Homo Biotechnicus

Though contemporary Western humanity remains absorbed in its “little pleasures for the day” and “little pleasures for the night,” I nevertheless wonder sometimes whether we are Nietzsche’s last men or the first posthumans. Perhaps we represent some kind of transitional form, if devolution has transitional forms, in which case we will probably never know. After all, the Neanderthals presumably did not comprehend who or what they were. It belongs to man—indeed it is his defining characteristic—to comprehend himself in the light of a total meaning of life that he cannot totally comprehend. This is why Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, became a question to himself. It is why man is Homo sapiens. And it is why C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man, which is turning out to be one of the most important little books of the twentieth century, says that the posthuman planners and conditioners of the future (our present?) are not “bad men” but rather not men at all in the traditional sense.  Read Full Article »