Course Description
The course gives an overview of the contemporary transhumanist movement and addresses the ethics of a wide range of emerging technologies such as gene editing, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, and body-machine interfaces. It provides a historical background to the movement’s main thinkers and highlights those traditions of postmodernism, secularism, liberalism, anthropological dualism, and expressive individualism that converge in their work. The course offers a detailed philosophical and theological evaluation of proposals for physical, cognitive, emotional, moral, and life span enhancements. It argues that the Thomistic tradition of natural law virtue ethics can assimilate the positive aspects of contemporary Transhumanism and correct the limitations of the movement. The course also compares the visions of soteriology and eschatology presented in Transhumanism and the Catholic moral tradition.
Bibliography
BAGGOT MICHAEL, ALBERTO GRACIA GOMEZ0, ALBERTO CARRARA, and JOSEPH THAM Tham, eds. Enhancement Fit for Humanity: Perspectives on Emerging Technologies. New York: Routledge, 2022.
BOSTROM, NICK. Superintelligence: Paths, Danger, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
CLARKE STEVE, JULIAN SAVULESCU, C. A. J. COADY, ALBERTO GIUBILINI, and SAGAR SANYAL, eds. The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
EARP BRIAN D., and JULIAN SAVULESCU. Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships. Stanford, CA: Redwood Press, 2020.
ZIMMERMANN JENS, ed. Human Flourishing in a Technological World? A Theological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.