Posthumanism

Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st-century thought. Posthumanization comprises "those processes by which a society comes to include members other than 'natural' biological human beings who, in one way or another, contribute to the structures, dynamics, or meaning of the society." Elsewhere (p. 35) in the same text Gladden proposes a longer definition, stating that "The processes of posthumanization are those dynamics by which a society comes to include members other than 'natural' biological human beings who, in one way or another, contribute to the structures, activities, or meaning of the society. In this way, a society comes to incorporate a diverse range of intelligent human, non-human, and para-human social actors who seek to perceive, interpret, and influence their shared environment and who create knowledge and meaning through their networks and interactions."

It encompasses a wide variety of branches, including:
*'' Antihumanism'': a branch of theory that is critical of traditional humanism and traditional ideas about the human condition, vitality and agency.
*''Cultural posthumanism'': A branch of cultural theory critical of the foundational assumptions of humanism and its legacy that examines and questions the historical notions of "human" and "human nature", often challenging typical notions of human subjectivity and embodimentMiah, A. (2008) A Critical History of Posthumanism. In Gordijn, B. & Chadwick R. (2008) Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity. Springer, pp.71-94. and strives to move beyond "archaic" concepts of "human nature" to develop ones which constantly adapt to contemporary technoscientific knowledge.
*''Philosophical posthumanism'': A philosophical direction that draws on cultural posthumanism, the philosophical strand examines the ethical implications of expanding the circle of moral concern and extending subjectivities beyond the human species.
*'' Posthuman condition'': The deconstruction of the human condition by critical theorists.
*''Existential posthumanism'': it embraces posthumanism as a praxis of existence. Its sources are drawn from non-dualistic global philosophies, such as Advaita Vedanta, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, the philosophies of Yoga, continental existentialism, native epistemologies and Sufism, among others. It examines and challenges hegemonic notions of being "human" by delving into the history of embodied practices of being human and, thus, expanding the reflection on human nature.
*'' Posthuman transhumanism'': A transhuman ideology and movement which, drawing from posthumanist philosophy, seeks to develop and make available technologies that enable immortality and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities in order to achieve a "posthuman future".; Oliver Krüger: ''Virtual Immortality. God, Evolution, and the Singularity in Post- and Transhumanism.'', Bielefeld: transcript 2021
*'' AI takeover'': A variant of transhumanism in which humans will not be enhanced, but rather eventually ''replaced'' by artificial intelligences. Some philosophers and theorists, including Nick Land, promote the view that humans should embrace and accept their eventual demise as a consequence of a technological singularity. This is related to the view of " cosmism", which supports the building of strong artificial intelligence even if it may entail the end of humanity, as in their view it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".
*'' Voluntary human extinction'': Seeks a "posthuman future" that in this case is a future without humans.

Philosophical posthumanism

Philosopher Theodore Schatzki suggests there are two varieties of posthumanism of the philosophical kind:Schatzki, T.R. 2001. Introduction: Practice theory, in ''The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory'' eds. Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina & Eike Von Savigny. pp. 10-11

One, which he calls "objectivism", tries to counter the overemphasis of the subjective, or intersubjective, that pervades humanism, and emphasises the role of the nonhuman agents, whether they be animals and plants, or computers or other things, because "Humans and nonhumans, it bjectivismproclaims, codetermine one another", and also claims "independence of (some) objects from human activity and conceptualization".

A second posthumanist agenda is "the prioritization of practices over individuals (or individual subjects)", which, they say, constitute the individual.

There may be a third kind of posthumanism, propounded by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Though he did not label it "posthumanism", he made an immanent critique of humanism, and then constructed a philosophy that presupposed neither humanist, nor scholastic, nor Greek thought but started with a different religious ground motive. Dooyeweerd prioritized law and meaningfulness as that which enables humanity and all else to exist, behave, live, occur, etc. "''Meaning'' is the ''being'' of all that has been ''created''", Dooyeweerd wrote, "and the nature even of our selfhood".
Dooyeweerd, H. (1955/1984). A new critique of theoretical thought (Vol. 1). Jordan Station, Ontario, Canada: Paideia Press. P. 4 Both human and nonhuman alike function subject to a common ''law-side'', which is diverse, composed of a number of distinct law-spheres or ''aspects''. The temporal being of both human and non-human is multi-aspectual; for example, both plants and humans are bodies, functioning in the biotic aspect, and both computers and humans function in the formative and lingual aspect, but humans function in the aesthetic, juridical, ethical and faith aspects too. The Dooyeweerdian version is able to incorporate and integrate both the objectivist version and the practices version, because it allows nonhuman agents their own subject-functioning in various aspects and places emphasis on aspectual functioning.

Emergence of philosophical posthumanism

Ihab Hassan, theorist in the academic study of literature, once stated: "Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism." This view predates most currents of posthumanism which have developed over the late 20th century in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains of thought and practice. For example, Hassan is a known scholar whose theoretical writings expressly address postmodernity in society. Beyond postmodernist studies, posthumanism has been developed and deployed by various cultural theorists, often in reaction to problematic inherent assumptions within humanistic and enlightenment thought.

Theorists who both complement and contrast Hassan include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, cyberneticists such as Gregory Bateson, Warren McCullouch, Norbert Wiener, and thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Cary Wolfe, Elaine Graham, N. Katherine Hayles, Benjamin H. Bratton, Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Francesca Ferrando, Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Timothy Morton, and Douglas Kellner. Among the theorists are philosophers, such as Robert Pepperell, who have written about a "posthuman condition", which is often substituted for the term ''posthumanism''.

Posthumanism differs from classical humanism by relegating humanity back to one of many natural species, thereby rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric dominance.Wolfe, C. (2009)
''What is Posthumanism?''
University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations ''a priori''. Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. Human rights exist on a spectrum with animal rights and posthuman rights. The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.

Proponents of a posthuman discourse, suggest that innovative advancements and emerging technologies have transcended the traditional model of the human, as proposed by Descartes among others associated with philosophy of the Enlightenment period. Posthumanistic views were also found in the works of Shakespeare. In contrast to humanism, the discourse of posthumanism seeks to redefine the boundaries surrounding modern philosophical understanding of the human. Posthumanism represents an evolution of thought beyond that of the contemporary social boundaries and is predicated on the seeking of truth within a postmodern context. In so doing, it rejects previous attempts to establish " anthropological universals" that are imbued with anthropocentric assumptions. Recently, critics have sought to describe the emergence of posthumanism as a critical moment in modernity, arguing for the origins of key posthuman ideas in modern fiction, in Nietzsche, or in a modernist response to the crisis of historicity.

Although Nietzsche's philosophy has been characterized as posthumanist, Foucault placed posthumanism within a context that differentiated humanism from Enlightenment thought. According to Foucault, the two existed in a state of tension: as humanism sought to establish norms while Enlightenment thought attempted to transcend all that is material, including the boundaries that are constructed by humanistic thought. Drawing on the Enlightenment's challenges to the boundaries of humanism, posthumanism rejects the various assumptions of human dogmas (anthropological, political, scientific) and takes the next step by attempting to change the nature of thought about what it means to be human. This requires not only decentering the human in multiple discourses (evolutionary, ecological and technological) but also examining those discourses to uncover inherent humanistic, anthropocentric, normative notions of humanness and the concept of the human.

Contemporary posthuman discourse

Posthumanistic discourse aims to open up spaces to examine what it means to be human and critically question the concept of "the human" in light of current cultural and historical contexts. In her book ''How We Became Posthuman'', N. Katherine Hayles, writes about the struggle between different versions of the posthuman as it continually co-evolves alongside intelligent machines. Such coevolution, according to some strands of the posthuman discourse, allows one to extend their subjective understandings of real experiences beyond the boundaries of embodied existence. According to Hayles's view of posthuman, often referred to as "technological posthumanism", visual perception and digital representations thus paradoxically become ever more salient. Even as one seeks to extend knowledge by deconstructing perceived boundaries, it is these same boundaries that make knowledge acquisition possible. The use of technology in a contemporary society is thought to complicate this relationship.

Hayles discusses the translation of human bodies into information (as suggested by Hans Moravec) in order to illuminate how the boundaries of our embodied reality have been compromised in the current age and how narrow definitions of humanness no longer apply. Because of this, according to Hayles, posthumanism is characterized by a loss of subjectivity based on bodily boundaries. This strand of posthumanism, including the changing notion of subjectivity and the disruption of ideas concerning what it means to be human, is often associated with Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg

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