Rationalist Inhumanism is among the most cogent articulations of humanism around and among the most important targets for posthumanist critique,
Last year, I was asked by friends to distill the thesis of the labor of the inhuman in two or three pages. This post is the product of my attempt at capturing the main points. I should add that I have now some critical objections about this piece but that would require a more lengthy post in another occasion:
Rational Inhumanism
- Anti-humanism and essentialist humanism are two faces of the same coin. The latter is an inflationary account of the human as defined by an immutable, inviolable structure or essence (biological structure, fixed nature, divine endowment, etc.) and the former is a deflation of that essence (via natural sciences, technology, or metaphysical flattening of the status of the human as just one object among many others). Both anti-humanism and essentialist humanism derive two seemingly distinct conclusions from the same set of premises. It is not that their answer to the…
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