New man in utopian and transhumanist perspective

Abstract

The title assumes that there is a difference between political Utopia and the transhumanist techno-vision. But if one follows recent publications that promise a renaissance of utopia, the transhumanist 21st century figures of the future are not a disconnected trend running parallel to the classic utopian discourse since Plato and More; in fact, they are its consumers. They have incorporated the original utopian potential and thus undergone a transformation beyond recognition. Yet can this hostile takeover be accepted? The author aims at answering this question by a comparison of both approaches focusing on three levels: How should the anthropological mechanisms, which form the basis of the utopian and transhumanist approach, be characterised? Which phenomenologically comprehensible structures of the world view result from those that they consider as the optimum for a successful life? Which differences in the structures of both imagination types can be deduced from the answers to these questions?