engleski

Human enhancemet - a case against human nature?

Technological development has enabled humanity to change (or, as it is often said, enhance) its nature. The idea of human enhancement, as a contemporary theoretical example of a human desire to transcend itself biologically, poses the question of human nature. In this paper the idea of human nature will be examined in terms of its continuity and volatility, especially in light of the conception of man/woman as a “defective being (mangelhaftes Wesen), which appears in philosophy under different versions (Anaximander, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Arnold Gehlen, Erich Fromm etc.). This understanding of human nature suggests that humanity is biologically imperfect (for example if we compare it with non-human animals, the former is biologically less equipped for the life in nature), but precisely this insufficiency is what enables it to construct a “human world” (culture and institutions). Therefore, this idea reveals a crucial contradiction in an encounter between the human person and technology. On one side, because it derives from his/her biological imperfection, the interpretation of the human person as a “defective being” can exculpate the desire to technologically enhance itself. On the other hand, human accomplishments, especially culture, may also be interpreted as a product or compensation of this same “imperfect” nature. From this perspective technological improvement of biological “imperfection” does not reveal as salutary anymore, but, on the contrary, as a destruction of a possibility of a “human” world.

human nature; human enhancement; “defective being”; culture

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