Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2016 9 (3)

Authors

Aksenov, Igor V.

Contact information

Aksenov, Igor V.:Department of Religious Education and Catechesis of the Diocese of Vyborg 1 Il’inskaia, Vyborg, Leningrad region, 188800, Russia; E-mail:

Keywords

trans-humanism; individual; person; assisted reproductive technologies; ethics

Abstract

What is the individual? From the scientific point of view, the individual is a material object – a body. In Christian anthropology the individual is a created being, he is a material object – a body, and he is a person – subject, transcending the material world of objects at the same time. Philosophy gives different definitions of individual but in the mid-twentieth century the rejection of the human being, as a subject and as an existing being, was openly proclaimed for the first time by structuralism – the founder of trans-humanism. The aim of the philosophical concept of transhumanism is to liberate the human race from the inherent biological limitations. Modern scientific and technological progress with its opportunity to reformat the human nature almost reached this concept. The science came the most closely to the real opportunity of changing of the human nature in the area of application of modern biomedical technologies that today allow us not only to provide medical assistance in overcoming diseases and relieving suffering, but also directly control the human life from its beginning to its end. For example, modern assisted reproductive technologies in fact substitute the natural processes of child-bearing and are connected with different manipulations with a future life of an individual. Such anthropogenetic perspectives generate a range of social, ethical and theological issues. The same technological aspirations which are giving the chance to the person to influence on the world, reduce the person to the status of object which can be designed and generated at will; the concept of mind as machine is the same concept which allows us to imagine possibility to alter ourselves, and at the same time it interferes with that we fulfilled these new duties. So there is the question: could the ideas of trans-humanism turn out to be direct dehumanization of life?

Pages

678-686

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/20160

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).