Wesley Smith points out the simultaneously vapid and dangerous musings of Rice University scholar Cary Wolfe on posthumanism. That is the idea that we can and should progress beyond the ancient understanding that something fundamental separates human beings from other creatures and from the rest of nature. <\/p>\n
Where does posthumanism come from? Wolfe is admirably frank about its genealogy: <\/p>\n
There is, in fact, a genealogy of posthumanist thought that stretches back well before the 21st or even 20th century. You find hints of it in anything that fundamentally decenters the human in relation to the world in which we find ourselves, whether were talking about other forms of life, the environment, technology or something else. Perhaps more importantly, you find it in the realization that when you dont allow the concept of the human to do your heavy philosophical lifting, you are forced to come up with much more robust and complex accounts of whatever it is youre talking about. And that includes, first and foremost, a more considered concept of the human itself. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Darwinian thought was a huge step in this direction. So was Marxs historical materialism or the Freud of Civilization and Its Discontents. [Emphasis added.] <\/p>\n
Darwin, Marx, and Freud the trio who did so much to give us modern culture with its deformities. Exactly how posthumanism cashes out in contemporary cultural terms is the subject of a detailed study with new polling data by John G. West, Darwins Corrosive Idea: The Impact of Evolution on Attitudes about Faith, Ethics, and Human Uniqueness. Download it now. <\/p>\n
Photo credit: http:\/\/www.cgpgrey.com<\/a> [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons. <\/p>\n Im on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Follow this link: <\/p>\n Darwin, Marx, and Freud: The Genealogy of "Posthumanism ...<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wesley Smith points out the simultaneously vapid and dangerous musings of Rice University scholar Cary Wolfe on posthumanism. Continue reading