Overview
- Presents a comparison of models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, and new configurations of biopower
- Offers a new perspective on human-technology relations that evades the dichotomy of “protecting” ourselves from technology vs. embracing technology as progress
- Includes a special chapter on molecular biomedicine and evolutionary biology links STS and philosophy of technology to current trends in biology
Part of the book series: Philosophy of Engineering and Technology (POET, volume 14)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
- Assisted Reproductive Technologies
- Biopolitics and Molecularization
- Cyborg anthropology
- Dystopic posthumanism
- Emerging biotechnologies
- Geneticization and Genetic responsibility
- Human enhancement
- Liberal posthumanism
- Methodological posthumanism
- Molar to molecular bodies
- Non-humanist posthumanism
- Originary prostheticity
- Radical posthumanism
- Technological mediation
- Technologies of the self
About this book
New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human – or posthuman – to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects.
The volume offers a comprehensive mapping of posthumanist discourse divided into four broad approaches—two humanist-based approaches: dystopic and liberal posthumanism, and two non-humanist approaches: radical and methodological posthumanism. The author compares and contrasts these models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, to new configurations of biopower, questioning what role technology plays in defining the boundaries of the human, the subject and nature for each.
Building on the contributions and limitations of radical and methodological posthumanism, the author develops a novel perspective, mediated posthumanism, that brings together insights in the philosophy of technology, the sociology of biomedicine, and Michel Foucault’s work on ethical subject constitution. In this framework, technology is neither a neutral tool nor a force that alienates humanity from itself, but something that is always already part of the experience of being human, and subjectivity is viewed as an emergent property that is constantly being shaped and transformed by its engagements with biotechnologies. Mediated posthumanism becomes a tool for identifying novel ethical modes of human experience that are richer and more multifaceted than current posthumanist perspectives allow for.
The book will be essential reading for students and scholars working onethics and technology, philosophy of technology, poststructuralism, technology and the body, and medical ethics.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology
Book Subtitle: The Case for Mediated Posthumanism
Authors: Tamar Sharon
Series Title: Philosophy of Engineering and Technology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7554-1
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-007-7553-4Published: 24 October 2013
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-024-0598-9Published: 18 September 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-7554-1Published: 11 October 2013
Series ISSN: 1879-7202
Series E-ISSN: 1879-7210
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 241
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Science, Anthropology