The Dark Side of Desire: Nietzsche, Transhumanism, and Personal Immortality

Abstract

Nietzsche has become embroiled in two interesting twenty-first century debates about advancing technology and its impact on human life, especially its meaning/value. The first focuses on Nietzsche himself and is concerned with the extent to which his views align with those of transhumanism. The second involves the not so blatantly Nietzsche-centric question of whether or not immortality, or radical life-extension, is desirable. Given that the desire for immortality, or at least some more feasible (but not so permanent) approximation of it, is strongly associated with transhumanism, it seems that these two debates have some fairly significant overlap. Establishing what Nietzsche ultimately believes about such a core transhumanist issue will go a long way toward determining how sympathetic he would be to the transhumanist cause in general. I argue that while his views do not commit him to an all-encompassing disdain for immortality, his intolerance for immortality-seekers means that he might only be open to some of the more fringe understandings of transhumanism.