrams attempt to illustrate what the words try to say.
None of it is clear.
You'll be wishing Professor Taylor would talk you through some of his illustrations because they are confusing.
He concludes that humans will merge with tech in a symbiotic relationship.
Neuroprosthetics, biobots, synthetic biology, and organic-relational AI are in our future, according to Taylor.
The book's final 50 pages are fascinating and readable because he spends less time philosophizing and more time talking about technological innovations.
It's an OK book, but not a great one. Hence, 3 stars.
October 19, 2025
A dense but thought provoking book about the interconnectivity of everything that exists. Taylor does an in-depth analysis of the great Western thinkers from the Milesian philosophers to Socrates to Kant, Hegel, Derrida, Heidegger, Tillich and many others. In the context of interconnectivity he also considers quantum physics and entanglement, with great quotes from Rovelli’s Helgoland. His writing can be dense and rather inaccessible at times.
I wish he had spent more time on the Easter philosophies that have as a central theme the idea of an underlying unity that is the substratum of the diversity we experience through our senses, indicating that everything that exists is connected.
I wish he had spent more time on the Easter philosophies that have as a central theme the idea of an underlying unity that is the substratum of the diversity we experience through our senses, indicating that everything that exists is connected.
March 29, 2025
This is an interesting book.
I guess I'll just outright admit I haven't touched actual philosophy since high school so when the first half end up being introducing different arguments and logics it was both very helpful and also kind of confusing, a consequence of not being used to read philosophy and needing to take a moment to really absorb what was being told to me. So not a quick read.
The philosophic and scientific information interspeced with details of the author's life and his thoughts as he reaches the end of his life - as he mentions a couple of times - are written wonderfully, I think. I don't necessarily agree with every arguments - something normal and is even done in the book by introducing points of view that are then critiqued - but I liked to read his point of view and where he comes from.
I guess I'll just outright admit I haven't touched actual philosophy since high school so when the first half end up being introducing different arguments and logics it was both very helpful and also kind of confusing, a consequence of not being used to read philosophy and needing to take a moment to really absorb what was being told to me. So not a quick read.
The philosophic and scientific information interspeced with details of the author's life and his thoughts as he reaches the end of his life - as he mentions a couple of times - are written wonderfully, I think. I don't necessarily agree with every arguments - something normal and is even done in the book by introducing points of view that are then critiqued - but I liked to read his point of view and where he comes from.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews