What does it mean to be human in an age of rapid technological advancement? Are we on the brink of transcending our biological limitations, or are we losing touch with the essence of what it means to be human? Emerging technologies challenge our understanding of identity, ethics, and existence.
Bringing together leading voices from history, philosophy, science, and ethics, this volume delves into the intricate intersections of transhumanism and posthumanism, offering a thought-provoking exploration of historical and philosophical debates from the Renaissance to the present. It examines how transhumanist thought envisions the enhancement of human capabilities through science and technology, while posthumanism questions the very boundaries that define what it means to be human. A must-read for scholars, students, and anyone intrigued by the future of humanity, this volume is an essential guide to the debates shaping our technological era.
1.Introduction; Jil Muller.-
2. Between Thinking Tools and Extended
Minds: Is There Any Room for Natural Organs of Knowledge and Action?; Guido
Giglioni.- Part I. Automata in the History of Medicine.-
3. Crossing the
Boundaries of Life: Reanimation in Later Medieval Central Europe; Hannah
Elmer.-
4. Mechanical and Hydraulic Elements in Sixteenth-century Medicine;
Michael Stolberg.-
5. From Contemplation to Composition: Translating
Physiology in the Early Modern Period; Thomas A. Murphy.- Part II. Automata
in Early Modern Philosophy.-
6. Flesh, Soul, and Steel: Aporias of
Materialist Embodiment; Charles Wolfe.-
7. Descartes on Clocks and Automata;
Jil Muller.-
8. Automaton in the Chinese Room: Descartess Causal Theory of
Representation; William Eaton.-
9. The Epistemic Category of Vegetative: A
Historical Tracking Indicator for Understanding the Evolution of Western
Medicine towards Transhumanism; Sarah Carvallo.- Part III. Spiritual
Automata, Intelligence, and Immortality.-
10. A Transhuman Ontology: Spinoza
and the Good Change; Emanuele Costa.-
11. Gilles Deleuze's Dream of a
Non-human Future of Mankind; Audrey Borowski.-
12. Transhumanist Immortality
and the Heideggerian Phenomenology: The Death of Biological Automata and
Existing Beings; Jessica Lombard.- Part IV. Automata in Arts, Architecture,
and Constructions.-
13. Neither Comic Nor Corpse: Revisiting Braccellis
Bizarie di Varie Figure; Nicole Howard.-
14. Blurring Boundaries:
Eighteenth-century Garden Entertainment and the Role of the Beholders in
Jacques Vaucansons Automatic Performances; Albert Kozik.- Part V.
Transhumanism, Fiction, and Cyborg.-
15. Robots and the History of the
Mind-body Problem; Richard Blum.-
16. Transcending the Human: The Disavowal
of Anthropocentrism in Posthuman Philosophical Thought; Ramah Khazam.-
17.
From Automaton to Cyborg: In Search of the Autonomy of the Living; Emanuele
Clarizio.-
18. The Mutant and the Cyborg: Between Science and Fiction, The
Posthuman and the Transhuman; Thierry Hoquet.
Jil Muller is Assistant Professor at Paderborn University, Germany, where she is Deputy Head of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists. Her research focuses on early modern philosophy, the history of medicine, moral theories, and women in early modern philosophy.
