Transhumanism Without Transindividuation in the Age Without Epochality: Stiegler, Vice, and Radical Human Enhancement

ABSTRACT

At its core, transhumanism is utopic and apocalyptic: it tells us we will be saved through an imminent radical change of our being wrought by radical human enhancement (RHE) technologies. We are rushing, its supporters claim, towards a technological utopia so long as assorted techno‐phobes do not stand in the way. In this paper, I will argue that the speed of contemporary technology conflicts with the utopic aim of transhumanism. Unlike many critics of transhumanism, I am not supposing that there is some inherent conflict between being “truly” human and using RHE. The problem with RHE lies with the speed with which contemporary technology operates. This speed has destroyed social and psychic apparatuses that once supported the development of virtue. Technologies developed in this milieu, or “age” to use Bernard Stiegler's terminology, will continue or conserve this destruction. In short, RHE developed in our age may allow transhumanists to achieve a bodily utopia in which we have achieved functional immortality, but they will not create a utopia in the moral sense—a society in which virtue flourishes and vice is eradicated. Instead, RHE will likely inscribe our vices into the very being of our trans‐ and posthuman progeny.