A Thomistic Proposal to Move Beyond the Posthuman and Toward Human Perfection
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Abstract
The search for human perfection as a constant quest for improvement is shared by both the Thomistic natural law virtue ethics tradition and the transhumanist movement. However, divergent notions of human nature and human telos profoundly differentiate such efforts to transform humanity positively. The present work clarifies the meaning of the natural moral law tradition and distinguishes it from misunderstandings that could arise from reducing nature to biological, non-rational processes. Next, the work examines how a proper notion of human nature and the goods that fulfill such nature can guide constructive debate about which types of biomedical enhancement to accept as helpful to human flourishing and which to set aside as detrimental to authentic growth. Without an objective standard of human nature by which to judge enhancement proposals, biotechnical changes can no longer be distinguished into categories of improvement or diminishment. This text shows why both bioconservative critics of human enhancement and transhumanist advocates for radical biotechnological alterations present impoverished visions of human nature’s capacities for transformation and perfection. In contrast, Thomism has the intellectual resources to overcome static notions of human nature and can correct the philosophical imprecisions involved in contemporary transhumanist discourse about posthumanity. This work, therefore, provides the necessary anthropological foundations to explore the role that virtues can play in fulfilling human nature’s dynamic orientation toward perfection.
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References
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