|
A peer-reviewed
electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 21(1)
– January 2010 |
Nietzsche, the Overhuman and the Posthuman: A Reply to
Stefan Sorgner
Michael Hauskeller
Department
of Sociology and Philosophy,
Journal
of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 21 Issue 1 – January
2010 - pgs 5-8
http://jetpress.org/hauskeller.htm
Sorgner (2009, 29) has argued
that Bostrom (2005, 4) was wrong to maintain that there are only surface-level
similarities between Nietzsche’s vision of the overman, or overhuman, and the
transhumanist conception of the posthuman. Rather, he claims, the similarities
are “significant” and can be found “on a fundamental level”. However, I think
that Bostrom was in fact quite right to dismiss Nietzsche as a major
inspiration for transhumanism. There may be some common ground, but there are
also essential differences, some of which I am going to point out in this brief
reply.
Beyond
good and evil
First of all, transhumanists
believe that it is both possible and desirable to improve human nature by means
of technology (More 2009). They tend to assume that by “making better people”
we will, as John Harris (2007, 3) puts it, make “the world a better place”.
Posthumans will allegedly lead happier, more fulfilling lives than we do now.
This assumption is the main reason why transhumanists demand that we pave the
way for posthumanity. In other words, there is a moral imperative at the heart
of the transhumanist agenda. David Pearce calls it the “hedonistic imperative”
(lifelong well-being as a basic human right), Julian Savulescu (2001) the
“principle of procreative beneficence”, which, if adhered to, naturally leads
to the embrace of radical human enhancement and, by implication, posthumanity.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, had
nothing but contempt for those who sought to improve the human condition, such
as John Stuart Mill whom he denounced as a “blockhead” (Flachkopf) because Mill still believed in good and evil (both
natural and moral) and felt that one should make it one’s duty to bring about
the victory of the former and the destruction of the latter (E, WIII, 665).
According to Nietzsche, the philosopher needs to position himself “beyond good
and evil,” because there are no moral facts and nothing that is truly better or
worse than anything else. Happiness for instance is not to be considered better
than suffering. To believe otherwise indicates a grave error of judgement. And more
than that: trying to improve humanity is actually an attempt to “suck the blood
out of life,” an act of “vampirism” (EH, WII, 1158). Consequently, Nietzsche
fervently denied that he himself intended any such thing: “The last I would promise is to better humanity.”
(EH, WII, 1065).
Revaluation
of all values
Transhumanists may want to
revaluate certain aspects of our existence, but they certainly do not, as
Nietzsche did, advocate the revaluation of all
present values. On the contrary, they emphasise the continuity between (past
and present) humanist, (present) transhumanist, and (future) posthuman values
and see themselves as defenders of the Enlightenment’s legacy against its
modern (bioconservative) enemies. “The posthuman values,” writes Bostrom (2005b,
5), “can be our current values”. Of course, a few things that are supposed to
be valuable by some, such as “the natural,” are discarded, but on the whole a
transhumanist would regard as good and valuable what is commonly regarded as
good and valuable, e.g., a long, healthy and happy life, intellectual curiosity
and proficiency, the ability to form deep and lasting relationship, etc.
Nietzsche, on the other hand,
wanted to turn our whole system of values upside down, or rather rip it apart. He
prided himself to be the “first immoralist” and hence “destroyer par
excellence” (EH, WII, 1153). What was commonly regarded as evil needed to be
recognized as the highest good. “Evil is man’s best power […] necessary for the
best of the overhuman” (TSZ, WII, 524). He wondered whether not all great
humans were in fact evil (E, WIII, 449), and he specifically and repeatedly mentions
Cesar Borgia as “a kind of overhuman” (TI, W2, 1012), whom he admiringly describes
as a “human predator” (Raubmensch) (BGE,
WII, 653). Compassion, charity, loving one’s neighbour – traditional Christian
values, but not alien to transhumanists either – are scoffed at as symptoms of
decadence. According to Nietzsche, universal altruism would take the greatness
from existence and effectively castrate humanity (EH, WII, 1155). Consequently,
what puts Nietzsche’s (or more precisely Zarathustra’s) overhuman over the merely human is precisely his
indifference to common moral concerns: “the good and just would call his
overhuman devil” (EH, WII, 1156).
Surely, transhumanists would not want to hold that the posthuman is post in this respect.
The
non-existence of the mind
Transhumanists continue the
logocentric tradition of Western philosophy. By and large they believe that
what makes us human, and what is most valuable about our humanity, is the
particularity of our minds. We are
thinking beings, conscious of ourselves and the world, rational agents that use
our environment including our own bodies to pursue our own freely chosen ends.
And because our essence consists in our thinking, it is at least conceivable
that we may one day be able to transfer (“upload”) our very being to a computer
(or another biological brain) and thus achieve some kind of personal
immortality. Generally, the organic body is held to be replaceable.
Nietzsche, however, opposed what
he thought of as the Christian devaluation of the body and the bodily
instincts. The mind, as an entity distinct from the body, was a clever
invention, in other words a lie (EH, WII, 1157). It doesn’t exist. Because the invented
mind used to be taken as a proof of humanity’s divine origin, one could only
hope to reach human perfection by
retracting, tortoise-like, one’s senses into oneself, relinquishing all
commerce with earthly things, discarding one’s mortal shell, and thus retaining
only what was essential to our humanity: pure spirit. For Nietzsche, however,
“pure spirit” was “pure folly,” and consciousness in general a “symptom of
imperfection” (A, WII, 1174). Nietzsche’s will to power, which is the essence
of all life, and in fact the essence of all being, is preconscious and
non-rational, although it has its own, superior, reason. One characteristic of
the overhuman is that he knows himself to be “entirely body and nothing else”
(TSZ, WII, 300).
The
big lie of personal immortality
Transhumanism “stresses the
moral urgency of saving lives”, which makes anti-aging medicine “a key
transhumanist priority” (Bostrom 2005b, 9). The indefinite extension of our
life spans is believed to be an obvious good. Nobody wants to die, death is an
evil, and life generally (though not necessarily under any circumstances) a
good. Hence, if we could achieve personal immortality, we should not hesitate,
but seize it. For Nietzsche, however, the promise of personal immortality is
nothing but a “big lie” (A, WII,
1205). Not so much because he thought it was impossible for us to ever become
immortal, but rather because he believed that most of us are far too
insignificant and worthless to deserve
immortality.
Promising immortality (or
indefinite life extension) to everybody
only boosts the widespread delusion that the world revolves around every single
one of us, whereas in fact most of us should never have been born in the first
place. Most people actually die too late, not too early, because they have
never learnt to live (TSZ, WII, 333). “‘Immortality’, granted to every Peter and Paul, has
been the biggest, most vicious attack against noble humanity to date” (A, WII, 1205). The promise of personal
immortality pretends that we are all equal. It denies difference and rank.
Moreover, it is based on an erroneous reification (Versubstanzialisierung) and atomisation of the individual self. The
ego is wrongly differentiated from the non-ego, which are in fact inseparable
in the eternal process of becoming (E, WIII, 612). By wishing for personal
immortality I cut myself off from this process, believe myself to me more
important than the rest of the world, which, for all I care, may perish if only
I will be safe (
What
is the Overhuman?
If the overhuman is not an
improved version of the human, what is he? There are of course statements in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, especially in
the first sections, that sound as if Nietzsche was indeed advocating the
transformation of the human into some kind of posthuman. “Man is something that
needs to be overcome” (TSZ, WII, 279). The overhuman is “the meaning of the
earth” (TSZ, WII, 280), and man merely a “rope tied between animal and
overhuman” (TSZ, WII, 281). But Nietzsche has no clear concept of the overhuman
and produces at best vague intimations of what he has in mind (Shapiro 1980,
171). There is a chance that his overhuman is merely an ironic device, never
meant to be taken seriously as an ideal human (Ansell-Pearson 1992, 310). After
all, we shouldn’t forget that the overhuman was preached by Zarathustra, not
Nietzsche himself, and may well be understood as a provisional concept in the
ongoing movement of understanding (Lampert 1987, 258), as one possible
perspective on the way things are, but not necessarily a true one, let alone the true one (Ansell-Pearson 1992, 314).
Nietzsche himself warned of misunderstanding
the overhuman as some kind of higher human. Zarathustra, he reminds us, is the destroyer
of all morality, not half saint, half genius, not an idealist type of higher
human, not a Parsifal, but a Borgia (EH, WII, 1101). He is mainly characterised
by contempt: of personal happiness and of reason (TSZ, WII, 280). The overhuman
is not thought of as an exemplar of a future human or posthuman race, but as the
“exceptional human” (Ausnahme-Mensch)
(EC, WII, 1155), and there have always been such exceptional humans who were
“in relation to the whole of humanity a kind of overhuman” (A, WII, 1166). Even
though Nietzsche sometimes talks as if a whole race of overhumans were
possible, the overhuman can in fact only exist in the singular, that is, set
apart from others. Overhuman is who is strong enough to take reality as it is, in all its fearfulness (EC,
WII, 1156), with all its pain and suffering, who does not want anything different, to the point that he
would welcome the opportunity to live it all again, just as it was. The eternal
recurrence of the same, the idea of which is the true centre of the Zarathustra, is counter to the dynamic
optimism that characterises transhumanist thought, and its non-selective
affirmation by the overhuman counter to transhumanism’s morally toned
selectivity.
All this makes it very
unlikely that Nietzsche would, as Sorgner (2009, 34) claims, “have been in
favour of genetic engineering” or indeed the transhumanist movement as a whole.
References
Ansell-Pearson, K. 1992. Who
is the Ubermensch? Time, truth, and w
Nietzsche. Journal of the History of Ideas 53(2):
309-331.
Bostrom, N. 2005. A history of
transhumanist thought. Journal of
Evolution and Technology 14(1): 1-25.
Bostrom, N. 2005b.
Transhumanist values. Review of
Contemporary Philosophy 4: 87-101.
Harris, J. 2007. Enhancing evolution. The ethical case for making
better people. Princeton and
Lampert, L. 1987. Nietzsche’s teaching.
An interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
More, M. 2009. True transhumanism. Global
Spiral February 2009.
Nietzsche, F. 1966. The antichrist (A). Beyond good and evil (BGE). Ecce
homo (EH). Estate from the 80s
(E). Human, all too human (
Pearce, D. 1995. The hedonistic imperative: http://www.hedonistic-imperative.com
Savulescu, J. 2001.
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Shapiro, G. 1980. The rhetoric
of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Boundary
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the overhuman, and transhumanism. Journal
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