If we take a look back into the past we can see that ideas of human perfection can be found throughout the history of ideas. It was Julian Huxley, brother of the famous Sci-Fi author Aldous Huxley, who coined the term that describes this pursuit:

“The human species can, if it wishes transcend itself - not just sporadically. An individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: Man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. ‘I believe in transhumanism.’: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence (…) It will at last ne consciously fulfilling its real destiny.” (Huxley 1957: 17)

In the following decades ‘trans(-itional)human’ has become the term for the human of the future, mostly envisioned as partly human but essentially different from us so that it cannot be called human anymore. But transhumanism has gone through some major shifts of meaning. Sorger and Ranisch make an attempt to sum up what transhumanism means today:

“Transhumanism advocates the radical transformation of the human’s biological capacities and social condition by means of technologies. These transformations are widely perceived as human enhancement or augmentation which might be so fundamental that they bring about life forms with characteristics that differ so drastically that the new life forms can be perceived as other than human. Visions range from the posthuman as a new biological species, a cybernetic organism, or even a digital, disembodied entity.” (Sorger&Ranisch 2014: 8) #definition

It is claimed, that in the transhuman age, enhanced humans will live longer, happier and presumably more virtuous life because they will be engineered to become “better humans” (Tirosh-Samuelson 2014: 56). Today concepts and reflections associated with transhumanism are brought forward by #philosophers, bioliberal thinkers, bioethicists, engineers, computer scientists as well as futurist (Sorger&Ranisch 2014: 14). But is transhumanism merely a niche discipline, a philosophical intellectual game, or does this theory already have (political) implications on our lives?

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