Conceptual Specificity of Transhumanism: Genealogy, Internal Definitions and Discursive Boundaries

Abstract

The article analyzes transhumanism as an intellectual movement founded on the classicalhumanistic paradigm. The relevance lies in the growing influence of transhumanist ideas in modern scientific and technological, as well as ethical and socio-political discourses. Additionally, there is a particular conceptual uncertainty surrounding the concepts of "transhumanism" and "posthumanism" in Ukrainian scientific and popular science discourse, which complicates both theoretical analysis and interdisciplinary dialogue.

The purpose of the study is to identify the conceptual specificity of transhumanism by analyzing its historical origins, theoretical foundations, and internal structure of the discourse, as well as to substantiate the thesis that classical humanism serves as the ideological and theoretical foundation of the transhumanistic paradigm. The implementation of the goal involves the completion of the following tasks: critical differentiation between transhumanism and posthumanism, comparative analysis of approaches to defining key categories within the transhumanist paradigm, and analysis of the transhumanist understanding of the concepts of "human - transhuman – posthuman", critical analysis of its methodological foundations.

The methodological basis comprises historical and philosophical analysis, the comparative method, conceptual reconstruction, and elements of discursive analysis. The paper analyzes the key positions of leading theorists of transhumanism, specifically Max More and Nick Bostrom. Also, it compares with the approaches of representatives of the posthumanist paradigm (K. Wolf, B. Latour, K. Barad). The results of the study demonstrate a close connection between transhumanism and the humanistic paradigm, which is expressed in aspirations to improve those "central capacities" that were and are relevant to the humanistic paradigm. The analysis of "central capacities", which has not yet been the focus of separate philosophical studies, not only allowed for the identification of this close connection but also highlighted methodological flaws in the way the views of representatives of the transhumanist paradigm are represented. Some problems associated with the methodological approaches of transhumanism representatives for selecting priority vectors of human development are demonstrated, it will further enable the development of analytical tools for a critical understanding of this paradigm. In addition, based on a comparative analysis, the article's authors identified, for the first time, potential points of tension in somewhat different understandings of "going beyond the human" among the leading representatives of transhumanism.

The conclusion is proposed that transhumanism preserves the principles of subject autonomy, individualism, and the value of human abilities, and, therefore, becomes an evolutionary link in the development of the Western humanistic tradition. Thus, it is stated that the claims of transhumanism itself to "go beyond the human" are perhaps premature, this requires further analysis and is a promising field of research.