Bioethics and transhumanism from the perspective of human nature

Abstract

This article aims, first, to analyze some of the historical changes in the concept of human nature and, secondly, to make a bioethical reflection about “enhancing” interventions proposed by the transhumanists. Once the genesis and major epochal changes in the concept of human nature are reviewed, we conclude that this concept, as understood today by transhumanism, could be aligned with the notion of liquid modernity. In this way, we would understand human nature as a “liquid nature”, permanently in change. This view poses many problems, not only of a bioethical kind, but especially of an anthropological and metaphysical nature. It tends to change man’s self-understanding and puts severe constraints on the assessment of supposedly enhancing interventions.