Nietzschean Meditations: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Era

Abstract

NIETZSCHEAN MEDITATIONS: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Era by Steve Fuller. Posthuman Studies 1, ed. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe Verlagsgruppe, 2019. 240 pages. Hardcover; $146.00. ISBN: 9783796539466. Paperback; $41.00. ISBN: 9783796540608. *Christians turning to Nietzsche for support may be counterintuitive, but that can be the case with regard to radical human enhancement technology. As addressed in the June 2020 theme issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, transhumanism presents a treacherous landscape that calls for a thoughtful response from theologians and faith communities. The therapies and technologies already impacting the structure--physical, cognitive, affective, and other aspects--of our lives are growing in precision and potency. And, as indicated in the name of this series, "Posthuman Studies," discussions are underway about the replacement of Homo sapiens with techno sapiens. Whether our technological future is heavenly or hellish depends on the values embedded in the technology and how that technology is used, so we who are alive now have a moral imperative to do our part to ensure that technologies of human enhancement unfold responsibly. *All the religions are far behind where they need to be in understanding and making critical assessment of radical human enhancement technology and its champion, a movement called transhumanism. Judaism and Christianity are ahead of other religions in this regard, but even they have much work to do and quickly, given the fast pace of the developing technologies in areas such as genetic engineering, tissue engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence. *Steve Fuller is well qualified to critique the transhumanist agenda. Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick, UK, and co-editor of the relatively new series, Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and Its Successors, he has written twenty-five books about many subjects, including intelligent design, philosophy of science, and social epistemology, an interdisciplinary field he helped develop. *The three sections of Nietzschean Meditations address the philosophical and theological history of transhumanism, the politics of transhumanism, and the role of death in transhumanism. There is a lot about transhumanism in this volume. This review addresses just a few slices relevant for Christian readers. *The √úbermensch, the future superman (also translated "Superior Man" and "Higher Man") Nietzsche made famous, was denigrated following World War II due to its association with the Nazis. Fuller travels back to Nietzsche's early reception when the superior man was not a racially tinged idea. This makes it possible for Fuller to "remain interested in the early twentieth-century image of Nietzsche as someone who took literally the prospect of transcending the human condition--a futurist who was unafraid to confront the puzzlement and even suffering that it would entail" (p. 10). *As with the transhumanist agenda, a happy outcome for Nietzsche's superman project was not guaranteed. Nietzsche's tightrope walker, which may be understood as a metaphor for the human condition, falls to his death. For Fuller, this does not mean that Christians, committed to transformation, should not make use of these technologies or see them as a means of God's grace. "As Nietzsche might put it--and transhumanists would recognize--we are not superior animals but failed gods" (p. 17). However, Fuller says we cannot regain our standing on our own; it is a grace-gift from God. Along the way, Fuller adeptly maps varieties of transhumanism onto theological (but not necessarily orthodox) positions, for example, Aubrey de Grey's Pelagian-like biological superlongevity program and Ray Kurzweil's Arian-like vision of "divine" consciousness escaping the confines of the body. For Fuller, the Arian "supposes that humans 'always already' possess divine capacities which may