Irina Deretic From Humanism To Meta Post and Transhumanism

BEYOND HUMANISM: TRANS- AND POSTHUMANISM
JENSEITS DES HUMANISMUS: TRANS- UND POSTHUMANISMUS

Edited by / Herausgegeben von Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
From Humanism to Meta-,

Post- and Transhumanism?
Irina Deretić
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
(eds.)
8
From Humanism to Meta-, Post- and Transhumanism?
BEYOND HUMANISM: TRANS- AND POSTHUMANISM
JENSEITS DES HUMANISMUS: TRANS- UND POST-
HUMANISMUS
Edited by / Herausgegeben von Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
Editorial Board:
H. James Birx
Irina Deretic
James J. Hughes
Andy Miah
Domna Pastourmatzi
Evi Sampanikou
VOL./BD. 8
Zu Qualitätssicherung und Peer Review Notes on the quality assurance and peer
der vorliegenden Publikation review of this publication
Die Qualität der in dieser Reihe Prior to publication, the quality of the
erscheinenden Arbeiten wird vor der work published in this series is re-
Publikation durch den Herausgeber der viewed by the editor of the series.
Reihe geprüft.
Irina Deretić / Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (eds.)
From Humanism to Meta-, Post-

and Transhumanism?
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Nationalbibliothek
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the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic
data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Cover image:
MetacomingDualities
© Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
ISSN 2191-0391
ISBN 978-3-631-66258-8 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-05483-5 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05483-5
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Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
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Editorial
Humanism has dominated Western culture for many centuries. It is character-

ized by the judgement that human beings have a special status in the world which
implies that they are categorically different from natural beings. The central ideas
of Darwin and Nietzsche, as well as scientific advances and technological innova-
tions, initiated several movements away from this type of humanism. The most
influential movements in this respect are transhumanism and posthumanism.
Both criticize the humanist understanding of the anthropou which also implies
a critique of the traditional understanding of human dignity. Transhumanism
primarily affirms the immense variety of enhancement technologies and attempts
to bring about the trans- and the posthuman. Posthumanism is characterized by
the attempt to transcend dualisms and to analyze the interaction between human
beings and technologies from an anthropological point of view. There are also
other approaches, like metahumanism or naturalism, which can get examined in
this context. All the movements can be considered from various perspectives. The
book series Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism represents a forum for
monographs and essay collections, in which reflections that belong to this field
of topics can be expressed. I am grateful that the publishing house Peter Lang is
interested in promoting this innovative topic, and I am glad that many experts of
the disciplines anthropology, art history, biology, ethics, literary theory, literature
studies, philosophy, political sciences and sociology support this project as edito-
rial board members.
Der Humanismus bestimmte jahrhundertelang die westliche Kultur. Er ist en-
tscheidend durch das Urteil gekennzeichnet, dass Menschen einen Sonderstatus
in der Welt besitzen, der impliziert, dass sie sich kategorial von natürlichen Wesen
unterscheiden. Zentrale Überlegungen Darwins und Nietzsches sowie wissen-
schaftliche Fortschritte und technologische Innovationen initiierten verschiedena-
rtige Bewegungen, die von dieser Art des Humanismus wegführen. Diesbezüglich
einflussreichste Bewegungen sind Transhumanismus und Posthumanismus. Beide
kritisieren das humanistische Verständnis des anthropou, das auch eine Kritik des
traditionellen Verständnisses der Menschenwürde impliziert. Der Transhuman-
ismus bejaht primär die große Vielfalt von Enhancement-Technologien und ist
darum bemüht, den Trans- und den Posthumanen herbeizuführen. Der Posthu-
manismus wird durch den Versuch charakterisiert, Dualismen zu transzendieren,
und die Interaktion von Mensch und den Technologien von einem anthropol-
ogischen Gesichtspunkt aus zu analysieren. Es gibt noch weitere Zugänge wie
6 Editorial
den Metahumanismus oder den Naturalismus, die in diesem Kontext untersucht

werden können. Alle diese Bewegungen können aus unterschiedlichen Perspek-
tiven betrachtet werden. Die Buchreihe Jenseits des Humanismus: Trans- und Post-
humanismus stellt ein Forum für Monographien und Sammelbände dar, in dessen
Rahmen Überlegungen aus diesem Themenspektrum vorgestellt werden können.
Ich bin dankbar, dass der Verlag Peter Lang daran Interessiert ist, dieses innovative
Thema zu fördern, und ich freue mich, dass zahlreiche Experten der Disziplinen
Anthropologie, Kunstgeschichte, Biologie, Ethik, Literaturtheorie, Literaturwis-
senschaften, Philosophie, Politikwissenschaften und Soziologie das Projekt im
Rahmen des wissenschaftlichen Beirats unterstützen.
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University, Rome

Contents
Irina Deretić & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Introduction��13
Irina Deretić, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

On the Origin and Genesis of Humans and Other Mortals in
Plato’s Protagoras��21
Rafael Ferber, University of Luzern

Plato’s “Side Suns”: Beauty, Symmetry and Truth. Comments
Concerning Semantic Monism and Pluralism of the “Good” in
the Philebus (65a1–5)��37
Christos Y. Panayides, University of Nicosia

Aristotle and Darwin on Living Things and Teleology��59
Pauliina Remes, University of Uppsala

‘For Itself and from Nothing’: Plotinus’ One as an Extreme
Ideal for Selfhood��71
Hans Otto Seitschek, LMU Munich

Christian Humanism: An Alternative Concept of Humanism��89
Ivan Vuković, University of Belgrade

Kant’s Two Conceptions of Humanity��97
Drago Đurić, University of Belgrade

Darwin’s Naturalization of Ethics�� 103
Una Popović, University of Novi Sad

Heidegger’s Transformation of Traditional Concept of the Human Being�� 115
Nenad Cekić, University of Belgrade

Humanism, State and Freedom: Nozick’s Minimal Humanism?�� 131
Evanghelos Moutsopoulos, Academy of Athens

Is a Renewal of Humanism Possible Today?�� 147
8 Contents
Boris Bratina, University of Priština, Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia

Other or The Other?�� 153
Mikhail Epstein, Emory University, Atlanta

Creative Disappearance of the Human Being: Introduction to
Humanology�� 163
Regine Kather, University of Freiburg

Humans and Nature: Modern Society between Cultural Relativism and
the Ontological Foundation of Values�� 175
Marija Bogdanović, University of Belgrade

Times of Hope and Risk: Market Based Genetics�� 191
Karen Gloy, Universität of Luzern

Post-Humanistic Thinking and Its Ethical Evaluation�� 215
Evangelos D. Protopapadakis, National and Kapodistrian University of

Athens
Earth as a Life-raft and Ethics as the Raft’s Axe�� 227
J. Hendrik Heinrichs, University of Erfurt

Trans-human-ism: Technophile Ethos or Ethics in a Technological Age?�� 243
Mirjana Pavlović, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade

The “Literature of Humanity”: The Case of Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman�� 257
Biljana Dojčinović, University of Belgrade

Modernist Narrative Techniques and Challenges of Humanity:
John Updike in European Perspective�� 269
Marina Milivojević-Mađarev, Yugoslav Drama Theater, Belgrade

The Idea of Humanism in the Work of Sarah Kane�� 283
Evi D. Sampanikou, University of the Aegean

Posthumanism in Contemporary Greek Art: Marios Spiliopoulos,
Traces of Human Beings�� 293
Predrag Milidrag, University of Belgrade

Post-humanism of The Matrix Trilogy�� 307
Contents 9
Yvonne Förster, Leuphana University Lüneburg

The Body as Medium: Fashion as Art�� 321
Goran Gocić, Belgrade

One Genealogy of De-centring�� 333
Jaime del Val, Institute Reverso

Metahuman: Post-anatomical Bodies, Metasex, and Capitalism of
Affect in Post-posthumanism�� 347
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University, Rome

Nietzsche’s Virtue Ethics and Sandels’ Rejection of Enhancement
Technologies: Truthful, Virtuous Parents may enhance their
Children Genetically�� 359
Acknowledgments
We wish to express our deep gratitude to the Austrian company Kapsch Traffic-
Com AG and to the Italian businessman Carmelo Marcuccio, who financially
supported the publication of this book.
We also appreciate the help from PhD candidate Aleksandar Kandić, and the
following students: Vladimir Zotov, Sara Dragišić, Katarina Maksimović, Igor
Stefanović, Stefan Mičić, Ana Obradović, Klara Pelhe, Stefan Radovanović. All of
them have provided important technical support for realizing this project.
Irina Deretić and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, October 2015

Irina Deretić & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
Introduction
The relationship between humanism, metahumanism, posthumanism and tran-

shumanism is one of the most pressing ones concerning many current cultural,
social, political, ethical and individual challenges. There have been a great amount
of uses of the various terms in past and contemporary philosophical exchanges.
The goal of the present volume is to provide a multifaceted survey of the concepts,
the relationship of the various concepts and their advantages and disadvantages.
There is an Ancient, a Renaissance, Enlightenment, a secular humanism and many
other types of humanism. When dealing with the various movements which claim
to go beyond humanism, the concept “humanism” implies the affirmation of cat-
egorical ontological dualities, e.g. the immaterial and the material. Consequently,
a secular humanism which holds a secular, naturalist or this-worldly ontology
also rejects a humanism which affirms such dualities and could be classified as
lying beyond humanism. Similar challenges need to be considered when talking
about meta-, trans- or posthumanism. However, the following meanings of the
various movements represent possible initial definitions which are helpful when
investigating in more detail the various contemporary approaches.
Posthumanism represents the attempt to avoid affirming categorical ontologi-
cal dualities in theoretical and practical circumstances. The term was coined first
by Ihab Hassan in the article “Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist
Culture?” from 1977. Hence, it reveals its origin in the tradition of literary theory,
cultural studies and continental philosophy. To move beyond humanism does not
imply that humanism ever was the correct description of the world. To move be-
yond humanism means that during a certain period of time, e.g. in between Plato
and Nietzsche (Sorgner), Stoa and the Third Reich (Sloterdijk) or in between the
beginning of the enlightenment and 20th Century (Hassan), a dualistic understand-
ing of anthropos was the dominant one. However, this insight no longer applies,
and attempts are being made to move beyond such a culture, as it is widely shared
today that non-dualist ways of thinking and acting are taken as plausible. Plausi-
bility is central as a notion concerning posthumanism, as the movement is based
upon a Nietzschean version of perspectivism, which also reveals the genealogy
of posthumanism. It starts with Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and then moves via
postmodern theories of interpretation towards today’s discourses. In contrast to
postmodernism, there is also a strong affirmation of a non-dualist ontology to be
14 Irina Deretić & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
found in posthumanism. Some postmodern philosophers like Deleuze and Fou-

cault are fairly close to posthumanist thinking, while others like Levinas or Derrida
are not. Still, postmoderns stress perspectivism more strongly, whereas, the main
focus of posthumanists lies on a non-dualist ontology. So far, posthumanism has
been particularly strong among philosophically minded literary critics and cultural
theorists, like Donna Haraway who wrote “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Tech-
nology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1985, updated
version 1991) and Katherine Hayles who wrote “How We Became Posthuman:
Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics” (1999). There can be
some traces of posthumanism in literary minded philosopher like Peter Sloterdijk,
too, e.g. in his essay “Rules for the Human Zoo” from 1999. Some scientifically
minded philosophers such as Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Humberto
Maturana can be seen as related to the posthumanist project, even though, it can
be doubted whether this judgment corresponds to their self-understanding. Many
ontological traces of what posthumanism stands for can be found in their book
“The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience” from 1991, or
Varela’s and Maturana’s “Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living”
from 1980. Even some biologists, like the geneticist Eva Jablonka, can be seen as
associated to posthumanism from a scientific perspective, e.g. in her book “Evolu-
tion in Four Dimensions” co-authored together with Marion Lamb from 2005.
Transhumanism in contrast to posthumanism can be seen as a more unified
movement. It is intimately related to the English world of naturalism, utilitarian-
ism, and evolutionary theory. The term “transhumanism” was coined by Julian
Huxley. Darwin supporter Thomas Henry Huxley was his paternal grandfather. His
brother Aldous Huxley was the author of the novel “Brave New World”. Andrew
Huxley, a noble-prize winner in biology, was his lesser known half-brother. Julian
Huxley was the first general director of the UNESCO, and long-time president and
member of the British Eugenics Society. “Transhumanism” as terminus technicus
was coined in his monograph “New Bottles for New Wine” from 1957. There, he
stressed the need of human beings to transcend themselves by means of the usage
of science and technology. Contemporary concepts of transhumanism are more
closely related to the ideas of the Iranian futurist Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, better
known as FM-2030, and Max More. Both changed their names in order to stress
an insight important for them and to stress the contingency of naming. FM-2030
wrote the “Upwingers Manifesto” (1973) and the book “Are You a Transhuman?:
Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Chang-
ing World” (1989). Max More, on the other hand, was responsible for the essay
“Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy” from 1990. Both thinkers have
Introduction 15
been particularly influential in forming the currently dominant understanding of

the term. The main goal which characterizes transhumanism is the affirmation
of the use of technologies to increase the likelihood of human beings to develop
further, so that eventually trans- and posthumans come into existence whereby
the meanings of the various concepts differs significantly among transhumanists.
“Transhumans” are regularly seen as members of the human species who are on
the way of becoming posthuman. The variety of possible meanings of the concept
“posthumans”, however, is immense whereby the following three options are prob-
ably the most widely held ones: 1. A carbonate-based entity still belonging to the
human species but having at least one capacity which goes beyond the capacities
current human beings possess: 2. A carbonate-based entity no longer belonging
to the human species; 3. A silicon based entity.
Besides the core features just mentioned, there are many differences between
various specific understandings of transhumanism. Even though, transhumanism
is based upon an affirmation of liberalism, there are transhumanists with libertar-
ian sympathies, like Max More, and others who are associated more closely with
a social-democratic understanding of transhumanism, e.g. James Hughes in his
monograph “Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the
Redesigned Human of the Future”. Concerning ethical ideals, there are transhu-
manists and thinkers closely associated with transhumanism which uphold a per-
fectionist ideal (Bostrom), a common sense concept of the good (Savulescu) and
a radically pluralist understanding of the good (Sorgner). The capacities which
ought to get promoted by means of technologies and other means depend on
the concept of the good which is being upheld. Intelligence, health, memory, the
capacity to concentrate, and the prolongation of the human health span, which is
different from the human life span, because it stresses the relevance of the period
of time in which one lives healthily, are capacities affirmed in some way or other
by many transhumanists.
In 2010, the Spanish artist Jaime del Val and the German philosopher Ste-
fan Lorenz Sorgner suggested an alternative to post- and transhumanism. They
recognize the need to bridge the gap between posthumanist and transhumanist
discourses and to present a philosophical alternative to these approaches. Thereby,
a philosophical and artistic attitude was developed which moves beyond a tra-
ditional dualist version of humanism, but which also lies in between trans- and
posthumanism. This approach was named metahumanism, because “meta” means
both “beyond” as well as “in between”. Sorgner is more closely related to the
English language philosophical tradition and del Val more closely to the French
philosophical and artistic world. Both share a high estimation of Nietzsche and
his perspectivism, a disrespect of paternalistic structures and a high evaluation

of radical plurality. These common attitudes were responsible for forming some
guiding principles which both of their works have in common.
In any case, all of the various movements beyond humanism have one judgment
in common which is closely connected to insights developed by Darwin, Nietzsche
and Freud: They all reject a categorically dualist understanding of human beings.
This collection of essays is dedicated to the pressing philosophical, cultural, social,
ethical and political challenges related to the relationships between humanism,
metahumanism, transhumanism and posthumanism. Leading scholars of many
different traditions, countries and disciplines have contributed to this exciting
Collection of Essays which hopefully will provide an immense intellectual stimulus
for a long period of time.
Map
This collection is divided into three sections: historical discourses, contemporary
philosophical reflections, and contemporary artistic perspectives. In the first sec-
tion, some of the most significant concepts of human being and of humanist ideals
have been discussed and critically evaluated. The book begins with Irina Deretić’s
article “On the Origin and Genesis of Humans and Other Mortals in Plato’s Protag-
oras” in which she explains the origin, development and nature of human beings
as it is described in Plato’s Protagoras myth. Her main claim is that, according to
this story, the human is a multi-dimensional being with various aspects and dis-
positions, which - after the creation of mortal beings - were developed further and
got differentiated through time. Martin Ferber’s piece “Plato’s “Side Suns”: Beauty,
Symmetry and Truth. Comments Concerning Semantic Monism and Pluralism
of the “Good” in the Philebus (65a1–5)” discusses beauty, symmetry and truth in
Plato’s philosophy which will become classic humanist ideals. His thesis is that
these three concepts are the qualities of the single reference, which is “The Good”.
Christos Panayides presents an account of Aristotle’s conception of final causality
in the realm of living things, including the humans, and subsequently. In his article
“Aristotle and Darwin on Living Things and Teleology” he critically compares and
contrasts Aristotle’s and Darwin’s theological explanations. The piece ‘For Itself
and from Nothing’: Plotinus’ One as an Extreme Ideal for Selfhood” by Pauliina
Remes reveals the implications of Plotinus’ One not merely as an efficient cause,
but also as a final cause of human existence. She argues that the significance of the
One as a telos of human selfhood lies in it being a foundation by means of which
it gives finite beings a being of their own right. Hans Otto Seitschek’s contributes
the article “Christian Humanism: An Alternative Concept of Humanism”. Herein,
Introduction 17
he deals with important aspects of Christian humanism and its understanding of

the human being. He argues that Christian humanism is a middle-way between
pure materialistic humanism, based on a monistic worldview (only one material
substance exists), and a mystical humanism without any rational foundation. Ivan
Vuković discusses Kant’s beliefs expressed in his later writings on history, law and
politics, according to which the rational souls are destined to cover the planet
Earth with a system of republican institutions. Hie article is entitled “Kant’s Two
Conceptions of Humanity”.
The second section of this collection is mostly dedicated to contemporary
debates on the conceptions of humanism, meta-, post-, and transhumanism and
their ethical evaluations, including philosophical ideas and views from the past
which move beyond traditional humanisms. It begins with Drago Đurić’s con-
tribution “Darwin’s Naturalization of Ethics”, in which the author envisages the
radical novelty of Darwin’s understanding of the human and his account of ethics.
The author argues that given an evolutionary scientific approach to ethics, there
is no room for an unbridgeable gap between facts and values. On the basis of a
theory of evolution as a conceptual framework, there can be only descriptive
ethics, but not prescriptive or normative approaches, apart from predictions that
some moral beliefs and behaviors can be evolutionarily successful. Una Popović’s
article “Heidegger’s Transformation of Traditional Concept of the Human Being”
envisages Heidegger’s fundamental transformation of a concept of the human be-
ing to Dasein by interpreting his analysis of modern philosophy in general, and
Descartes’ concept of ego cogito in particular. Nenad Cekić discusses the idea of
minimal humanism which is based on Kantian concepts of “man as an end in
himself ” and freedom in the article “Humanism, State and Freedom: Nozick’s
Minimal Humanism?”. Nozick’s understanding of minimal humanism is closely
related to his concept of a minimal state as a protective association (agency),
i.e., a libertarian state, which maintains its stability by restricting individuals to
their “moral space” and cannot play a redistributive role in economy. Evangelos
Moutsopoulos piece “Is a Renewal of Humanism Possible Today?” questions the
idea of a new morality for tomorrow’s world, based on Greek humanism as a
potential for intercultural dialogue, and a means of confronting the problems of
humankind today. In the article “Other or The Other?”, Boris Bratina examines
the ideas of opposing, ceaseless struggle, and total conflict, extending through the
whole of philosophical tradition by means of reducing The Other to that being
mere other. This has happened continually (if one excludes religious teachings)
until the advent of late modernity; specifically, in the works of Buber and Levi-
nas. Going beyond Nietzsche’s own perspective, Mikhail Epstein’s piece “Creative
Disappearance of the Human Being: Introduction to Humanology” extends the
field of humanism to seriously consider the technohuman of transhumanism or

posthumanism. Through the integrated synthesis of humankind and technology,
the future outcome of evolution will be the creation of an artificial being with
superior intelligence that transcends our own species.
Beginning with the questions whether the survival of humans and their physi-
cal, psychic and social well-being is a goal, or even an intrinsic value, Regina
Kather claims that human life does not depend on the interpretation of nature, on
mental acts, but on the interaction with nature. Her piece “Humans and Nature:
Modern Society between Cultural Relativism and the Ontological Foundation of
Values” explains why the dynamic and complex order of nature is an ontological
basis for human life. Though values cannot be derived directly from being, they
do not only depend on consensus, cultural tradition, and interests. In Kather’s
view, they have an ontological foundation which transcends cultural interpreta-
tions and which all humans can share with one another. In the article “Times of
Hope and Risk: Market Based Genetics”, Marija Bogdanović examines the de-
velopment and shaping of bioethics as a science which connects the life sciences
and humanities in researching moral dilemmas that arise in the application of
technological advancements in the field of medicine. She argues that for complex
ethical problems, both in current clinical practice as well as in genetic manipula-
tion, one needs appropriate methods of moral reasoning, from a “principle-based
method to various case-based methods”, or some combination of the two. Using
the example of Bruce Sterling’s science fiction novel Schismatrix - in which man-
kind continues to live unmodified on Earth, while on other planets there are two
competing trans-human or post-human groups - Karen Gloy critically discusses
gene manipulation and technology both on a theoretical-scientific and an ethical
level. Her article “Post-Humanistic Thinking and Its Ethical Evaluation” explores
the validity and merits of two ethical viewpoints: a fundamental-substantialist
view which does not allow any modification, and a liberal subjectivist view which
allows for and postulates them. Evangelos Protopapadakis contributed his piece
“Earth as a Life-raft and Ethics as the Raft’s Axe” in which he discusses Kaarlo
Pentti Linkola’s claim that our species represents a major threat for the ecosphere,
as well as his suggestions on how this threat could be best dealt with. He puts
forward arguments against Karlo Pentti Linkola’s ethical views, which, according
to the author, are ineffectual and incompatible with any kind of ethics as well as
highly detrimental for environmental ethics in general. By analyzing the con-
cept of transhumanism and its constituent ‘trans’, and ‘human’ or ‘humanism’, Jan
Hendrik Heinrichs’ piece “Trans-human-ism: Technophile Ethos or Ethics in a
Technological Age?” distinguishes different such versions, and discusses the scope
of the claims of their protagonists.
Introduction 19
The nature and paradoxes in the debate concerning both humanism and posthu-
manism are manifested and articulated in the most striking manner in the various
kinds of art. The third section of the collection begins with the three contributions
of receptions of humanism in literature. Mirjana Pavlović’s article “The “Literature
of Humanity”: The Case of Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman” demonstrates how the
criticisms of both civilizational values and the dark side of humans are interwoven
in Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, which can be interpreted as a philosophical dis-
cussion on human nature where the author accentuates the bestial side of a man.
The complex and ironic message of the story is that the savage nature of a man
can be changed only through teaching and civilizational progress. By interpreting
the scene from John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick, Biljana Dojčinović’s
piece “Modernist Narrative Techniques and Challenges of Humanity: John Updike
in European Perspective” deals with issues of ethical norms and responsibilities
of a reader, which are key issues of modern(ist) ways of writing. She particularly
focuses on the opposition between the heritage of modernism and the elements
of Hawthornean romance, which, according to Dojčinović, may be extrapolated
to the contemporary human state in general. Marina Milivojević-Mađarev’s article
“The Idea of Humanism in the Work of Sarah Kane” explains the idea of human
being and humanism in the works of Sarah Kane, who attempted to discover the
essence of human being by analyzing the human body and soul.
Most papers in the third section discuss various manifestations of post- or
metahumanist experiences in different kinds of contemporary arts. Evi Sampan-
ikou’s article “Posthumanism in Contemporary Greek Art: Marios Spiliopoulos,
Traces of Human Beings” reflects on posthumanist values in contemporary Greek
art, particularly within the recent work of the artist Marios Spiliopoulos who
presented a multimedia exhibition entitled “Traces of Human Beings”. Placed in
the industrial remains of Eleusina, Athens, the exhibition aims to establish the
connection between the local communities and the global, multicultural world,
the connection between the past, the present, and the future, which – according
to the author - makes it both humanistic and posthumanistic in its approach.
Predrag Milidrag analyzes the philosophical implications of The Matrix Trilogy
in an article entitled “Post-humanism of The Matrix Trilogy”. The author explores
Platonic, Cartesian and Hegelian themes in this movie, particularly in relation
to the free will problem. Yvonne Förster in her article “The Body as Medium:
Fashion as Art” argues that social and popular aspects of fashion have their origin
in a creative process that does not focus on the individual, but rather on abstract
ideas and concepts. This is illustrated by historic and contemporary examples,
which are further used to outline a phenomenology of the body as a medium for
abstract and even (in a broad sense) post-humanistic concepts. Goran Gocić’s
article “One Genealogy of De-centering” compares and contrasts reflections by

Mircea Eliade and Jacques Derrida. Whereas Mircea Eliade considers the ancient
practices of imitating God’s creation, which served the purpose of centering the
human being, Jacques Derrida reflects on the contemporary de-centering in the
West. This book ends up with metahumanist papers by Jaime del Val and Stefan
Lorenz Sorgner. The former redefines the traditional materialist accounts of the
posthuman by claiming that human bodies are constituted through relationality
and intensity, since they exist in the relation to other human bodies, animals,
objects, architecture, and so on. His article “Metahuman: Post-anatomical Bodies,
Metasex, and Capitalism of Affect in Post-posthumanism” explains why our own
body is also the effect of relational bodies on the level of bacteria, cells, molecules
and the subatomic world. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, on the other hand, develops a
metahumanist virtue ethical perspective concerning genetic enhancement by
drawing upon selected Nietzschean reflections to argue against the bioconserva-
tive virtue ethical position of Michael Sandel in his article “Nietzsche’s Virtue
Ethics and Sandels’ Rejection of Enhancement Technologies: Truthful, Virtuous
Parents may enhance their Children Genetically”
Giving this survey of some of the most significant anthropologies within the
history of philosophy which have been explained further by means of examples
from the sciences, literature, painting, and film, this essay collection is mainly con-
cerned with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between human-
ism versus meta-, trans-, and posthumanism. Far from introductory, this book
presents the complexity of urgent contemporary questions concerning our past,
present, and future in a variety of disciplines from philosophy via the sciences to
the arts. The contributions do not only explore already existing anthropological
concepts and theories, but they also attempt to create and articulate original, and
sometimes radically new views on what might occur in a posthuman “world”. In
doing this, the papers participate in on-going discussions on striking issues of
who the human being is and what she or he may become. By means of enhance-
ments of all kinds, including genetic modifications, it is highly likely that our hu-
man qualities are subject to radical modifications. What we do not know exactly,
however, are the outcomes of such technological processes: will it be an enhanced
human being, equipped with many new excellences, will it be an entirely new
being, belonging to another scale of evolution, or will it be something which we
have not yet managed to imagine so far? Will the future excellences be human at
all? If this is not the case, future scientists, engineers, philosophers and ethicists
will have to face the delicate task of evaluating and dealing with them properly.
Irina Deretić
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade
On the Origin and Genesis of Humans and

Other Mortals in Plato’s Protagoras
1. Introduction
“Where did we come from?” This is an endless riddle for human thought. Fur-
thermore, it challenges us with the question: “Who are we?” This is an even more
perplexing and complex issue. One of the most prominent and well-known answers
to these two questions is given by Protagoras1 in Plato’s dialogue named after him.
It is not surprising that the same famed sophist, who claimed that a human is
the measure of all things,2 is the one also telling us this myth about the origin of
humankind and its virtues.
The story and its interpretation are parts of Protagoras’ so-called Great Speech,
which includes not only the myth itself, but also the sophist’s interpretation of it.
Protagoras used the myth to support his claim about the possibility of teaching
virtue. My primary intention is not to interpret the role of the myth in the course
of this dialogue or to evaluate it in terms of its consistency, persuasiveness, and
argumentative power as a part of Protagoras’ so-called Great Speech. Instead,
1 In the interpretative commentaries of the myth in Plato’s Protagoras, the much-dis-

cussed question is whether the view presented in this myth is to be assigned to the
historical Protagoras or to Plato himself. The strongest argument in favor of the claim
that this fable is, in fact, Protagoras’ own is that the myth, it seems, presents a sophis-
tic Weltanschauung rather than a Platonic one. Stallbaum even claims that Plato paro-
died Protagoras’ stile from his work: Περὶ τῆς ἐν ἀρχῆς καταστάσεως (Steward 1905,
221). Additionally, the myth does not support Socrates’ view, but Protagoras’s claim that
virtue (ἀρετή) is teachable. Yet, Plato is the one who composed this myth in the manner
he did; as a dramatist, he frequently puts in the mouth of his characters, and even of
Socrates’ opponents, some of his own views. Finally, the claim that Plato’s role is more
creative, than it is commonly assumed, can be supported by the fact that the historical
Protagoras was an agnostic, while Plato’s Protagoras believed that religiousness is one
of the essential human characteristics. Bern Manuwald discussed this controversial
topic in a very profound and detailed manner. See Manuwald 1996, 103–131.
2 “The Human is the measure of all things: of the things that are that they are and of the
things that are not that they are not (πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος, τῶν
μὲν ὄν των ὡς ἔστιν, τῶν δὲ οὐκ ὄν των ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν)”. See Plato Tht. 151e.
22 Irina Deretić
I will endeavor to (a) find out what this myth conveys about the origin, the devel-
opment, and the nature of humans, and, (b) what it reveals about the dimensions
and aspects of us, which are, as we shall see, not irrelevant even today. It seems that
Plato’s Protagoras somehow, and to some extent, anticipates what later anthropolo-
gists proved to be true, i.e., that both political complexity and state organization
emerged after a long period of cultural development. For that reason, one might
say that this myth is not only of historical interest, but also of philosophical rel-
evance today.
In other words, I will attempt to elucidate the origin, nature and development
of humans as it is described in this sophist’s fable. My main claim is that, accord-
ing to this myth, ἄνθρωπος is a multi-dimensional being with various aspects
which gradually developed through time; this implies, among other things, that
the determining human characteristics are not only being intelligent and politi-
cal, but also include others. I will, also, point out that for an explanation of the
way humans were created, the idea of progress should be taken into account. That
is to say, according to my interpretation of this myth, after the creation of mortal
beings had been finished, human dispositions were further developed and differ-
entiated through time. The fable describes the Titans’ and Zeus’ interventions, by
which suddenly mortal beings were created and next were re-arranged, reshaped,
and enhanced. This kind of progress, however, is not to be understood in terms
of evolution. On the contrary, the myth is a creationist one, because all living
creatures, including human beings, had been already created by gods, while some
human characteristics, as we will see in the course of this paper, had been devel-
oping through time. The additional reason that the origin of humans is in a way
connected with development (not evolution) is also affirmed by Protagoras himself
in the dialogue.3
According to my interpretation, first the creation and then the further develop-
ment of living beings in the myth is to be divided into four stages, out of which
the last two, the pre-political and following this the political one, are of particular
significance for humans. My intention is to elucidate that these four stages de-
scribed in this myth can be better accounted for by using different hermeneutic
models, or by finding out which theory best underlines each of these four stages.
In the course of my paper, I will explain both what these four stages and their
corresponding hermeneutic or explanatory models actually are.
3 See Prot. 322a.

On the Origin and Genesis of Humans and Other Mortals 23
2. Progress and Evolution

To begin with, I would like to make two important introductory remarks which
will help us understand the general framework of this story that Plato ascribes to
Protagoras. The first one is concerned with the notion of evolution, since it is nec-
essary to distinguish the idea of progress, presented in the myth, from the notion
of evolution. Although Greeks had not developed a theory of evolution, the idea
of the transformation from one species into another is known in ancient Greek
thought.4 Philosophers like Anaximander and Empedocles might be considered
to be “proto-evolutionists”.5 Anaximander held that life originated in moisture “by
the heat of the sun”, and that humans arose from either fishes or a fish-like animal;
such a human was first surrounded by prickly barks which then burst when the
human grew through time.6 Empedocles conveys a bizarre picture of the origin
of life on Earth, claiming that in the beginning there were disembodied organs
which joined together, forming different mutant beings, e.g., a two-headed and
human-faced animal. Nevertheless, a perfect combination of organs survived and
multiplied.7 Although these imaginative explanations seem to be the creation of
a poetical imagination, rather than the result of scientific reasoning, they none-
theless do contain the structure and logic of proto-evolutionary thought; this is
the belief that from more primitive organisms had developed different and more
complex species though time.
It seems that in Plato’s thought there cannot be found any evolutionary ideas.
Yet, in the Timaeus, with a touch of irony, the animal species are described as
derived from humans by means of a series of deformations of originally human
bodies. What Plato has in mind in the Timaeus is a kind of odd inverted evolu-
tion, or devolution, as opposed to a progressive structure of human development
as given in the Protagoras. On the other hand, in the myth of Plato’s Politicus,
the origin of humankind is described in contrast to both the devolution in the
Timaeus and to the progress in Plato’s Protagoras. Following the older Hesiod
tradition, in the Politicus, Plato, with sophisticated irony, explains human genesis
in terms of a “progressive decline from the idealized original state of innocence,”
as if such an original state ever had existed. Protagoras’ myth, by contrast, belongs
4 For example, in a fable of Aesop, Zeus orders Prometheus to create some more men
by reshaping some members of different animal species. This example is emphasized
in the K. Thein article. See, Thein 2003, 66.
5 See Birx 2010 Vol. 2, 586–587.
6 See Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1993, 139–140.
7 See Hummel 2009, 406–7.
24 Irina Deretić
to the naturalistic tradition that was “developed in the fifth century from tradi-
tional antecedents” (Taylor 1991 78.), which accounts for human development as
a progress from primitive beginnings.
At this point, I am reaching the second general remark which is worth em-
phasizing; it refers to the historical and cultural context. Namely, in the middle of
the fifth century BCE originated the Greek doctrines about the genesis of culture.
The main concern of these teachings was to discover the different stages that hu-
mans had passed through until they attained their current state of socio-cultural
development. Of course, these reflections were not collaborated by systematic
observations and/or archaeological findings. Yet, this theoretical interest antici-
pated the later rise of those scientific disciplines which have systematically, with
collaborative proofs and testimonies, elucidated how humans tamed their bestial
nature and became cultural beings. Considerations on this process of becoming a
human might be found in Democritus8 and in the Corpus Hippocraticum,9 as well
as in the tragedies10 and works of the sophists. Moreover, Xenophanes articulated
the belief that, from the very beginning, the gods had not given everything to
humans. Consequently, humans were still in need of things and therefore they
used their own efforts to find, through time, what was better for them.11 This view
is the first articulation of progress in Western thought.12
3. The First Phase of the Creation of Mortals and

Theory of Elements
Let us consider the text of Plato’s Protagoras’ fable in detail! The first stage of
the myth begins with two temporal phrases. “Once upon a time” ( Ἦν γάρ ποτε
χρόνος)13, i.e., at one time, as it is said, there were only gods. “ Ἦν χρόνος” is a typi-
cal temporal phrase, occurring at the beginning of many myths, which indicates
that there is a time before the time of the sequence of events. It has frequently
been pointed out in the literature on this myth that there is a difference between
mythical time and historical time.14 Whereas history attempts to explain a phe-
nomenon as belonging to a temporal order, trying to find out the nature of the
8 See Democritus DK 68 B5.

9 See Hippocratus Περὶ ἀρχαίας ἰατρικῆς; See also, Szlezak 2010, 162.
10 See e.g., Aischylus, Prometheus Bound 442–506.
11 See Xenophanes DK 21 B 18.
12 See Szlezak 2010, 162–163.
13 See Prot. 320c5.
14 See Erler 2002, 86–7.
connections between events within a certain time period, myth explains the origin
of the phenomenon by putting it in an indeterminate ancient time which is, in
fact, an absolute timeless beginning.
The second temporal phrase designates the necessary event of the genesis
of mortal beings (θνητὰ γένη), i.e., “the appointed time came for their genesis
(χρόνος ἦλθεν εἱμαρμένος γένεσως)” (320d1). Why would the everlasting gods
want to create mortal beings? Was it due to an unexplainable necessity, since the
phrasing “χρόνος ἦλθεν εἱμαρμένος” is usually used to designate a necessary
sequence of events, or due to an incident without any higher goal? At the begin-
ning of the myth, there is no answer for the above-mentioned dilemma. Yet, in
the course of this myth, the described interventions by the Titans and even Zeus
himself can be understood as revealing that the creation of mortals has a higher
purpose or value.
In the first stage of this myth, it is said that the gods created the mortal beings
out of two elements, earth and fire. What Plato’s Protagoras has in mind here
is the physical theory of the four elements, out of which everything existing is
composed, i.e., the explanation of material compounds of all “mortal genders”.
According to most Pre-Socratic natural philosophies, the material elements are
the staff of all existing things. Nevertheless, in contrast to Protagoras’ myth, for
the natural philosophers the material elements had not been created by the gods,
but these elements are themselves uncreated and everlasting, and for that reason
the elements are often described as if they were some kind of gods. In other words,
the creationism of Protagoras’ myth is not present in the relevant Pre-Socratic
philosophies. Due to the attributes assigned to earth and fire in some Pre-Socratic
natural philosophies, it is not unexpected that they are chosen to be the elements
out of which mortal beings are made of. It seems that earth symbolizes the body
and fire represents the soul of mortals.15
The absence of water and air in the forming of the organisms of mortals might
be unusual, regarding the significance of water and air in the Pre-Socratic theories
of nature. From the fact that this part of the myth is very short and undeveloped,
it seems that the myth maker does not put much importance on this first phase
of the creation of mortals. However, what does have some significance is the fact
that matter made the created beings mortal, whereas the gods, i.e., the authors of
the creation, made the created material beings alive.
15 For example, fire as the element of both processuality and of the soul is one of the most
discernable points of Heraclitus’ philosophy.
26 Irina Deretić
4. Epimetheus and Biological Explanatory Model

Since creation turns out to be a more difficult task than it may appear to be at
first glance, the gods assigned two Titans to provide mortals with their faculties
(δυνάμεις), appropriate to each type of them. This implies that creation had not
been finished by the gods’ mixture of elements, so that the later titanic interven-
tions, finishing with Zeus’ gifts, to some extend “recreated” supposedly entirely
created beings.
The two Titans were Epimetheus and Prometheus, i.e., “Afterthought” and
“Forethought”. The meanings of titanic names predetermine in the fable the out-
comes of their works for the functioning of living beings. Having in mind the
connotations of their names, even before they begin to fulfill their pursuits, we can
already foresee that Epimetheus, due to his short-sightedness, will do something
wrong in the end, which should be corrected afterwards by his cleverer brother
Prometheus. Their own agreement upon the division of their labors also empha-
sizes the different rank and nature of their activities. Epimetheus would distribute
faculties to mortal creatures, while Prometheus should inspect (ἐπίσκεψαι) the
outcomes.16
It is noteworthy that both brothers show some typical human characteristics:
Prometheus has positive ones such as inventiveness, bravery, and the drive for
knowledge, while Epimetheus has negative ones like short-sightedness, absent-
mindedness and forgetfulness. Epimetheus’ way of thinking is purely instru-
mental, oriented toward attaining particular ends, while Prometheus’ activity is
reflective, including both criticism and creativity. This is the reason why, in some
interpretations,17 Prometheus’ activity is compared with a philosopher’s work in
general, and with Socrates’ attitude in particular. Socrates critically investigates
the validity and justification of the various common beliefs of others, and only
after the rigorous examination of them, including mostly the rejection of these
opinions, is he ready to take his own independent judgment on things. After a
critical “inspection” and a negative evaluation of his brother’s pursuit, who did not
completely fulfill the gods’ will, Prometheus is ready independently, against the
will of gods, to take their knowledge, considered to be exclusively gods’ possession,
and give it to humans (just as Socrates gave knowledge to humans).
In the second stage of the myth, Epimetheus is faced with a task which is
more than difficult for someone who is presupposed to be short-sighted and “not
particularly clever”, being able only to think after (and not before) the labor has
16 See Prot. 320d4.

17 See Kofman 1986, 26–35.
been finished. The work of Epimetheus was not exhausted in the distribution of

those qualities to animal species that are necessary for their survival, since he also
changes the very shape of animal bodies by adding claws, horns, hooves, thick
skin, etc., to them.
What underlies Protagoras’ description of Epimetheus’ activity is a kind of
biological explanatory model, namely, he talks in terms of the dynamic constitu-
tion of an organism or, more precisely, in terms of an animal’s biological efficiency
and fitness. The distribution of these faculties to animal species aims at biologi-
cal equilibrium, which is supposed to appear as a result of the assigning to each
species the physical attribute that the other species do not have. In other words,
the qualities are distributed among the animal species on the principle of balanc-
ing one against the other (321a3), against mutual destruction (321a4), and for the
survival of each of them (320e3).
The above can be collaborated by the division of Epimetheus’ labor in three
subclasses. The first one is the protection of animals from mutual extermination
and distraction by equipping them with the different properties necessary for their
survival and self-protection, balancing these powers appropriately.18 The second
subclass is the adaptation of animals to their climate and topographic environ-
ments.19 Using the Darwinian conceptual framework, one may say that animals
were provided with appropriate characteristics, which made them able to adapt
to their environment and to struggle for survival. The third one is securing the
food appropriate for each kind of animal.20 Since Epimetheus carried out a pretty
complex labor, which consisted of differentiating animal species, assigning to
each of them a particular power, whereby having in mind their proper biological
balance, he turns out to be cleverer than he was supposed to be.
Very probably, considering particularly the second stage of the myth, Friedrich
Schleiermacher, though being unfair in calling this myth “rough”,21 rightly empha-
sizes its obliviously “materialistic” character. This is what Schleiermacher considers
to be the negative feature of this myth, but one may rather conceive this part of the
myth as being full of the observant insights into the various forms of functioning
of the animal world. That is to say, the author of the myth has both the eye of a true
18 See Prot. 320d8–321a2, as well as Heinemann 2003, 73. His detailed and well-founded
article is focused on this stage of the myth, pointing out the analogies of the myth with
Hypocrites’ medical writings.
19 See Prot. 321a2–b2.
20 See Ibid. 321b3–b6
21 See Schleiermacher, 1996, 113.
28 Irina Deretić
naturalist and the talent for classification, showing a keen sense for distinguishing
various faculties, modes, and environmental circumstances.
5. The Weakest Animal as a Cultural Being

Since Epimetheus’ sources — i.e., physical, corporal capacities to adapt to the en-
vironment and defend from other animals — were exhausted, there was nothing
left for him to give to the last species. And this species is the human one. It seems
that a higher or different kind of “cleverness”, from the ones that Epimetheus
himself has, was required in order to develop the human being in all aspects of his
or her nature. Preliminarily, humans were described as being opposed to all other
animals; humans were “completely unequipped”, “naked, unshod, unbedded, and
unarmed (321c4–5)”. Having such corporal characteristics, the human species is
incapable of surviving, i.e., it is both physically unfit for its struggle against the
well-equipped wild animals and not adaptable to severe climatic changes. Unlike
the other animals, humans lack physical organs for attack and a corporal constitu-
tion for protection. As German philosopher Arnold Gehlen put it, long after Plato,
a human being is a being with deficiencies, hopelessly maladjusted, undeveloped
and corporally not specialized for a certain activity.22
This account of humans, as beings who are not naturally superior to the other
animal species, but are rather inferior in their physical constitution, emerged in
Protagoras’s myth for the first time in such a clear expression in the history of
philosophy. Moreover, that the biological inferiority is the first essential charac-
teristic which both distinguishes them from the animal world and enables them
to become what they are. The ongoing story tells us what we already knew from
the history of humankind: out of need, the most ill-equipped animal became the
best endowed.
In the third stage of the myth, Prometheus had to correct his brother’s mistake.
Thus, Prometheus steals fire from Hephaestus, as well as both technical wisdom
and crafts from Athens, and consequently is punished for his actions.23 Compared
to Aeschylus’ poetical version of this myth, where Prometheus’ tragic punishment
for his courageous act plays the central role, in Protagoras’ myth Prometheus’ pun-
ishment is not of any particular importance. Nevertheless, the consequence of his
thefts in both works determines human nature in an essential way. In the fourth
stage of this myth, due to their mutual hostility, humans could have exterminated
22 This is one of the major claims of Arnold’s Gehlen book: Der Mensch, seine Natur und
seine Stellung in der Welt, 1940.
23 See Prot. 321d–322a.
each other, but because of Zeus’ intervention, who gave them political knowledge,
humans survived and were salvaged from their evil destiny.
In my opinion, the third and the fourth stages in this myth refer to the process
of creating culture and politics, and are to be understood in terms of the tele-
ological explanatory model, since this model elucidates and explains the crucial
characteristics of human nature. However, these characteristics are distinguished
in the manner in which their ends are defined. Whereas in the pre-political phase
humans primarily strived to survive, in the later political phase their goal was not
only to stay alive, but also to live a good life. Although in the pre-political phase
humans create culture, which surpasses mere survival, the political ἀρεταί are
those which make human life good and virtuous, and consequently worth living.
If the aim of the third stage of the myth is a successful adaption to the changeable
environmental conditions, leading to the realization of some human potentials,
then the fourth stage is more perfect, since it pursues full realization of human
potentials.
This line of reasoning might be articulated in the following manner: 1. A human
develops the technical intelligence in order to survive, 2. By developing technical
intelligence, a human is able to realize only some of her or his potentials, 3. The
good life is a life in accordance with political excellences, 4. By attaining political
excellences, humans can succeed in the realization of their full potentials, 5. In
leading the good life, humans are able to realize their full potentials, 6. Attainment
of one’s full potentials is a more perfect goal than the attainment of some of these
potentials, 7. Therefore, leading the good life is a more perfect goal than merely
surviving through the use of technical intelligence. Nevertheless, by adjusting to
the environment and protecting oneself from the other hostile animal species,
humans developed their intelligence in a way that allowed them to surpass their
instrumental and technological abilities. Thus, the accomplished goals of human
lives turned out to be not only survival, but also the establishment of human
culture.
In order to elucidate the interpretative framework of this stage of the myth, I
will return to the beginning of Prometheus’ intervention, when one finds humans
ill-equipped, and therefore biologically unable to survive. Facing the hard task
to save the weakest among all animals, Prometheus provided humans with some
kind of technical intelligence. If we try to demythologize this story, then the fol-
lowing interpretation might be plausible. Due to the deficiencies in their physical
attributes, humans developed intelligence, which enabled them to overcome their
physical unfitness in order to prevail against negative circumstances. Such weak
creatures survived due to their intelligence, which in the myth manifested itself
in learning and acquiring the basic and necessary technical skills. This implies
30 Irina Deretić
that by using them, humans essentially distinguish themselves from the rest of

the animal world, something which enables them to reach goals that are higher
than just an adaptation to and accommodation in nature. However, according to
Plato’s Protagoras, technical intelligence is not sufficient for determining human
nature. Therefore, Protagoras introduces some new elements in his description
of how an intelligent animal becomes a human.
6. Religiousness and Political Excellence

It might appear odd that, in this myth, humans are said to have started to worship
the gods before they acquired food, shelter, and clothes. It seems that worship-
ing the gods was the first (πρῶτον 322a4) activity they began to perform after
receiving the “stolen” gifts from Prometheus. In my view, this πρῶτον should not
be interpreted in a temporal sense, but in a way that humans’ “kinship with the
gods” is something which has priority over the above-mentioned other activities,
which were necessary for mere surviving. Accordingly, it could be claimed that
the religiousness of humans, which fundamentally and not only in degree, dis-
tinguishes them from the other animals, is essential for forming human nature.
In other words, for the author of this myth, the most primary relationship that
humans ever established was and is the relationship that they have with the gods.
This “kinship” is said to exist because humans share in the divine. Although it is
not clear what the divine aspect of humans is, one might from the context draw
the conclusion that this is a logos or capacity for rational thinking. That is to say,
this is the very aspect which differentiates them from the rest of the animal world.
The other animal species are said to be τὰ ἄλογα (321c1) or non-rational.
Due to the logos, that godlike immortal aspect of the human soul which only
partly manifests itself in one’s technical intelligence, humans started to believe
in and to have reverence for the gods. While developing the capacity to acquire
knowledge, a human becomes aware that she or he has something divine in her-
self/himself which corresponds with divinity itself. It seems that by worshiping the
limitless gods, humans attempt to overcome the limits of their own existence, i.e.,
to improve their incomplete, imperfect and deficient nature. The second primary
element of human culture is language, a product of human intelligence which is
a necessary condition, but not, as we shall see, a sufficient condition, for human
socialization. At the same time, language is a presupposition for both poetic and
theoretical achievements. So, we are gradually coming to the next differential
characteristic of the human species, and that is its capacity to create culture.
From the aforesaid, one may conclude that, unlike most animals, humans have
a technical intelligence which enables them to rise above physical disadvantages in
order to survive. There are some animals that also possess some primitive, un-
developed forms of instrumental intelligence. However, what essentially distin-
guishes humans from other animal species is both religiousness and language,
which constitute the fundamentals of human culture. Whereas technical knowl-
edge is related to the external physical world, in order to adapt, cultivate or exploit
it, religion and language are the ways in which humans express and understand
themselves. Nevertheless, neither culture in general, nor religion in particular, is
sufficient to stop human hostility and aggression, and enable humans to achieve
a good life. The fact that the gifts from the gods were “stolen” makes them inad-
equate for attaining something which is genuinely good.
In my interpretation, one reaches two important conclusions. First, according
to Protagoras’s myth, culture precedes the establishment of political communi-
ties. Culture presupposes the formation and appropriate development of such
communities. Therefore, it seems that political excellences are later “inventions”.
Second, since the myth, as has been seen, describes two stages, a pre-political and
a political one, it could be claimed that humans developed progressively through
time, from the lower pre-political stage to the higher political stage. Consequently,
an account of humanity cannot be reduced to merely the human capacity to create
technical and cultural inventions, but should also include αἰδώς and δίκη, those
two political gifts from the highest god, Zeus, that make us truly human.
One may object to my interpretation by claiming that, instead, all four stages
in this myth, including creation and all interventions, had happened at once.
This is highly implausible, due to the following reasons. First, the creator of the
myth carefully distinguished the activities belonging to the domain of technical
knowledge and culture from the civic activities enabled by political excellences,
having in mind that acquiring political virtues is a more progressive state com-
pared to the state where only technical skills were available. Second, the danger
of self-destruction, which was a very realistic threat, is the reason for “receiving”
political excellences; this implies that humans did not have political excellences
from the very beginning, when they lived “scattered and began to be destroyed”
(322b9). Moreover, Protagoras himself characterizes Zeus’ gifts as things which
did not belong to the human φύσις (323d1), but did require “practice and teach-
ing” (323e1).24 This demonstrates that these divine gifts had not been primarily the
characteristics of human nature, but became a part of it in the progressive process
24 See Thomas A. Szlezak’s profound interpretation of the relation between φύσις and
νόμος in sophists in general, and in Protagoras’ myth in particular. See, Szlezak 2010,
161–165.
32 Irina Deretić
of human socialization. Consequently, humans had not been completely “created”

at the beginning of human civilization, but have been changing through time until
they reached the level which implies a well-organized political and social life.
Like technical skills, political excellences, αἰδώς and δίκη, were developed out
of need and necessity. Nevertheless, their goals are different. Whereas technical
skills were acquired for self-protection from the wild animals, political excel-
lences emerged as responses to the danger of self-destruction. Living in scattered
groups, humans were driven out of self-protection to live in larger communities,
but they found this impossible due to their mutual hostility. What was absent was
a firmer tie among humans themselves, which would enable them not only to
stay alive but also to live well. Consequently, as one may notice, being aggressive
is also one of the crucial human characteristics which one tames by developing
political excellence.
Plato’s Protagoras characterizes both αἰδώς and δίκη as political excellences.
Nonetheless, he does not explain what he means by these two terms. Since αἰδώς
is “one of the most difficult of Greek words to translate”,25 it is even more difficult
to understand its meaning and role in this context. It seems that αἰδώς cannot be
reduced to political ἀρετή, although αἰδώς is a necessary condition for attaining
political excellence. A tentative definition of αἰδώς might be that it is an affec-
tion, which emerges when one judges oneself in terms of some ethical ideal that
is accepted as one’s own. In other words, the judgment that is constitutive for
this emotion depends on oneself, i.e., on one’s self-esteem. It suggests that αἰδώς
implies the relationship that we have with ourselves, even when it is caused by
or directed to others. Being self-aware of our own deeds, judging them in moral
terms, feeling distressed and embarrassed if our values and ideals are violated by
ourselves, is something that can be assigned only to humans.
One may rightly question the political character of the term αἰδώς. What does
shame or disgrace have to do with political excellences? One may answer that
although the term αἰδώς is of a self-referential character and implicates moral
self-awareness, this moral “emotion” also has social and political dimensions in
the sense of moral and social solidarity, as well as a respect for others. Addition-
ally, Plato repeats the same metonymic phrase: “αἰδώς καὶ δίκη”26 in the Laws,27
implying that regard and respect for others is a presupposition for justice. There-
fore, αἰδώς can prevent us from wrongdoing, like in cases where one can easily
25 See Cairns 1993, 1.

26 The link between the αἰδώς and δίκη in Hesiod is emphasized by Cairns. See, Cairns
1993, 155 ff.
27 See Lg. 943e1–2.
inflict “an unjustified punishment”. In this context, the term αἰδώς obliviously
has political implications.
The second virtue, δίκη, political ἀρετή par excellence, makes possible a stable
and regulated political life. What is lacking in the pre-political phase of human
development is a sense of both moral sensibility and social solidarity, which ena-
bles one not only to take care one’s own interests, but also to respect the needs and
rights of others, in virtue of which one becomes a member of a community that
is founded on just laws and good customs. In the pre-political phase of history,
humans did not understand and appreciate the value of living together.
Whereas αἰδώς regulates our internal life and generates the excellence σω-
φροσύνη28 — usually translated into English as moderation, self-restrain or self-
control — δίκη, i.e., justice, regulates our relationship with others, introducing
customs and unwritten or written laws. For the Greeks, δίκη is a political ἀρετή
par excellence, which makes possible a stable and regulated political life. What
is missing in the pre-political phase of human development is a sense of moral
sensibility and social solidarity, which is a presupposition for the establishment a
community, founded and organized on just laws and good customs.
Shame and justice are both necessary conditions for the functioning of any
community, and sufficient conditions for attaining a good and prosperous life.
They are developed out of necessity for bare survival, but they aim toward the
realization of what is the best in humans. Unlike technical skills, shame and justice
do not have instrumental value, but they do have intrinsic value: being moderate
and just is valuable and worthwhile per se. These excellences are also constitu-
tive aspects of happiness and a flourishing life, both for an individual and for the
community.
In order to be not only accidentally, but also essentially a human, everyone has
to possess αἰδώς and justice.29 If human logos or rationality is something godlike
in us, but our physical needs, the instinct for self-protection, and aggressiveness
are features that we have in common with animals, then exercising political vir-
tues is a unique activity that belongs exclusively to humans. It seems that political
excellence is a kind of bridge between the bestial and the divine in us, enabling
us to cultivate our innate aggressiveness, appetites, and corporal needs in order
to reach the higher goals of our reason. Yet, political excellences are not the only
qualities that make us human.
28 In Plato’s Chamedes, the connection between αἰδώς and σωφροσύνη is emphasized.

See, Chrm. 150c.
29 See Prot. 323c ff.
34 Irina Deretić
This myth provides us with both a multifaceted and sophisticated account of

who we are. All essential human features seem to be developed out of need and
necessity, and derived from our first characteristic, i.e., the fact that we are fun-
damentally weak or physically deficient. By technical wisdom and its products,
skills and crafts, humans succeeded to survive fighting against often hostile envi-
ronments. At the same time, they developed some aspects of their culture before
establishing systematically-organized political communities. Yet, by taming her
or his bestial nature, the rational animal, like all other beasts, still remains aggres-
sive, destructive and self-destructive. By being aware of their own nature, though,
humans may overcome their deficiencies, creating themselves through time as
self-conscious, religious, rational, expressive and artistic beings, as well as becom-
ing later self-restrained, just and political citizens.
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Rafael Ferber
University of Luzern
Plato’s “Side Suns”: Beauty, Symmetry and

Truth. Comments Concerning Semantic
Monism and Pluralism of the “Good” in
the Philebus (65a1–5)1
“Three suns I saw stay on the heaven”

First line of Max Mueller’s poem The side suns
(Die Nebensonnen) In memoriam Margherita Isnardi Parente
Under semantic monism, I understand the thesis “The Good is said in one way”
and under semantic pluralism the antithesis “The Good is said in many ways”.
Plato’s Socrates seems to defend a principle of “semantic monism”2. He defends this
principle not only concerning common nouns such as “pious” (Euthyphr. 6d2–e7),
“bravery” (Lach. 192b5–d12), “beauty” (Hipp. Ma. 288a8–289c) and “virtue” (Men.
72c6), but also concerning the reference to the noun “Good”. The Good, for the
sake of which we do everything (Hipp. Ma. 297b3–8; Gorg. 468b1–3; 499e9–500a9;
Symp. 205e7–206a1; Phil. 20d7–8), is one single good. In the Republic, it is the Form
of the Good (Resp. 505a2; 508e2–3; 519c2). The Philebus starts not with the search
for the Form of the Good, but for a certain state of the soul which can render the
life of all human beings happy (Phil. 11d4–6). But it asks nevertheless the Socratic
1 This article is the enlarged English version of a paper read on the occasion of the Eighth
Symposium Platonicum, Dublin 23–28, July 2007, which I gave also in Rome on the
invitation of Ada Neschke and Christoph Riedweg, and in Belgrade on the invitation
of Irina Deretić. A shortened German version appeared in Dillan et al. 2010, 259–65.
My thanks go to the different audiences and especially to David Longrigg for the im-
provement of my English and to an anonymous referee for some helpful remarks. This
is a reprint (without footnotes) of the following: Ferber, R (2010). Plato’s “Side Suns”:
Beauty, Symmetry and Truth. Comments concerning semantic monism and pluralism
of the “Good” in the Philebus (65A 1–5). Elenchos, 31 (Fascicolo 1): 51–76.
2 I owe the expression “semantic monism” to Lesher 1987, 278: “In several early dia-
logues, he [Socrates] defends a principle of “semantic monism”: that whenever we
employ a word there is a single quality designated by that term which, once properly
identified, can serve as a distinguishing mark for all the things designated by that term
[…] So, a multiplication of the senses of ‘know’ would be thoroughly Un-Socratic”.
38 Rafael Ferber
question: “What in fact is the Good?” (ὃτι ποτ’ ἐστνὶν ἀγαθόν) (13e5–6) and holds
on to a “single form” (μία ιδέα) of the Good (65a1). Just as in the Republic, only
one sun exists3, so the “Good” has for the platonic Socrates only one reference.
Nevertheless, the platonic Socrates defends in the Philebus a semantic pluralism,
more exactly trialism, of “beauty, symmetry and truth” (Phil. 65a2). Therefore,
metaphorically speaking, there seems to exist not only one sun but – so to say –
three suns. If the platonic Socrates defends a semantic monism on the one hand,
and a pluralism on the other, how can we unite his pluralism with his monism?
My thesis is that the three references are “qualities” (ποῖα) (Ep. VII 343b8–c2)
of the one single reference, or again, speaking metaphorically, “side suns” (Neben-
sonnen) or parhelia, of the single sun4. My aim is to cheer up those who may miss,
after the fatiguing “second best sailing” (Phil. 19c2–3) in the chiaro-oscuro of the
Philebus velde summo Bono, the reward of a look on the one sun with the solace
of a glance on three side suns. In the following, I propose first an exegesis of Phil.
65a1–5. Second, I ask a critical philosophical question about this monism and
the corresponding hierarchy of values (66a6–c6).
I
[S1] Οὐκοῦν εἰ μὴ μιᾶ δυνάμέθα ιδέα τὸ ἀγαθὸν θηρεῦσαι,
[S2] σὺν τρισὶ λαβόντες,
[S3] κάλλει καὶ συμμετρία καὶ άληθεία,
[S4] λέγωμεν ώς τοῦτο οἶον ἒν ὀρθότατ’ ἂν αἰτιασαίμέθ’ ἂν τῶν ἐν τῆ συμμείξει,
[S5] καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ώς ἀγαθὸν ὂν τοιαύτην αὐτὴν γεγενέναι
“[S1] So if we cannot hunt down the Good in a single form,
[S2] let us secure it by the conjunction of three,
[S3] beauty, symmetry and truth, and say:
[S4] [If we take] this [trinity] as if it would be a unity (τοῦτο οῑον ἒν), we may by right
postulate [this unity] as the cause of that which is in the mixture,
3 See Resp. 508a7, 11, d1; 509a2, b2, 9; 509c6; 515e8; 516b1–2, 4; 516e6; 517e4; 532a5;
532b8–9; 532c3 and ad loc. Ferber 1989, 49–79, Bonazzi et. al. 2003, 127–49.
4 “Side suns”, also called sundogs or parhelia, are bright, colourful light patches, which
appear in ice clouds 22 degrees or more to either side of the sun. We don’t know if this
beautiful natural phenomenon was known to Plato. I use it here as an image of my
own to capture Plato’s thoughts on the Good in the Philebus. Although the sun is not
mentioned explicitly in the Philebus – except in 28e4 – the image of the risky direct
look on the sun (see Phaed. 99d-e; Resp. 516c8; 515e2; 516a1–2) is still vivid in the
Laws: “Still, in answering this question we mustn’t assume that mortal eyes will ever be
able to look upon reason and get to know it adequately: let’s not produce darkness at
noon, so to speak, by looking at the sun direct” (Leg. 897d8–e1, transl. Sanders 1975).
Plato’s “Side Suns” 39
[S5] and that through this unity as that which is good, also the mixture becomes so”5
(Phil. 65a1–5).
[S1] and [S2] form a conditional sentence. [S1] is the antecedent and [S2] the
consequent. The decisive question concerning [S1] seems to me to be the follow-
ing: How can we understand the “cannot” (μὴ […] δυνάμέθα)? Is it (a) a logical
impossibility, (b) a general human impossibility or (c) an impossibility of the
interlocutors Socrates and Protarchus?
Is it (a) a logical impossibility to hunt down the Good in a single form? Evi-
dently it is not. It is, for example, not a logical contradiction to say that the essence
of the Good is “the One itself ” (Aristot. Metaph. Ν 4. 1091b13–5)6.
Neither is it (b) a general human impossibility, for instance, in the sense of a
Pyrronic ἀκαταληψία (Diog. Laert. ix 61, 22). The Good is not by its own nature
incomprehensible (φύσει τὸ ὰγαθὸν ὰπερίληπτον) and our mind is not completely
closed concerning the essence of the Good7. Also in the Philebus, the platonic
Socrates defends neither a dogmatic nor a pyrrhonic skepticism [concerning the
knowledge of the Good]8.
The impossibility arises because (c) the power of the Good (ή τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ
δύναμις) has taken refuge from “us” (ἡμῖν) (Phil. 64e5)9 “in the nature of the beau-
tiful” (64e6). The impossibility is therefore an impossibility of the interlocutors.
Until now, it was “for us” (ήμῖν), that is, for Socrates and Protarchus, not possible
to hunt down the single Good in one single form. For the nous of a “great man”
(Charm. 169a2) – that is, a platonic dialectician or a philosopher king – it could be
possible to come “for a short time” (κατὰ βραχύ) (Leg. 875d3) at least “very close”
(ἐγγύτατα) to an understanding of this single form (Ep. VII 342d1)10.
The three characteristics of the Good on which Socrates and Protarchus agreed –
(a) the “most perfect” (τελεώτατον, Phil. 20d3), (b) the “sufficient” (ίκανόν, 20d4)
5 Translations were done by me (modelled sometimes on Schleiermacher’s translations)

if not otherwise indicated.
6 See Ross (ed.), 1924, 488, but Lafrance 2006, 260–3.
7 See Westernik 1959, 259: “Why has the dialogue no end? Because the rest can easily
be gathered from what has been said. Or because the Good is, by its own nature, in-
comprehensible (ὰπερίληπτον). Or because the extreme grades of the Good, whatever
is beyond animals or below them, have really been left out of account, as we already
pointed out in discussing the theme of the dialogue”.
8 See for a detailed argument Ferber 2007, 5–39, esp. 49–56, 154–9.
9 See Slezak 2004, 216, Heidelberg 1978, 150, Cairns et al. 2007, 192.
10 See Slezak 1997, 219, Migliori 2003, 142, Ferber 2007, 94–121.
40 Rafael Ferber
and (c) the “desirable to all” (πᾶσιν αίρετόν, 61a1; 20d8–9; 67a7–8) – are only for-
mal characteristics. They exclude pleasure and knowledge as candidates for the top
place. But these formal characteristics are neither sufficient to indicate the positive
content of what is “desirable to all”, nor give a ranking of pleasure and knowledge11.
Nevertheless, Socrates holds down to one single form of the Good when he tries
to know “what in man and in the universe is good by nature and what one should
divine (μαντευτέον) is its form (τίνα ἰδέαν αὐτὴν εἶναι)” (Phil. 64a2–4). In a similar
vein, in the Republic “every soul” (vi 505d11) already divines the essence of the Good
(ἀπομαντευομένη τι εἶναι, 505e2).
[S2] draws a conclusion from [S1]. If it is not possible to hunt down the Good in
one form, then let us secure it by the conjunction of three. Although [S2] does not
actually speak of three forms, it can be obviously understood as implying that the
three are forms. In fact, it has been interpreted that the conjunction of three forms
could secure the one form12. In other words: If it is not possible to define the Good
explicitly through one (higher) form or summum genus (μέγιστον γένος)13, then
we may add that it is possible implicitly through a conjunction of three forms or,
speaking with an expression from the Sophist, with an “interweaving of the forms”
(συμπλοκη τώνέίδών) (Soph. 259e5–6) or, more exactly, with an “interweaving of
three forms” (συμπλοκὴ τῶν έἰδών).
Nevertheless, Apelt has already argued that we don’t have to understand here
the expression “idea” or “form” in the technical sense, but that it can be under-
stood also in the colloquial sense of characteristic (Phil. 67a12; Theaet. 184d3;
11 See D. Davidson 1990, 398: “The original three “conditions” or criteria of the good
showed no more than that the good life must contain both mind and pleasure; they
made no pretense at proving one of the two elements superior to the other”. Davidson
criticizes the following remark of Demos 1939, 50: “In the Philebus Plato gives two sets
of grounds of the Good, each set consisting of three members. The Good, he says, is
that which is desired, the self-sufficient, and the complete. The second triad is of the
Good as beauty, measure, truth (20d, 60c, 61a). We will treat the first triad as basic,
adding measure from the second triad. The other two members of the second triad
are, as we hope to show, repetitions or variations of the other four”. Davidson writes in
the margin of his copy: “Are there really the same sort of grounds? One set are criteria
of good, other set are [unreadable]”. (Private library Ferber, quoted with the written
permission of Marcia Cavell.) I would say: One set are formal criteria; the other set is
substantive.
12 So argues Seel, esp. 192: “The Form of the Good cannot be conceived of as one single
Form, but as a combination of several forms. Therefore the Form of The Good cannot
be empty”.
13 See Krämer 1989, 251, Ferber 1989, esp. 97–111, 149–54.
Tim. 35a7)14, or, so to speak, of quality. But because in Phil. 64a2 “idea” or “form”
is used in its technical sense, we may also in 65a1 not exclude completely the
technical sense (15a4–b2). But on the other hand, here and now, we stand finally
only at the entrance of the Good (ἐπὶ μὲν τοῖς τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ νῦν ἢδη προθπύροις)
(64c1) and the domicile of “its quality” (τοῦ τοιόυτου) (64c2) or what the Good
is like. Therefore, the colloquial sense of characteristic also cannot be excluded.
But how can we combine the technical and the colloquial sense of “idea”?
We may join them together if we say, in the sense of the Seventh Letter, that we
try to capture the “fifth” (πέμπτον, 342e2), that is, the one idea or the essence
(τί έστι) [of the Good, 342a4], with three characteristics, “qualities” (ποῖα, 343b8–
c2) [of the Good] or aspects [of the Good] which intend “no less” (οὐχ ἧττον,
342e3) than to cover the “fifth” (πέμπτον) (342e2), that is, the essence (τί ἐστί)
[of the Good]15. As the light of the one sun is broken in three side suns, so the one
Good appears to “us” (Phil. 64e5) quasi in three qualities or aspects, namely, an
“aesthetic” one, beauty; a relational one, symmetry; and an ontological or, more
14 Apelt 1922, 152, esp. 109: “Es ist hier ebensowenig unmittelbar die Idee darunter zu
verstehen, wie bald darauf (67[a] bei τῆ τοῦ νικῶντος ίδέα”. Apelt translates ibid. ίδέα
with “Gedankenform”: “Künnen wir also das Gute nicht in einer Gedankenform er-
gründen, so müssen wir es in dreien zusammen erfassen”. See Taylor, 1936, 433: “We
may thus take measure or proportion (symmetria), beauty (kallos), and truth or reality
(aletheia) as three “forms” or “notes” found in the good and say that the goodness of
our “mixture” is due to the presence of this trinity in unity (65c)”. See Dies 1949, 89:
“Si donc nous ne pouvons saisir le bien, sous un seul caractère, saisissons-le sous trois,
beauté, proportion, vérité…” (my emphasis).
15 For the question of the authenticity or at least indirect authenticity of the Seventh Letter
see Burkert, 2000, Ciani 2002, 9–11, Knab 2006, 45–50, Ferber 2007, 95, and for an ex-
plicit argument on the subtle issue of Ep. VII 342e3, ibid., 54–5, 149 exp. 130, Gonzalez
1998, 255, comes very near to the point: “It is true that ‘Plato’ here claims only that the
four elements express a thing’s quality no less than its being but, as some commentators
have noted and as a later passage will confirm, this is an understatement. The weakness
inherent in language is that it expresses more how a thing is qualified than what it is”.
Runia Enumeration in the “Philebus” and other Platonic Writings, in Dillon et al. 2010,
109, makes again evident that the “Letter, if it is indeed by Plato’s own hand, would
have been written in the last phase of his life when he looks back at its most turbulent
episode. It would be roughly contemporaneous with the other dialogues [see the enu-
merations in Phil. 66a-c, Phaedr. 266d-e, Soph. 231d-e, Tim. 48c, Leg. 631b-c with the
enumeration in Ep. VII 342a-d] that we have studied in this paper”. See Burnet 1920,
206: “It would have been impossible to find anyone fifty years later who could handle
the language as he does”.
42 Rafael Ferber
exactly, ontic one, truth16. Socrates and Protarchus could, in distinction from the
future dialecticians or philosopher kings, hardly ever bear (Resp. 518c10) a direct
look at the one single sun.
[S3] articulates these three qualities of the Good, beauty, symmetry and truth.
The “Good” has in Frege’s terminology one reference, but three different senses
or three different “modes of presentation”. To use Frege’s analogy by replacing
“moon” with “sun”:
“Somebody observes the [Sun] through a telescope. I compare the [Sun] itself
to the reference; it is the object of the observation, mediated by the real image
projected by the object glass in the interior of the telescope, and by the retinal im-
age of the observer. The former I compare to the sense, the latter is like the idea or
experience. The optical image in the telescope is indeed one-sided and dependent
upon the standpoint of observation; but it is still objective, inasmuch as it can be
used by several observers. At any rate, it could be arranged for several to use it
simultaneously. But each one would have his own retinal image. On account of the
diverse shapes or the observers’ eyes, even a geometrical congruence could hardly
be achieved, and an actual coincidence would be out of the question. This analogy
might be developed still further…”17.
If it is not possible to define the form of the Good with an “interweaving of
three forms” (συμπλοκὴ τριῶν εἰδῶν), so at least it is possible to define it implicitly
with an “interweaving of three qualities” (συμπλοκὴ τριῶν ποιῶν) or three “modes
of presentation”. This “interweaving of three qualities” does not make a strict unity
of the three ποία, just as the “interweaving of forms” (Soph. 259e5–6) does not
make a strict unity of these forms (253d1–e3). Nevertheless, the “interweaving” of
three “modes of presentation” gives them a kind of weaker unity than the unity of
one form or ἕνας (Phil. 15a5–6) to be specified in [S4]. Let us elucidate now these
three “modes of presentation”: (a) beauty, (b) symmetry and (c) truth.
(a) Beauty: It evidently contains the “nature of the symmetrical” (Phil. 64e4–5).
Just as the “nature of the symmetrical” beauty exists for Plato not only in the eye
of the observer, but also in the world, “moderation” (μετριότης) and “proportion”
(συμμετρία, 64e6) “becomes for us everywhere beauty and virtue” (64e7). It is
not easy to see how the meanings of μετριότης and συμμετρία differ. But while
the meaning of μέτρίοτης accentuates more the “moral” aspect of the Good, the
meaning of συμμετρία accentuates more the “aesthetic” one. Both expressions
16 See Friedlander 1969, 542, esp. 73: “It seems that the number three is more important
than the exact designation of the three ideai. Also this inconsistency might have been
intended expressive as a warning that this trinity must not be frozen into dogma”.
17 Frege 1892, 25–50, Angelelli 1967, 143–62, Black 1960, 60. I quoted with small alterations.
point to a value. Also, in the Republic, the Good was of an “overwhelming beauty”
(509a6–7).
(b) Symmetry: It is decisive that both values – the “aesthetic” and the “moral”
one – contain “a certain inborn order” (κόσμος τις ἐγγενόμένος, Gorg. 506e2).
Order is an effect of the Good. So Socrates asks: “Is it not a certain inborn order,
which is built into everything, which makes every man and everything good?”
(506e2–3). Order makes evident that symmetry is also a quality of the Good. It is
therefore clear that order makes symmetry a quality of the Good.
(c) Truth: It is, since the Republic, related to ἐμμετρία (486d6–7), and of course
also ἐμμετρία, fit measure, points to a value. Further, we read in the Philebus: “…
but if in our soul by nature is a force, to love the truth and to do everything for it
(πάντα ἕνεκα τούτου πράττειν)” (58d4–5). “Truth” is here, like the truth which
the “true” philosophers (Resp. 475e3) in the Republic “love to look at” (475e4),
primarily used in the ontic sense of authenticity or in the sense of “the really real”
(τὸ ἀληθινὸν ὂντως ὂν, Soph. 240b3)18. Now every creature that has any knowledge
does everything for the sake of the Good (Phil. 20d7–10; Resp. 505d11–e1). If in
our soul by nature there is also a force to do everything for the sake of the truth,
that is, to go to all lengths for the sake of the truth19, then truth is also a good in the
sense of an ultimate end and has an intrinsic value. But the fugitive platonic Good
is in the Philebus, as opposed to the Republic, no more the “one σκοπός” or the one
(exclusive) “dominant end”20, “for the sake of which they [the future philosopher
kings and queens] have to do everything they do” (Resp. 519c3–4). For a dominant
end is per definitionem “at least lexically prior to all other aims and seeking to ad-
vance it always takes absolute precedence”21. For example, the philosopher kings
and queens have to renounce private property and a family. It seems to be also an
“inclusive end”22 insofar as it includes at least beauty, symmetry and truth, which
18 See Bury 1897, esp. Appendix F, 201–11, 203, Trendelenburg 1837, 15 esp. note 38: “…
res enim, nisi ipsis veritas et ratio inesset, hominem plane deci-perent. Coginitionis
veritas nihil est nisi rerum veritatis simulacrum”. The platonic correspondence theory
of truth (see Crat. 385b5–8; Soph. 263b3–7) is founded in an intuitionist theory of
truth, see Symp. 212a1–2. I have to see the counterpart before I am able to compare
my statements with it, see Krämer et al. 2001, 119.
19 I understand πάντα ἓνέκα τουτου πράττειν (Phil. 58d5) here in distinction to Resp.
505d11–c1, see Ferber 2007, esp. 27, like Irwin, 1977, 336 esp. 45, in the sense of “go
to all lengths”. Ibid., 336 esp. 4, quoted in Burnyeat 2006, 14, esp. 20.
20 Expression from Hardie 1967, 299.
21 Rawls 1971, 553.
22 Expression from Hardie 1967, 299.
44 Rafael Ferber
we can capture, and allows pleasure also its appropriate place (that is, the fifth in
the final ranking)23. Like truth (Phil. 58d4–5), beauty and symmetry have an intrin-
sic value and belong in an Aristotelian terminology to that “which is intrinsically
and for the sake of itself desirable (κατὰ αὑτὰ καὶ δί’ αιὐτὸ αἱρέτ[ά])” (Eth. Nic. a7.
1097a32). So the ultimate end in the Philebus as an inclusive end includes at least
the intrinsic values of beauty, symmetry and truth. Of course beauty, symmetry
and truth are not simpliciter the ultimate Good, for Aristotle eudaimonia, for Plato
the Form of the Good. But also for Plato the Good in the Philebus is said to be
“captured” not in only one, but in many ways insofar as we have not one, but three
ultimate goods or, more exactly, three ultimate “qualities” (ποῖα) of the ultimate
Good. And of course, the platonic Socrates does not say in the words of John Keats
in his Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all / Ye know
on earth, and all ye need to know”. Beauty is not truth, truth not beauty. Truth
and beauty are not identical. But they are related to each other insofar as they are,
like symmetry, “qualities” (ποία, Ep. VII 343b8–c2) or aspects of the Good and
therefore of the orderly. These intrinsic values go with the pure pleasures, that is,
pleasures not intermingled with pain, like the aesthetic pleasure to see beautiful
colours and shapes (Phil. 51b3) and the pleasure of true knowledge (51e7–52a1).
This pleasure is related to the “aesthetic” one in that knowledge of the truth may
give pleasure, which is comparable to the “aesthetic” one.
[S4] unifies these aspects of the Good in a certain way and comes to the fol-
lowing conclusion: “[If we take] this [trinity] as if it would be a unity (τουτο οίον
έν), then we may by right postulate [this unity] as the cause of that which is in the
mixture”. The trinity is characterized in a certain sense as unity (velut unum)24 and
postulated as the cause of that which is in the mixture. Socrates defends neither
an equivocal semantic pluralism or, to be more precise, trialism, nor a univocal
semantic monism, but a postulated univocal monism and a factual pluralism or
23 See Dillon et al. 2007, 250–5.

24 I read with the majority τοῦτο οἶον ἓν and not τοῦτο οἷον like Sayre 1983, 171, esp. 81,
see contra Sayre, Harte 1999, 400–1, see Ficino: “Quod si bonum ipsum una idea con-
sequi non licet, saltem una cum tribus, pulchritudine, commensuratione, veritate com-
prehendentes, di-camus id universum velut unum causarum eorum quae in mixtione
sit, esse, et propter hoc utputa quod bonum sit, mixtionem fieri talem” (Bipontina, 317.
My emphasis). In the same way also Frede 1993: “Well, then, if we cannot capture the
good in one form, we will have to take hold of it in a conjunction of three: beauty, pro-
portion, and truth. Let us affirm that these should by right be treated as a unity and be
held responsible for what is in the mixture, for its goodness is what makes the mixture
itself a good one” (my emphasis).
trialism. We can call it a quasi-monism, which is also the cause of that which is in
the mixture. It is the cause of the right mixture of pleasure and knowledge. This
mixture has not only to obey the formal criteria of the Good (supra, p. 56), but
also to contain the substantive criteria “beauty, symmetry and truth”. Since order
is a common trait in these three aspects, it must be an ordered mixture.
[S5] adds “that through this unity as that which is good, also the mixture be-
comes so”. The τοῦτο οἷον ὄν is nevertheless the ἀγαθὸν or the quasi-unity is the
real Good, if not by nature (φύσει), so at least “for us” (ἡμῖν). The fictitious or only
semantic unity of the three qualities of the Good becomes “for us” nevertheless
a reality. In Frege’s terminology: The sense of the expression “unity” becomes for
us its real reference25. If it becomes for us a real reference, then it also becomes
a causal force. Indeed, the Good is also the cause of the quality of the mixture
in the good life. This means that it not only satisfies the substantive criteria of
beauty, symmetry and truth, but also, as Plato’s Socrates repeats, becomes “per-
fect” (τέλεον, Phil. 61a1), “sufficient” (ίκανόν, 66b2) and “desirable for all” (πᾶσίν
αἱρετόν, 61a1).
Plato’s Socrates defends a postulated quasi-monism of the Good and a factual
pluralism. If we do everything for the sake of the Good (Gorg. 468b6–8; Resp.
505d11–e1; Phil. 20d8–9), then we desire the one single Good. But most of us can’t
reach it and even the embodied nous of the dialecticians or philosopher kings and
queens can only come very close (ἐγγύτατα) to understanding it (Ep. VII 342d1)26.
In fact, if we do everything for the Good, then we do everything for the “quali-
ties” (ποῖα) of the one single good, which are approachable also “for us” (ἡμῖν).
The one ultimate good appears to us broken into three ultimate goods. Or to say
it in scholastic terminology: The bonum simpliciter appears to us broken in three
bona secundum quid or three ultimate ends in a certain respect. To speak again
metaphorically: The one sun shows us three side suns. But this fictitious or quasi-
monism we can nevertheless unite with a factual pluralism.
Only after this quasi-monism does the locus nobilissimus de boni summi gradi-
bus follow27, although – from a logical point of view – it cannot be easily deduced
from the three criteria. Strictly speaking, it is the locus nobilissimus of the grades
of goodness of men’s “possession” (κτῆμα, Phil. 66a5)28: (a) “The measure (μέτρον)
and the measured (μέτριον) and the right moment (καίριον) and whatever else the
25 Frege 1892, 59: “The indirect reference of a word is accordingly its customary sense”,
see Ferber 2008, 140.
26 See for an explicit argument Ferber 2007, 106–20.
27 Stallbaum quoted in Bury 1892, 169.
28 This point has been made by Frede 1997, 364.
46 Rafael Ferber
eternal nature has chosen to be similar (τήν ἀίδιον ᾑρῆσθαί φύσίν)” (66a6–8)29.
(b) “The well-proportioned (σύμμετρον), the beautiful (τὸ καλόν), the perfect (τὸ
τέλεον), the sufficient (ἱκανόν) and all that belong to this gender” (ibid.). (c) The
third “as I divine reason and insight” (66b5–6). (d) The fourth the inexact “sci-
ences and arts and the right opinions” (66b9). (e) The fifth “the pleasures, which
we have determined as painless and have called pure pleasures of the soul alone,
which follow the perceptions” (66c4–6).
I will not on this occasion take up once again the discussion concerning this
locus nobilissimus. (The research history on this locus nobilissimus could alone
fill the space of an article30.) I will only summarize what seems clear and unclear
in the locus. It seems clear that there is no one-to-one correspondence of this
ranking to the fourfold division of “everything that actually exists now in the
universe” (Phil. 23c4)31, although the first grade seems to correspond to πέρας,
the second grade to the mixture of πέρας and ἂπέίρον, and the third grade to the
cause (αἰτία) of this mixture32. But it is, first, at least prima facie not clear how
this ranking is related to the ranking of external, bodily and psychic goods in the
Philebus (48d4–49 A 2; Leg. 631b3–d6; Aristot. Eth. Nic. 1098b12–8). It is, second,
not clear what the onto-logical status is of the two first goods, especially because
the first class (a) (above) seems not to point to platonic ideas, as the expression
the “appropriate” (καίριον) indicates. It is, third, not clear why the formal criteria
of the ranking, the “perfect” (τέλεον) and the “sufficient” (ίκανόν), appear again
in the ranking itself. It is, fourth, not clear why the substantive criterion of beauty
of the ranking appears again in the ranking, but the criterion of truth does not.
It is, fifth, finally not clear where the difference lies between the first and the sec-
ond class, although the second class seems to refer to things that have measure
in some ways and are therefore well proportioned. But both classes correspond
to the “measured” (μέτριον) of the Statesman, which is circumscribed also as the
“graceful (πρέπον), the opportunity (τὸν καίριον) and the right” (το δέον) and
“all that is in the middle of two extreme ends” (Pol. 284e6–8). I have called it a
non-mathematical μεταξύ between the transcendent idea of the Good and the
29 Conjecture Bury 1892, 13.

30 See the doxography, ibid., 169–78, contra Trendelenburg, for whom the 1st class contains
“ipsius boni idea” and “the cognate ideas”, Diès 1927, 385–97, Gadamer 1985, 152–3,
Hackforth 1945, 137–9, Gosling 1975, 224–5, Migliori, 1993, 315–23, Frede, Philebos
1997, 362–9, Harte 2006, 615–27. For a short overview on the status quaestionis, see Erler
2007, 258 and Vogt 2007, 250–5, esp. 254.
31 Transl. Frede 1993.
32 See Gadamer 1985, 152.
phenomena33. But then the two top classes of the Philebus would not be on the
top but, like πέρας and απέίρον, “derived principles”34. Socrates seems to hold the
circumscription of the two first classes rather vaguely, because the aim seemed
to him to have been attained already by removing reason and pleasure from the
top place (Resp. 505b5–c11).
If the Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman has left out the περὶ αὐτὸ τἀκριβὲς
ἀπόδειξις (Pol. 284d2)35, it is at least plausible to suppose that the platonic So-
crates also left out the ἀπόδειξις of the one single form of the Good. The phrase
of Protarchus, “There is still a little left to say (σμικρὸν ἒτι τὸ λοιπόν), Socrates”
(Phil. 67b11), would then have to be understood, like the Socratic “Something
small” (σμίκρ’ ἂττα, 20c8), in the sense of “simple irony”: “A lot is still left to say”.
As mentioned above, the passage περὶ αὐτὸ τἀκρίβές ἀπόδειξίς (Pol. 284d1–2) and
also the passage σμικρὸν ἒτί τὸ λοιπόν would then each be a “passage of omission”
(Aussparungsstelle)36. The quasi-unity or trinity of “beauty, symmetry and truth”
is only the entrance to the Good and the domicile of “its quality” (Phil. 64C1–2)
or that which is like it. In other words, at the end of the dialogue we have not yet
arrived at that which is dear to us in the top place (πρῶτον φίλον, Lys. 219d1) or
the Good itself. We have only arrived at that which is dear to us, so to speak, in
the second place (δεύτερον φίλον). We don’t know what the Good is, but only
where it can be found, namely, in beauty, symmetry and truth. At least Socrates
is very clear about the fact that at the end of the Philebus we have not yet finished
the search for the Good: “And divining (ὑποπτεύων) that there are many other
things (ἂλλα πολλά) [than pleasure and knowledge], I said, that if something
would show up which is better than both, I would fight for the second prize for
reason, and pleasure should lose the second prize” (Phil. 66e7–10).
33 See Ferber 1995, in Rowe 1995, 68, Ostenfeld 1998, 55.

34 See De Vogel 1986: “And not even the peras and the apeiron are to be taken as the
ultimate principles in that dialogue. Here Krämer rightly remarks that in the Philebus
peras and apeiron are derived principles”.
35 See Ferber 1995, 63–75, but contra Brisson et al. 2003, 241, esp. 209.
36 See Migliori 1993, 325, contra Szlezak, 209, esp. 35: “Dass eine sachlich an sich gebotene
Thematisierung der Idee des Guten mit Bedacht aus der Diskussion herausgehalten
wird, darin wird man Migliori zweifellos zustimmen müssen […]. Doch die Gestal-
tung des Schlusses entspricht keineswegs der bekannten literarischen Technik Platons
an den Aussparungsstellen. Der Hinweis auf die Notwendigkeit der Behandlung des
höchsten Prinzips steht nur dem Gesprächsführer zu, im Munde des Protarchos wäre
er nicht überzeugend”.
48 Rafael Ferber
But since not Socrates but Protarchos is uttering σμικρὸν ἒτι τὸ λοιπόν, we could
say instead of “passage of omission”, in the words of Friedlander, that the phrase
σμικρὸν ἒτι τὸ λοιπόν is one of the “many hints of the dialogue” which open to
us “a window to other things beyond its main topic [the ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθόν]”37.
These things are not necessarily “the value[s] of the rest of the pleasures”38 or
“trivial problems”39. They could be the “many other things” (ἂλλα πολλά, Phil.
66e7) Socrates mentions which could unveil further the entrance to the house of
the Good. Again speaking metaphorically, for Protarchus and Plato’s Socrates, the
Sun itself is not something they see, but can only glimpse at between or behind
the side suns.
II
Nevertheless, despite the many cautionary hints of Plato’s Socrates (Phil. 66b5–6),
the above quoted hierarchy of the Good did not convince everyone, if anyone.
Richard Robinson (1902–1996), for example, writes in his book An Atheist’s Values:
“In the Philebus he [Plato] seems to be preparing himself to give the answer [on
the question “What is the good?”], and does at the end say something that looks as
if it might be meant to be the answer; but it is completely unsatisfactory. The good,
we seem to hold, is in the first place measure, secondly symmetry, thirdly mind,
fourthly knowledge, and fifthly pure pleasure. I have not yet heard of anyone who
felt enlightened by this. No subsequent writer has redeemed the master’s failure.
The suspicion arises that the question is unanswerable because wrongly put”40.
In fact, no philosopher after Plato seems to have adopted this hierarchy or to have
redeemed Plato’s failure. The mistake lies in using “the word “the” so as to imply that
there is only one thing of a certain kind when in fact there are many”41. Furthermore,
Plato closes his eyes to the unavoidable conflict between different goods and the
potential ill effects of the one single Good or, as we may call it, the principle of the
potential double effect of the one single Good: “The good is conceived as being a
good that never conflicts with any other good and never has any kind of ill effect.
But there cannot be such a good”42.
37 From the report of Friedlander to Gadamers Habilitationsschrift: Gadamer 1931 quoted

by Grondin 1997, 162. I took the liberty of making a free translation.
38 Bury 1897, 163.
39 Dillon et al. 2010, 335.
40 Robinson 1964, 17.
41 Ibid., 18.
42 Ibid.
But let’s nevertheless assume that the answer is clear43. We have a further prob-
lem, which to my knowledge has been made explicit only by Rawls (1921–2002)
in his Political Liberalism (1993). Of course, Rawls’ perspective is in the broadest
sense political; he is not deciding the Philebus issue de boni summi gradibus. He
is, rather, saying that that issue is not relevant for, and ought to be excluded from,
considerations of justice. But he makes a footnote on any metaphysical theory de
summo bono and de boni summi gradibus. The footnote is especially important if
the Socratic principle of “semantic monism” gets transformed into a metaphysical
and political conception of the Good, as was the case with Plato (Resp. 519c2–4;
Pol. 284d1–e8)44. The footnote becomes even more important if we read the de-
termination of the good life for every individual in the Philebus as “a preface” to
the “ideal social life described in the Laws”45. Also, the happy life in the Laws is a
well-mixed life of pleasure and reason (Leg. 636d4–e3; 653b1–c3; 658e6–659c7;
689a1–9; 696c8–10; 700d2–701a1)46: “State and individual and every living being
are on the same footing here” (636e1–2, transl. Saunders, cit.).
Let’s now assume that there is this one Good and a shared understanding of
this Good and its degrees. Together with Rawls, let’s call this a “comprehensive
view” of the Good. A “comprehensive view”, Rawls tells us, “includes conceptions
of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals
of friendship and of familial and associational relationships”47. Rawls distinguishes
between religious and philosophical, reasonable and unreasonable “comprehen-
sive views”. Plato’s view of the Good was the first philosophical “comprehensive
view”. Since Plato’s Republic and Laws do not yet know the human rights of free-
dom of opinion and conscience, Plato’s philosophical view seems to be for us
rather the first (partially) unreasonable philosophical “comprehensive view”. But
such a “comprehensive view”, reasonable or not, seems to survive in the change
of generations only by the oppressive use of state power: “… a continuing shared
43 See Dies 1927, esp 385: “Au surplus, le raisonnement de Platon est, en son ensemble,
si clair, et sa thèse est si simple, qu’il suffira de l’analyser fidelement pour que le lecteur
en definisse de lui-meme la portee”.
44 See Resp. 519c2–4, Ferber 1989, 130–1, to Pol. 284d1–e8, Id., 1995.
45 So Frede 1892, 67, in Dillon et al. 2010, 16: “Thus, there is an analogy between the result
of the Philebus and the chief contention of the Laws. Plato makes provisions there for
the second best form of the state as the best constitution attainable for human beings.
In the Philebus, humanly attainable happiness is not a god-like state of permanent
(pleasure and painless) equilibrium”.
46 See the pertinent remarks of Stalley 2010, 234–6.
47 Rawls 1996, 13.
50 Rafael Ferber
understanding on one comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine

can be maintained only by the oppressive use of state power”48. Rawls calls this
“the fact of oppression”49. One testimony among others for this thesis is Plato’s
Laws. In the Laws, the third rank of the final ranking in the Philebus – “reason
and insight” (Phil. 66b5–6) – is enforced on his citizens “by the oppressive use of
state power”. The law is “reasons distribution” (τοῦ voῦ διανομή, Leg. IV 714a2)
or – so to say – petrified reason: “… we should run our public and our private life,
our homes and our cities, in obedience to what little spark of immortality lies in
us, and dignify these edicts of reason with the name of “law” (τοῦ voῦ διανομήν
ἐπονομάζοντας νόμον)” (Leg. 713e8–714a2). Although the legislator uses prefaces
which appeal to reason also by argument (718a6–723d4; 726a1–734c2), “reasons
distribution” (τοῦ voῦ διανομή) contains coercive prescriptions (773c6; e4) and
stipulates penalties (789e4; 790a1–2)50. So the Athenian says, for example, con-
cerning the Socratic opinions that the just is happy and the unjust unhappy (Gorg.
470c1–471d9; Resp. 618e4–619b1):
“If I were a lawgiver, then I should try to compel (ἀναγκάζειν) the authors and
every inhabitant of the state to take this line; and if anybody in the land said that
there are men who live a pleasant life in spite of being scoundrels, or that while this
or that is useful and profitable, something else is more just, then I should impose
pretty nearly the extreme penalty (ζημίαν τε ὀλίγου μεγίστην)” (Leg. II 662b4–8)51.
(The “extreme penalty” that is, the death penalty is reserved for the “dissembling
atheist” who “deserves to die for his sins not just once or twice but many times,
whereas the other kind needs simply admonition combined with incarceration”
(Leg. 908e2–3)52. Those who deny only the Socratic opinions that the gods exist and
are concerned about the world and our affairs (Pol. 27d3–4; 35d6–8; 41d2) have to
be imprisoned “as prescribed by law in the prison in the center of the country; no
free man is to visit him at any time, and slaves must hand him his ration of food
fixed by the Guardians of the Laws” (Leg. 909b7–c4).)
To maintain the same conception of the happy life as the well-mixed life of
pleasure and reason, the “noocracy” of the second best state will evidently need
48 Ibid., 37. See Ibid., 39: “With unreasonable doctrines, and with religions that empha-
size the idea of constitutional authority, we may think the text correct; and we may
mistakenly think there are exceptions for other comprehensive views. The point of the
text is: there are no exceptions”.
49 Ibid.
50 See now the excellent book of Laks 2005, esp. 71–7.
51 Transl. Saunders.
52 Idem.
the “oppressive use of state power” at the discretion of the Guardians of the Law,
that is, the members of the “nocturnal council” (Leg. 962c9–10; 961a1–c1). In
comparison, the elder platonic academy was neither a Kallipolis (Resp. 527c2) nor
“a second best voyage” (Pol. 300c2; Leg. 874e7–875d6) instead of the Kallipolis,
but shows us healthy differences of opinion concerning even the theory of ideas
and principles (Aristotle, Metaph. Μ 6. 1080b25–30)53.
This lack of agreement is for us not necessarily a bad thing. For example, Isaiah
Berlin (1909–1997) writes: “To assume that all values can be graded on one scale
[uni summi boni gradus], so that it is a mere matter of inspection to determine
the highest, seems to me to falsify our knowledge that men are free agents”54. A
reasonable pluralism concerning the Good is not, as Rawls following Berlin writes,
“an unfortunate condition of human life”55. A reasonable pluralism which we find
de facto in modern democracies is also de iure a good, in comparison to which a
reasonable monism would be de facto and de iure an evil. This is especially true
of political values such as maximal freedom and maximal equality, whose incom-
mensurability seems evident.
But is the thesis of substantive incommensurability also true of the ultimate
end? If this is the case, then it would be logically possible that Socrates and Pro-
tarchus would defend another good, knowledge versus pleasure. But because
there is no common currency, it would not be possible to say which of the two
is better. Indeed, Aristotle had already denied that all goods are commensurable
(συμβλητά, Pol. 1283a3–10; Eth. Nic. A9. 1164b2–6)56. For instance, “money and
knowledge have no common measure” (Eth. Eud. 1243b22). In the same vein, we
could then say: knowledge and pleasure have no common measure57.
The Socratic reply could be that the thesis of substantive incommensurability
is only true for such relatively briefly stateable moral principles, as we need them
in political contexts such as maximal freedom and maximal equality. Concerning
the ultimate end of an individual, such incommensurability could be overcome in
a temporally unlimited dialogue58. But even if nobody can exclude that at the end
53 See Krämer 1983, 1–174, Dillon 2003, Brisson et al. 2006, esp. 249–54.
54 Berlin 2002, 217.
55 Rawls 1996, 37.
56 Burnyeat 1980, in Oksenberg 1980, 91 draws attention to this point.
57 See Jowett 1892, 138, quoted in Bury 1897, 202: “The comparison of pleasure and
knowledge is really a comparison of two elements which have no common measure …”.
58 So Penner et al. 2005, 293.
52 Rafael Ferber
of the day we get a consensus on the ultimate end (summum bonum sive Deus)59,
an unlimited dialogue is not possible for mortals. Therefore, for human beings,
the end result will be empirically rather a pluralism of incommensurable ultimate
substantive ends. Or we could say with the commentator of Aquinas, Cajetan
(1468–1534), “…a unity in disorder which constitutes the City of Babylon, not
the order in love of Jerusalem”60. But is “a unity of disorder which constitutes the
city of Babylon” really the last word on the issue? Do we have to decide between
“the order in love of Jerusalem” and “a unity of disorder which constitutes the
city of Babylon”?
If the Good is not a platonic idea, “which thinking is determined to see [that is
to understand]” (Tim. 52a4), then the Good could nevertheless still be an idea in
the Kantian sense (Critique of Pure Reason, A327/B384), which is not given to us
to know, but only to search for. Such an idea has no objective reality and admits
not a schematic but only a symbolic hypotyposis (Critique of Pure Judgment, § 59,
A255). The sun would not be the real offspring (ἒγκονος) of the Good, but only
a symbolic hypotyposis of an ideal of reason. It would symbolize the complete
teleological explainability of the world (whereas the “side suns” would symbolize
only fragments of its teleological explainability).
But this has a consequence: The Socratic principle of “real reference”, after
which we pursue only the real, but not the apparent, good (Resp. 505d5–9)61 is to
be combined with the Socratic insight that we, or at least the majority of us, like
Socrates, do not know the real Good (505d6–8) or ultimate end62. Knowledge
would be for Plato in the final analysis not opinion and also not right opinion
with justification, but an immediate vision, that is, an immediate understanding
(νόησις) of the Good63. Even Socrates knows at the end of the the Philebus only
“what one should divine (μαντευτέον) is the form (τίνα ἰδέαν αὐτήν εἷναι) [of
59 Concerning the historical question of the identification of the platonic good with God
see Ferber 1989, esp. 130.
60 Cajetan, 1568, 1a2ae, q. 1, art. 5: see Weber 1919, 27: “The impossibility of “scientific”
advocacy of practical standpoints – except in the case of a discussion of the means to
a given, presupposed end – is rooted in reasons which lie far deeper. Such advocacy is
meaningless in principle, because the different value systems of the world stand in an
irresolvable conflict with one another”.
61 I take the expression “principle of real reference” from Penner et al. 2005, 205–10.
62 See also Penner 2007, 17: “Hence in general, people do not know what it is that they
are referring to”.
63 See for an explicit argument Ferber 2007, 102–6, where I correct an error of Ferber
1989, 101.
the Good]” (64a2–4). But even if the platonic dialecticians or the members of the
nocturnal “council” (Leg. 961a1–c1) had captured the fugitive Good and could
“stand” the view of it (Resp. 518c10), could they communicate this shared un-
derstanding over the generations without the oppressive use of state power? And
would such an oppressed shared understanding still be understanding (νόησις)?
To be precise: After the Socratic principle of the epistemological priority of
definitional knowledge, we would not be able to capture the human good without
having first captured the essence of the Good. But how should we know “what
in fact is the Good (ὃτι ποτ’ ἐστὶν ἀγαθόν)” (Phil. 13e5–6) without starting from
some human good, knowledge or pleasure? This circle is unavoidable. It hangs
together with the fact that as philosophers we are situated “between wisdom
and ignorance” (Symp. 204b4–5). So also our knowledge of the Good is situated
between wisdom and ignorance. But as the Philebus shows, Socrates and his in-
terlocutor Protarchus do not have only incommensurable ideas of the Good, as
Socrates and the silent Philebus may have.
Protarchus is not closing as Max Mueller has closed his poem The side suns
(Die Nebensonnen): “In the dark I will feel better” (“Im Dunkeln wird mir woehler
sein”). Perhaps Philebus could have agreed with this, after he has uttered his unex-
amined (false) opinion and prophecy on the Good: “In my opinion [Aphrodite’s]
pleasure wins and always will win, come what may” (Phil. 12a7). Protarchus and
Socrates can nevertheless talk and argue with each other and understand each
other’s viewpoint and find a temporally limited agreement in the relative order of
human goods, such as pleasure and knowledge, even if they can’t look back like the
philosopher king or “royal man with insight” (Pol. 294a8) on the kingly knowledge
of the absolute Good, “through which only the just and what else makes use of it
becomes useful and benign” (Resp. 505a3–4). They share, despite their definitional
ignorance, thanks to their common language, a common understanding and a
common world against which the relativistic thesis of substantive incommen-
surability of pleasure and knowledge only makes sense. They share especially a
common (formal) understanding of what they are searching for, namely, (a) the
“most perfect” (τελεώτατον, Phil. 20d3), (b) the “sufficient” (ίκανόν, 20d4) and
(c) the “desirable to all” (πᾶσιν αίρετόν, 61a1; 20d8–9; 67a7–8).
In fact, despite his definitional ignorance, Socrates arrives also at a shared
substantive understanding with Protarchus, the “son of Kallias” (Phil. 19b5), the
“son of that man” (36d6–7) – perhaps an allusion to Kallias, son of Hipponikos,
the admirer (Pol. 20a5) and host of the sophist Protagoras (Prot. 310a7–311a1)64
64 See Apelt 1922, 137, Frede, 2000, in Gill et al. 1996, 221.
54 Rafael Ferber
and listener to his relativistic account of the human good. Against such a relativ-
istic account of the good as something “multifaceted and variable (ποικίλον […]
καὶ παντοδαπόν)” (Prot. 334b6), Socrates arrives through discussion at a shared
substantive and positive understanding on a presumed objective hierarchy of the
human goods65 when he gives the “gold medal” to the orderly mixed life of pleas-
ure and reason, the “silver medal” to reason and the “bronze medal” to pleasure as
far it is pure66. The mixed pleasures, like the pleasure of food, drink and sex, are of
course necessary for the survival of the individual and the species. Nevertheless,
despite the opinion of the majority (Phil. 67b1–2), they get no medal because
they have, in distinction to beauty, symmetry and truth, only an instrumental
but not an intrinsic value. On the other hand, Socrates divines that there are still
better things than the “gold medal”, namely, “the absolute Good (το παντάπασίν
ὰγαθόν)” (Phil. 61a2) or that “what in man and in the universe is by nature good”
(64a2), or, so to speak, the form of the Good67. Plato’s first interpreter, Aristotle,
says that the essence of th[is] Good is “the One itself (αὐτὸ τὸ ἓν)” (Aristot. Met-
aph. Ν 4. 1091b13–5). But despite what has been said by Aristotle, in the possibly
last written and published word of Plato on the Good, the Philebus68, the sun itself,
the Good or “the One itself ”, is only visible in the “quasi-unity” (οἷον ἓν) of the
three side suns of beauty, symmetry and truth.
A modern Italian victim of the above-mentioned “fact of oppression” (supra,
69), Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), writing to his sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht,
has formulated this achievement of a dialogue of coming to an agreement in the
middle of ignorance on the ultimate issues in a more general way. He wrote not
like Plato from the viewpoint of an imaginary “cave” or so with harmless ficti-
tious inhabitants to convert from their hedonism like Philebus and Protarchus.
He wrote from a real and probably rather dark prison in a region – where Plato
during his first visit to Sicily (Ep. VII 324a5) and “Archytas and his Tarentine
friends” (338d7–d1) may have left his footprints too – (in Turi near Bari) in the
following way: “When the two of us write to each other, don’t we often tend to
65 See Ferber, 2010, in Renaud et al. 2010, 211–44, esp. 222–9.

66 See already Bury 1897, 173.
67 See Jaeger 1948, 159, esp. 1: “Presumably it was Plato who first took the notion of in-
ner divination (manteuesthai), which the poets were already using in the sense of the
presentiment of external events, and stamped it with the philosophical meaning of a
divination not of the future but of deep and hidden attributes”.
68 See Thesleff 1982, 198–9: “The late date and the authenticity of the Philebus have not
been seriously questioned since the beginning of this century. […] the dialogue almost
certainly takes account of doctrines of Eudoxos of Knidos”.
get irritated (scopriamo continuamente motivi di attrito), [that is, don’t we write
“with a lot of friction” (μετὰ τρίβῆς πάσης, Ep. VII 344b2–3)]? Yet, in the end, we
manage to settle many of our differences”69.
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Christos Y. Panayides
University of Nicosia
Aristotle and Darwin on Living

Things and Teleology
1.
In Physics (Phys.) II 3.194b23–195a3 [Either Phys. or Phys, throughout the paper],
Aristotle presents his doctrine of the four ‘causes’ (aitia). Very briefly, in this well-
known stretch of text [Why do we need a coma here/Delete?] he acknowledges
the existence of four different kinds of causes:
The efficient cause, where this is identified with the thing(s) from which an ac-
tion originates. To give one example, the efficient cause of a child is its father, i.e.,
the male adult human being who provided the agency that triggered the relevant
developmental process.1
The material cause, or ‘that out of which as a constituent a thing comes to be’
(Phys. 194b24); e.g., the material cause of a statue is the bronze out of which it
is made.
The formal cause, where this is identified with the essence or the definition of
a thing. Let us suppose that a man sets out to build a house. The formal cause
of the builder’s actions is the essence or the definition of house he has in mind.
The final cause, where this is the ‘end’ (telos) or the thing ‘for the sake of which’
(to hou heneka) something happens or comes to be (Phys. 194b32–33). For in-
stance, the final cause of the builder’s actions is the house itself, i.e., the final
outcome of his efforts.2 [Shouldn’t these (four causes) be indented, as in the
original version?]
It is routinely assumed that the textual evidence from Phys. II 3, as well as from
numerous other places in the corpus, warrants the claim that final causality or
teleology is a central component of Aristotle’s philosophy.
There is also an interpretative thesis, espoused by many commentators working
on Aristotle’s zoological works, according to which the Stagirite supposes that: (a)
there are goals or ends in nature, and (b) most of the things that happen in the
1 For further discussion of the example used here, see Henry 2009, esp. 368–369.
2 A more detailed treatment of Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes may be found in
Matthen 2009, 335–338. See also Charlton 1970, 98–104 and Henry 2009, 379.
60 Christos Y. Panayides
realm of living things can only be explained by reference to these ends.3 In other
words, this thesis takes it that what has come to be known as Aristotle’s ‘biology’
is essentially governed by teleology.4 What is also quite interesting to note, is that
some modern scholars have argued that teleology pervades the work of another
great biologist, namely, that of Charles Darwin. To be more specific, there are
arguments made for the case that Darwin was not a fervent anti-teleologist, as
many contemporary scientists assume5, and that his evolutionary theory clearly
encompasses a certain form of teleological explanation.6
In what follows, I propose to do three things. First, I present a brief analysis of
the thesis that final causality is a key feature of Aristotle’s biology. Second, I review
an argument in support of the claim that Darwin’s version of evolutionary theory
employs a teleological explanation. Finally, I proceed to make some concluding
remarks on Aristotle’s and Darwin’s views concerning teleology and the realm of
living things.
2.
It is uncontested that Aristotle does indeed assign final causality a role within the
domain of nature, i.e., the domain that encompasses ‘animals […], plants, and
simple bodies’ (Phys. 192b8–12). And as just indicated, many interpreters assume
that the Stagirite’s view is that most of what happens in the course of nature can-
not be explained without reference to final causes. The finer details regarding the
construal of this position, however, are the object of an on-going debate.7 The
3 The interpretative position just sketched out, i.e. (a) and (b), is accepted by a number
of scholars; see, e.g., Cooper 1987, Gotthelf 1987, Lennox 2009 and Matthen 2009. Yet,
two things need to be noted here. First, there are differences in the way this general
thesis is construed by its various proponents. Compare, for instance, Gotthelf 1987,
e.g., 212 with Matthen 2009, 338–340. And second, this thesis has had its fair share of
detractors; see, e.g., Sorabji 1980 and Nussbaum 1978.
4 For a concise discussion of Aristotle’s biological/zoological works, i.e., Parts of Animals,
Generation of Animals and History of Animals, see Lennox 2006. Although the con-
cept of biology does not really appear before the seventeenth century, it is recognized
that in these works Aristotle breaks new ground; he gives a theoretical defense of the
proper method for biological investigation, and he provides the first systematic and
comprehensive study of animals.
5 See, e.g., Ghiselin 1994 and Mayr 1982, e.g., 528–531. See also the references in Gotthelf
1999, 29–30, fn. 42.
6 Lennox 1993, 1994 and Gotthelf 1999.
7 See fn. 3.
Aristotle and Darwin on Living Things and Teleology 61
modest aim of this part of the paper is to present a fairly rudimentary and, I hope,
sufficiently neutral reconstruction of this thesis. Due to space limitations, we will
not have the opportunity to place the ensuing interpretation within the context
of the current debate, or to defend it against its actual or potential detractors.8
Aristotle openly argues for teleology within the realm of living things in at least
two places: Phys. II 8 and Parts of Animals(PA) I 1. It is important to recognize
that in these and other related texts, he sets out his views in contrast to those
of his Pre-Socratic forerunners. To appreciate the significance of this point, we
may begin with an analysis of Phys. II 8. 198b10–32. In this passage Aristotle
reports that the Pre-Socratics attempted to explain natural phenomena solely by
means of material causes, and in particular by means of material necessity (Ibid,
198b12–14).9 He then proceeds to discuss an example. We are told that Empedo-
cles argues that the various parts produced in the course of an animal’s formation
are produced exclusively by material necessity. Specifically, Aristotle reports that
his predecessor contends that: the natures of the materials involved are such that
of necessity sharp teeth, which happen to be suitable for biting, come to be in the
front of (let us say) a tiger’s mouth; and, due to other material necessities flat teeth,
which happen to be suitable for chewing food, come to be in the back of the animal’s
mouth (Ibid, 198b23–27). Finally, and quite significantly, Aristotle rounds off his
description of the Empedoclean position with this: ‘So when all turned out just
as if they had come to be for something (ei heneka tou), then the things, suitably
constituted as an automatic outcome, survived; when not, they died, and die, as
Empedocles says of the man-headed calves’ (Ibid, 198b29–32).
[New paragraph] Aristotle explicitly states that the materialist or mechanistic
explanation of natural phenomena is unsatisfactory (Ibid, 198b32–34). In Phys. II
8. 198b34–199a8 he explains why this is so. He asserts that in nature things ‘come
to be as they do always or for the most part’ (Ibid, 198b34–36). Apparently, what
he is trying to state here is something along the following lines. We can see that in
the course of an animal’s formation, the parts produced serve the creature’s best
interests or its good. For instance, this tiger’s front teeth came up sharp; and, the
sharpness of these teeth facilitates tearing food off, which is something the animal
needs to do to survive and flourish. Furthermore, it is an empirically confirmed
8 The interpretation that follows is largely based on elements from Cooper 1987, Gotthelf
1987, Lennox 2009 and Matthen 2009.
9 Aristotle does acknowledge the exception of Anaxagoras who attempted to provide
a teleological explanation of the coming to be of the universe. Like Plato, however,
he deems Anaxagoras’ efforts to be unsatisfactory; see, e.g., Metaphysics I 4. 985a18ff,
and I 7. 988b9ff.
fact that in the course of animal generation in general, the parts produced are
regularly, i.e., always or for the most part, such that they promote the welfare of
the organisms in question. As we have just seen, the materialists maintain that
everything that takes place in nature is the outcome of material necessity. They
also suppose that it is by mere coincidence that these occurrences promote some
good. To return to Aristotle’s example, their claim is that it is only a matter of lucky
coincidence that the outcome of material necessity, i.e., sharp teeth in the front of
the tiger’s mouth, actually promotes the creature’s welfare (Ibid, 198b16–32). If an
outcome in the realm of living things is in fact advantageous, as front sharp teeth
are advantageous for a tiger, then this outcome must either be coincidental, or
it must have come to be for the sake of the animal’s welfare (Ibid, 199a3–4). The
happenings in nature discussed, however, cannot be coincidental as coincidences
are not regular events; they are necessarily exceptional occurrences (Ibid, 198b34–
199a3, 199a4–5). Therefore, it follows that explanations in the realm of living
things ought to be teleological. That is to say, it may be assumed that things in
this domain happen the way they do not by material necessity, but for the sake of
a certain end, where this is the welfare/good of some living thing (Ibid, 199a5–8).
[New paragraph] Whether this argument in support of teleology in nature is
a good one or not, is an issue we need not be concerned with.10 For our present
purposes, what is of importance is to gain a better understanding of the content
of Aristotle’s conception of final causality. Thus, I would like to suggest that what
suffices to note here is that in Phys. II 8 Aristotle supposes that the empirical
evidence confirms at least one thing: in the course of animal generation the parts
produced are regularly, i.e., always or for the most part, such that they promote
some living organism’s welfare or good. At this point, it is also vital that we take
into consideration two more things. First, in PA I 1. 642a 24–31, the Stagirite tells
us that the reason why ‘previous generations’ failed to arrive at the correct kind
of explanation, is that they ‘lacked the notion of what-it-is-to-be and the defining
of the being’. In other words, his claim is that his predecessors failed to come up
with the correct kind of explanation of occurrences in nature, as they failed to
acknowledge that livings things have essential natures or forms. And second, we
need to bear in mind that Aristotle takes it that (a) the world is both ungenerated
10 Some commentators, see, e.g., Charlton 1970, 123, detect serious problems in this
argument. I have to agree with Cooper (1987, 251–253), however, that provided the
premises are placed within the correct historical and philosophical context, then the
overall argument may be ‘vigorously defended’. On this same issue, see also Gotthelf
1987, 224–225.
and eternal (e.g. On the Heavens I 10–12), and (b) the kinds of plant and animal
life the world contains are also eternal (e.g. De Anima II. .15a22–b7).
In Metaphysics (Meta) A. 3. 984b11–15, Aristotle asserts that: living things
‘manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be’;
and, there are a couple of reasons, including the one reported in Phys. II 8, as
to why this beauty and goodness cannot reasonably be accounted for in terms
of ‘spontaneity and chance’. His main claim in this stretch of text is that there is
overall goodness in the realm of living things. More specifically, the world seems
to be occupied by animals which are well-formed and well-adapted for the kinds
of lives they lead.11 The key to the proper understanding of this claim lies with
some of the texts mentioned above. Aristotle supposes that the world is both
ungenerated and everlasting. He also takes it to be a fundamental fact about the
world, i.e., it is just part of the way the world is, that it contains certain species of
living things. Moreover, he holds that each of the animal species the world con-
tains has an essential nature or form. And as he explains in PA I 1.640b28–641a32,
5. 645b15–20, the form of an animal is its soul, where this is ultimately identified
with the (complex but integrated) sum of an organism’s functional capacities for
a specific kind of life.12 Now, given the material in Meta. A. 3, it transpires that
Aristotle’s view is that the good for a living thing is to simply be what it in fact is.
That is to say, the good for an animal is to live that particular kind of life that it is
naturally equipped with the relevant functional capacities to lead. Finally, it seems
that his view is that we can plainly see that the world is populated by animals that
lead full and active lives which are characteristic of their kinds.
[New paragraph] What remains to be seen is how the material discussed so far
may shed light on Aristotle’s conception of final causality. The answer to this puz-
zle is to be found in texts such as De Anima (DA) II 4. 415a22–b7.13 In this passage,
Aristotle tells us that animals aspire to share in the ‘everlasting and divine’. It is
evident though that an individual animal cannot achieve this goal, i.e., ‘continuous
existence’, as it is perishable. There is nonetheless a sense in which animals may be
said to share in the divine. Animals replicate their forms through reproduction,
11 It should be noted that although the realm of living things includes plants as well as
animals, Aristotle seems to be mainly concerned with animal life; he does not have
much to say (in a systematic way) about plants. The analysis presented here reflects
this peculiarity in Aristotle’s discussions of the domain of living things.
12 Aristotle gives a much clearer statement of this thesis in De Anima II. 1. For a more
detailed treatment of this issue, see Lennox 2009, esp. 351–356, as well as Balme 1992,
88–91 and Hamlyn 1993, 82–87.
13 See also Generation of Animals 731b 32–35.
and thus manage to secure the eternal existence of their kind/species. As we are
about to see, this last point is also the key to deciphering the precise content of
Aristotle’s conception of teleology within the realm of living things.
Aristotle seems to assume that it is a fundamental fact about the world that
the species it contains are so equipped as to be able to replicate their forms. It is
part of the way the Aristotelian world is that the animal species it contains are
furnished with reproductive mechanisms. And, these mechanisms are such that
they enable animals to initiate formation processes which, if not inhibited in one
way or another, result in living organisms that have the same essential natures
or forms as they do.14 It appears then that the Stagirite’s overall view concern-
ing the realm of living things is this: the world is ungenerated and eternal; it is
a fundamental fact about the world that it contains the animal species it does;
these animals have essential natures or forms; the good for an animal consists in
performing those activities that are part of its essential nature or form; it is also
a fundamental fact about the world that the animals it contains have the natural
tendency to replicate their good life-forms, and that they are equipped with the
reproductive mechanisms which are required for them to do so; the process of
reproduction is the one that allows animals to achieve eternity in kind.
In light of the above, Aristotle seems to have a plausible alternative to the
materialist/mechanistic explanation of occurrences in nature. As we have seen,
he takes it that the mechanistic explanation cannot possibly account for the regu-
larity with which good and beautiful parts are produced in the course of animal
generation.15 His own explanation for the beauty and the goodness manifested
in the parts produced during animal formation is in effect the one noted above.
It is a fundamental fact about the world that the animals it contains have the
natural tendency and the ability to initiate processes which are aimed at produc-
ing organisms that have the same good life-forms as they do. What is more, we
are told in Phys. II. 8 and Meta. A. 3, there is empirical evidence that seems to
provide this thesis with some measure of support. It is an empirically confirmed
fact that the parts produced in the course of animal generation are regularly such
that they contribute to the welfare or the good of some living organism. These are
parts which, Aristotle points out, are invariably ‘(hypothetically) necessary’ for
the formation of a specific end product, i.e., a particular animal with a specific
14 For a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s views concerning the nature of reproductive pro-
cesses in animals, see Henry 2009.
15 In Meta. A. 3. 984b11–15 he also notes that material necessity (alone) cannot possibly
explain the complexity of animal formation processes.
good life-form.16 In the final analysis, Aristotle supposes that it is a fundamental

fact about this world that animal formation processes are end-directed. And,
it is precisely for this reason that in places such as PA I. 1 (esp. 639b11–21) he
asserts the priority of the final cause over all other causes. To spell things out a
bit, Aristotle’s argument seems to be this: in the course of an animal’s formation
we observe the production of a number of parts; the proper explanation for the
coming to be of these parts ought to be teleological; that is to say, the reason to
be cited for the production of a part X, is that X has come to be for the sake of
a certain end, i.e., a particular animal with a specific form; this is so because a
teleological explanation simply reflects the way reality is; it is a fundamental fact
about the world that every animal in it is endowed with an inherent nature that
allows it to replicate its good life-form; and, every animal formation process is
by nature such that it is directed towards an end, where this is an organism with
the same form as its parents.
3.
It is time now to turn our attention to Darwin. Darwin’s contemporaries, both his
supporters as well as his detractors, give contradictory assessments of his views
on teleology. Some praise him for promoting teleology, whereas others praise him
for undermining it. On the other hand, some blame him for promoting teleol-
ogy, whereas others blame him for undermining it.17 A possible explanation for
this state of confusion, which in some form seems to persist even to these days18,
may be the fact that Darwin himself never took a definitive stance regarding the
views ascribed to him on this particular issue.19 However, these are matters I do
not plan to take up here. As already noted, my intention in this part of the paper
is to review an argument in support of the claim that Darwin does in fact endorse
some kind of teleology in nature.
J. Lennox has argued, I think convincingly, that there is textual evidence
which firmly suggests that Darwin’s version of evolutionary theory employs some
form of teleological explanation. I cannot possibly do justice to the complexity
16 See PA I 1. 639b21–640a9. For a detailed treatment of the concept of hypothetical

necessity in Aristotle’s biology, see Cooper 1987, esp. 243–246.
17 For two discussions of this issue, see Lennox 1993, 416–418 and Gotthelf 1999, 20ff.
18 See the discussion in this and the next section of the paper.
19 This much seems to transpire from Darwin’s correspondence; see Lennox 1993, 409–
410 and Gotthelf 1999, 9–14.
of Lennox’s argument on this occasion. Thus, what I propose to do is to sum-

marize a very small part of it.20
In his paper ‘On the Two Forms, or Dimorphic Condition, in the Species of
Primula, and on their Remarkable Sexual Relations’ (‘Dimorphism’), Darwin pre-
sents an experimental study of homomorphic and heteromorphic fertilization in
Primula vulgaris and veris (Primroses and Cowslips).21 Darwin reports, among
other things, that within the species of Primula veris we have a certain type of
sexual dimorphism. Specifically, he observes that there is within the species an
almost equal distribution of individuals with ‘long-styled’ and individuals with
‘short-styled’ forms of their sexual organs (Darwin 1862, e.g. 77–78, 82–83).22
What is quite interesting to notice for our present purposes, is the explanation he
offers for the presence of sexual dimorphism in Primula veris.23 Darwin argues
that dimorphism contributes to the increase of heteromorphic crosses, i.e., crosses
between individuals with sexual organs of different forms, and the decrease of
homomorphic crosses, i.e., crosses between individuals with sexual organs of the
same form. Furthermore, he shows that heteromorphic crosses are by far more
fertile and produce more vigorous offspring than homomorphic fertilizations.
Most remarkably, however, he has no hesitation to state that the ‘final cause of the
dimorphism’ in question is the promotion of intercrossing (Darwin 1862, 92). On
the basis of the above, Lennox (Lennox 1993, 414) argues that Darwin’s intended
explanation in ‘Dimorphism’ is the following:
Sexual Dimorphism is in fact present in Primula Veris.
Sexual dimorphism results in increased heteromorphic crosses. At the very
same time, it contributes to the decrease of homomorphic fertilization.
Heteromorphic crosses are more fertile and produce more vigorous offspring
than homomorphic crosses.
Thus, natural selection would favor increased dimorphism in Primula veris.
Dimorphism is present in Primula veris because it promotes intercrossing.
If this reconstruction of the Darwinian explanation is correct, and here it
should be noted that (1)-(5) seems to be born out by the text of ‘Dimorphism’,
20 What follows is a summary of Lennox 1993, 412–414, 417. Lennox’s overall argument
is endorsed by Gotthelf (1999, 20ff) who further supports it with some plausible
conjectures.
21 Darwin 1862.
22 Very briefly, in the long-styled form the pistil is long and stands way above the anthers,
whereas in the short-styled form the pistil is short and the anthers stand high above it.
See the diagrams in Darwin 1862, 78, 90.
23 What follows is a very brief summary of Darwin 1862, esp. 87–93.
then we have good reason to think that Darwin does indeed endorse some form
of teleology in nature. As Lennox (1993, 410–411) points out, the collective textual
evidence shows that: ‘[…] Darwin uses the term ‘Final Cause’ in a consistent way
[…] The reference of the term seems constant. In contexts where the central ques-
tion is […] “What is S for?”, Darwin refers to the answer to the question as stating
the “Final Cause” of S’. In ‘Dimorphism’ Darwin clearly considers the question
regarding the ‘meaning or use’ of sexual dimorphism in Primula veris (Darwin
1862, 91–92). His answer is unequivocal. The particular variation in question has
a very specific function. It promotes heteromorphic fertilizations. And, intercross-
ing brings about advantageous consequences; i.e., heteromorphic crosses are more
fertile and they produce more vigorous offspring than homomorphic fertiliza-
tions. What is imperative to notice here, however, is Darwin’s insistence that the
cause, and in particular the ‘Final Cause’, of the presence of sexual dimorphism
in Primula veris is the promotion of heteromorphic fertilizations. In other words,
he seems to hold that the presence of dimorphism is to be explained in terms of
a certain end, namely, the promotion of intercrossing. Given that this is the case,
then, as Lennox (1993, esp. 414, 417) points out, it appears that the Darwinian
explanation in ‘Dimorphism’ is in fact teleological in nature.
To conclude our analysis, we need to note two more things. First, Darwin sup-
poses that ‘“natural selection” refers to a natural process which preserves traits in
virtue of their advantageous consequences’ (Lennox 1993, 416–417). And second,
in the context of the explanation given in ‘Dimorphism’, as this was reconstructed
above, Darwin takes it that natural selection would favor sexual dimorphism in
Primula veris on account of the function it performs. That is to say, he supposes
that natural selection would favor this particular kind of sexual dimorphism, as
it promotes intercrossing which in its turn is advantageous for the species. Hence,
there seems to be some merit to Lennox’s claim (Lennox 1993, e.g. 417) that in a
sense Darwin ‘re-invents teleology’ by finding a place for it within his own version
of evolutionary theory.
4.
I would like to close the discussion in this paper with a very quick comparison
of the two approaches to teleology in nature examined above. This I intend to do
by means of further considering Lennox’s thesis that Darwin in effect re-invents
teleology.24
24 Most of what follows is largely based on the discussions in Lennox 1993, 409–410,
Lennox 1994, and Gotthelf 1999, esp. 23ff.
Lennox’s argument in support of the claim that in ‘Dimorphism’ Darwin explic-

itly employs a certain form of teleological explanation has been met by stiff resist-
ance. M.T. Ghiselin has complained that: (a) in the course of his reconstruction
of the Darwinian explanation, Lennox uses the term ‘teleology’ in a sense which
is ‘downright perverse’ and (b) it should be evident that Darwin never ascribed
to any type of teleology in nature (Ghiselin 1994).25 What we need to do here is
to decipher Ghiselin’s objection.
What exactly does Ghiselin have in mind when he charges Lennox with a per-
verse use of the term ‘teleology’? Apparently, he takes it that the only ‘non-trivial’
teleological explanations are those which appeal to divine design or inherent
natures (Ghiselin 1994, 489–490). To spell things out a bit, it seems that Ghiselin’s
view is that there are only two legitimate types of teleological explanation:
1. Platonic-style teleological explanations. According to Plato, the world was con-
structed the way it is by a ‘god-creator’ (demiurge).26 In this kind of world,
organisms are best constructed the way we find them. And, to explain the good
construction and good functioning of these organisms, we have to appeal to
the intentions of an intelligent superior being, the god-creator, who designed
everything in accordance with its own apprehension of the good.
2. Aristotelian-style teleological explanations. As we have seen, Aristotle takes it
that the world is both ungenerated and eternal. Furthermore, he assumes that
it is a fundamental fact about this world that it is populated by well-formed and
well-adapted species of animals. And, these animals have the inherent natural
capacities to initiate end-directed processes via which they may replicate their
own good life-forms. Hence, in this kind of world, the production of the parts
in the course of an animal’s formation is best explained by reference to the final
product of the end-directed process in question.
Given Ghiselin’s position that the above are the only legitimate conceptions of
teleology, it is no surprise that he refuses to acknowledge the presence of any
kind of teleological explanation in Darwin’s work. Darwin is not committed to
the existence of a world that is well designed by some divine being.27 Neither does
he accept that it is a fundamental fact about this world that: (a) it contains spe-
cies of living things which are well-formed and well-adapted for the kinds of lives
they do in fact lead, and (b) the existing animal species have inherent natures that
25 For Lennox’s response to Ghiselin, see Lennox 1994.

26 As is well known, Plato develops this thesis in the Timaeus. It should be noted that
Plato’s take on teleology was later adopted by Christian philosophers.
27 On this issue, see Lennox 1994, 410.
facilitate end-directed reproductive processes. Darwin’s conception of the world is

neither Platonic nor Aristotelian. He instead argues that in the world we observe,
the emergence of species of living things is a consequence of a series of individual
cases of natural selection. It is also a fact that within the Darwinian universe, the
features the process of natural selection favours are the ones that seem to be the
most advantageous for the living organisms concerned. Furthermore, and this is
the point Ghiselin resolutely fails to capture, Darwin supposes that the explana-
tion for the presence of these features is teleological in nature. As he plainly states
in the study of Primulae in ‘Dimorphism’, sexual dimorphism in Primula veris is
to be explained by means of a certain function or end. In particular, he states that
this kind of dimorphism is present in the species under investigation because it
promotes intercrossing.
Darwin’s conception of the world is very different from those of Plato and
Aristotle. Yet, it remains true that he does employ a certain form of teleological
explanation in nature. Thus, I believe it is fair to say that Lennox is right. Darwin
does re-invent teleology, in the sense that his teleological explanations do not
coincide with those suggested by Plato and Aristotle, i.e., (1) and (2) above. His
is a type of teleology adjusted for the needs of a world governed by the process
of natural selection.
At this point, I would like to add a comment about Aristotle. As we have seen,
for the Stagirite, teleological explanations simply reflect certain primitive facts
about the nature and the workings of living things in the world. It is certain that
he would not find much which he could deem familiar in Darwin’s conception
of the world. Hence, I believe that it would not be reasonable or productive to
indulge in a detailed comparison of his conception of teleology in nature with
that recommended by Darwin. At the very same time, I believe it is plausible to
assume that he would applaud his distinguished successor for at least one thing:
his adoption of a teleological explanation in nature, even if it is of the severely
curtailed variety noted above.
References
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Notes. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cooper, J. (1987): Hypothetical Necessity and Natural Teleology. In: Gotthelf, A. &
Lennox, J. (ed.): Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology. CambridgeUniversity
Press, Cambridge, 243–274.
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Primula, and on their Remarkable Sexual Relations. In: Journal of the Proceed-
ings of the Linnean Society of London (Botany) 6, 77–96.
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Pauliina Remes
University of Uppsala
‘For Itself and from Nothing’: Plotinus’

One as an Extreme Ideal for Selfhood
Ancient philosophy includes a controversial ideal of becoming godlike. This ideal

can be interpreted as a call to become a perfect, invulnerable being untouched
by worldly desires and contingencies. If so, then it embodies, then so one might
argue, both an unrealistic and inhumane ideal to become another kind of crea-
ture. One may wonder what the ethical benefits of such a goal are: The best life
for human beings would be a life that actually does not resemble a human living
at all, and would not, thus, be an actualization of humanity or its best part, but
an abandonment of it. (For a related accusation in Platonism, see Annas 1999,
ch. VI). Moreover, since there seems to be a rupture between human and non-
human, one may also raise a question whether this is an impossible telos, a breach
of categories, as it were.
The worry becomes ever more pressing when, in later antiquity and during the
Middle Ages, monotheistic conceptions of deity are further developed. In Neo-
platonism, as well as in its Christian and Islamic aftermath, we find a distinction
between that which is the creator/generator, an independent and self-sufficient
thing, and that which is created/generated, a dependent and lacking being. Both
of these descriptions seem essential attributes of the nature of the described thing,
the former of God or the One, the latter to his/its creations or dependent beings. If
the attempt to become godlike is understood as a call to become like God (and not
like the hypostasis Intellect), either through an ethical quest or through mystical
experience, then one is asked in some sense to breach this division. But can that
which is by definition dependent become independent and self-sufficient? And if
not, then is becoming godlike merely a metaphor? Moreover, even as a metaphor,
its purport can hardly be in envisioning the human beings’ position and nature
as the all-powerful creator of everything that exists. The point of the ideal must
be sought elsewhere, or at least it must mean a much more subtle identification
with divinity.
It has sometimes been argued that a given interpretation of selfhood is tied to
a particular, connected theology. I shall here present one useful typology. 1) The
monistic conception holds that a fundamental unit is a whole. The finite creatures
only have significance as parts of a whole – on their own they are lacking, seeking
72 Pauliina Remes
the infinite whole they belong to, often understood as their source or creator. As
a lacking part, the finite individual is in a tragic situation of being estranged from
its natural union, the whole or God. This brings itself the motive of return, the
struggle for reunification and a connected ecstasy.
According to 2) the individualistic conception, the finite individual has its
own integrity, lacking nothing essential to it. It is will or agent, whose autonomy
is stressed. God and the devil are personifications of powers central in the self ’s
moral drama. Knowledge of God comes through self-knowledge, rather than vice
versa. The self has an a prior place.
Finally: 3) the social conception takes the community as fundamental, un-
derlining social and cultural interdependence. While the goal of life is to be in
harmony with the community, and perhaps also God, there is no fundamental
lack. The individual retains and expresses its own being within the community.
(Proudfoot 1976, passim, and esp. 22–27.)
Within that typology, at the outset it seems that Neoplatonism would lie firmly
within the monistic variety. The self is understood through its having its origin
in God, Goodness or the One. Particularity is derived from the soul’s descent or
loss from this original unity. In Plotinus’ famous words:
What is it, then, which has made the souls forget their father, god, and even
though they are parts from this higher realm and altogether belong to him, be
ignorant both of themselves and of him? The origin of evil for them was audacity
(tolma) and birth and the first difference and the wish to belong to themselves.
Since they appeared to take pleasure in self-determination (to autexousion), and
to make much use of self-movement, running the opposite way and making the
distance as great as possible, they were ignorant even that they were from that
realm;… (Plotinus Enneads V.1.1.1–9.)1
As something descended from God, selfhood has a sparkle of God within it, but
it also suffers from a fundamental bereavement. It is a being constantly cut off from
its loved and perfect source, exhibiting and experiencing a lack thereof. For the
self to be understood in those terms, the goal of life is to become reunited with the
divine and perfect source. The dynamic of the self ’s actions and choices is explained
through its abandonment and move away from original unity with the One, or,
alternatively, through its aspiration to be reunited with it. Of these directions, the
first implies disintegration and self-delusion, the latter the road to self-unification
and to truth. The reunification forms the goal of the self ’s self-constitution, its true
1 The translations are for the most part those of the author, but sometimes they build
on those of A. A. Armstrong.
Plotinus’ One as an Extreme Ideal for Selfhood 73
happiness, goodness, as well as proper self-knowledge and self-understanding.

Perhaps paradoxically, at the end of this road lies a loss of a particular selfhood, a
loss of that which was the cause of the alienation and delineation of the self from
its origin. If selfhood is understood in terms of lack and bereavement, then this is
exactly what the reunification is supposed to fix, even if the price to pay was the
individual existence and autonomy gained in the original separation.
At least at the level of this typological generalization, this picture is highly nor-
mative. All human activity becomes pregnant with moral meaning, with notions
of a right and wrong direction (e.g., Gerson 1994, 186). One might provocatively
claim that the self is lost long before it gains the unity with the One: there is no
notion of something free or autonomous, with an independent position in the
universe, let alone a status as a point of origin of its own proper nature. Rather,
the self is like a pearl on a thread, swinging back and forth, sometimes closer to
one end, sometimes the other. It is determined by the two extremes, the One and
the point furthest removed from the One: evil and matter’s indefiniteness. The
movement between the two, and particularly the movement toward the former,
constitutes the self ’s being.
It is, of course, a matter of preference whether this picture is found gratifying
or not. From an ethical perspective, one might claim that it is a fruitful descrip-
tion of the kind of moral search that human beings engage in during their whole
life. In the eudaimonistic ethical theories with emphasis on character-formation,
people are, ideally, taken to strive toward the constitution of a virtuous character.
This work includes many kinds of choices, actions and habituations, all of which
have their own relevance for the project as a whole. Yet, from the post-ancient and
particularly modern perspective, the picture seems wanting. The multiple possibili-
ties that might give variety both to choices that are beneficent (either morally, or
in terms of the unity of the person or the successfulness with which that person
leads her or his life), as well as those that are flawed (in the same respects), are all
rendered insignificant in the picture. Only movement closer to or further from
the One matters. The opulence of our experience is constrained by the opposing
directions, and the self is in danger of becoming a mere locus or battlefield of
conflicting pulls.
An important qualification of this picture is obviously in the question of what
determines the direction of this back and forth swinging. This is in Platonism partly
something outside the agent’s own jurisdiction, in her or his background and des-
tiny, perhaps even previous lives, if we take the Platonic references to the transmi-
gration of souls seriously. But importantly, Plotinus underlines that there always
remains a dimension free from necessity. This is the core of the human being herself
or himself, and particularly her or his intellectual or rational capacity (III.1.8.9–15).
74 Pauliina Remes
In Plotinus, the self lies between perfect intellection (nous) and the sensible, bodily
realm (V.3.3.45–6). In this position, the Intellect’s role is to present that part of us
which is not vulnerable to the worldly contingencies. There is a further question as
to whether its role is also to give direction to the self, to inform its reasonings and
to secure that it is possible for the self to, as it were, fight back the pull toward the
sensible reality, and return toward the good origin. If the Intellect’s presence can be
used to this effect, then this would happen by exercise of self-control and dialectical
work toward a unified and holistic understanding of the cosmos. (I discuss this in
detail elsewhere, see, Remes 2007: chapters 3 and 4). The scholarship on this issue
is divided – it seems unclear if anything apart from intellectual capacity can be said
to be, for Plotinus, free in any real sense of the term (e.g., see, Bene forthcoming).
In this article, I wish to study somewhat different passages in Plotinus, ones
that give rise to an understanding of selfhood as something autonomous, perhaps
even individual in the qualified sense of 2) in the typology. This view emerges
once one takes seriously Plotinus’ idea of the One as a telos of human selfhood.
While autonomy is embodied also in the self ’s intellectual nature, as a perfectly
self-controlled thinking thing, its ultimate origin lies in the One. Furthermore, I
shall claim that the One’s self-sufficiency also gives room for the freedom of an
individual kind. The purpose is to tease out the implications of the notion of the
One not only as an efficient cause, but also as a final cause of human existence.
What are the implications of the One’s final causality to selfhood and to the notion
of freedom? Can we make sense of what it would be like to live a human life in a
Onelike or godlike manner, according to the One as our paradigm? What is the
purport of the One for being a self and person? For the purposes of the article,
particularly the Ennead VI.8 [49] ‘Free Will and the Freedom of the One’ makes
fruitful reading. Truly grasping the One means, for a person, a loss of a deficient
and imperfect selfhood. But, as we shall see, it is the source of another kind of
selfhood: selfhood as a power to determine one’s own life and nature. Seen from
this point of view, the self turns out to be a self-making and self-constituting being.
Self and One in Plotinus: Preparatory Remarks

Plotinus’ Enneads give rise to two kinds of ideal selfhood. Explicit are the ideas
of the Intellect as the true self, and the everyday self-residing in the composite
(e.g., II.3.9.30–1; IV.8.4.31–5). The relationship between the two presents several
interesting dilemmas, as does the difficulty, in the end, of rigidly separating two
exclusive and demarcated selves. Some sources suggest, rather, a more extended,
continuous and interconnected scalae of aspects of selfhood, emphasizing the
human capacity to consciously identify herself or himself with different aspects of
her or his nature. Scholars have dedicated studies to selfhood in Plotinus, explor-
ing its embodied, rational and intellectual layers (see, e.g., O’Daly 1973; Remes
2007; Aubry 2008; Kühn 2008; Chiaradonna 2008). Against this background, the
chosen approach, namely the study of the One as an ideal self, encounters an im-
mediate difficulty. At the explicit level of the testimony, the ideal selfhood is to be
found in the Intellect. Intellect embraces plurality, and its fundamental structure
is the subject-object distinction foundational to rational beings. The One, on the
other hand, transcends plurality and duality, and precludes all separation and
limit – thereby also personhood and (individual) selfhood. (VI.9.7.12–20.) Rather
than being a self, the One is a thing the grasp of which requires a loss of the self,
an abandonment of one’s particularity, individuality and autonomy. The One can
be an ideal for the self only implicitly. It is outside human nature and, as Plotinus
contends, not really what we, essentially, are. We border it (VI.9.8.36–8), but are
not to be confused with its perfection.
Yet, as both unity and highest goodness, the One is also the ultimate ideal for
the self. It is the final goal, telos, of all aspiration: “the nature of the good is the
very goal of the striving” (e.g., VI.8.7.3–4). As such, the One suggests an ideal that
is also normatively regulative. Whatever the extra value that the One is supposed
to import to the selfhood organized, otherwise, around the embodied and intel-
lectual aspects of human nature, it will not be merely one more possible aspect of
the self. It is an aspect that the self ought to strive to attain or realize in its life. It is
an aspect that should, in one way or another, illuminate and inform all the other
aspects2. As the highest metaphysical entity and the ultimate limit and point of
explanation, its weight in explaining all things is, although by no means exclusive
(it precludes, most notably, all plurality, the explanation of which must be sought
in the Intellect), nonetheless heavy.
The kind of approach used here has, broadly speaking, been embraced in the
context of ethics. Traditionally, the regulative import of the One to selfhood has
been found in the idea of the loss of the self and the ethical benefits of the absence
of the ego. Since the approach of the One implies a bereavement of our personality,
personal self-control and separation from others, it also brings with it an aban-
donment of the self-centered perspective. It can yield, rather, an establishment of
‘togetherness’, an affinity with everything else in the universe. In this argumenta-
tion, the One’s austerity and ‘hostility’ to differentiating limit and individuality
turns into an inclusion of the entirety of being. The One is not just an absolute
unity. It is the source and opulence of everything that exists (e.g., VI.7.12.22–30;
2 For an interpretation about the significance of the One to the self, see Ousager 2004.
76 Pauliina Remes
VI.8.4.5–9; VI.9.6; see, Bussanich 1990, 173, 178). As the goal of the ethical quest,
this implies the vicinity of beings to one another, and thereby the fraternity and
unity of all souls or human beings. Moreover, as self-sufficient, the One does not
suffer from any need or desire, and thereby it is also an end point of the self ’s desire
for invulnerable and perfect happiness. Its ethical significance lies therefore not
only in the question of other-regard, but also in the ancient philosophy’s strive
for unassailable eudaimonia (Bussanich 1990, passim).
The emphasis of this article is not, however, on this important dimension of
self-improvement, or with the possibilities the apophatic understanding of the
One may or may not imply. The focus of interest lies, rather, in Plotinus’ positive
remarks of the One’s nature, metaphorical or approximations as they necessarily
have to be of something that is absolutely one. Within the study of Plotinus’ theol-
ogy, the positive or “cataphatic” approach is common enough. Many interpreters
have explicated the operative attributes of the One, thus appreciating Plotinus’
twofold strategy in, on the one hand, denying the One all positive attributes,
and, on the other, nonetheless giving coherent descriptions of it as a thing with a
distinctive nature.3 The selected descriptions in this article are the ones that may
come to have significance for the notion of self.
The One as a Cause and Telos of the Self

The study of the One’s significance and explanatory role with respect to anthro-
pology and selfhood brings the researcher to the maze of descriptions used of the
One. Which of these features have a role to play in human selfhood? What kind
of explanatory role do they play? This is a complex issue to which a full answer is
not forthcoming in the limits of this article. It is, however, useful to state some-
thing general about the role of the One in explanations, concerning particularly
humanity and selfhood.
First, without the One, there would be nothing, no determinate entities of any
kind, and thereby also no selves. The One is necessary for any talk about existence
of entities, and the determinate existence of a human being is no exception. This
is because of the One’s efficient causality, the way it causes the coming into being
of things and has a role in the actualization of potentialities4. Second, the final
causality of the One means that the One is, in Aristotelian terminology, that for the
sake of which other things are, for which they exist. It is the thing at which other
things aim. Final cause is external to the thing’s own essence and nature. Precisely,
3 See, for instance, Gerson 1994, chapter II; Bussanich 1997.

4 See Bussanich 1997, 46.
its externality to being postulates the One as an object of striving for the Intellect
and the souls. It is that which ultimately explains the desire and dynamics found
at the lower levels of being. As has been noted, Neoplatonic physical explanations
are predominantly vertical, that is, explicating the metaphysical causes acting
upon the physical world. Thereby, even horizontal drives can in Neoplatonism be
understood by the vertical directedness of the soul back toward its origin5. In the
case of human selfhood, the One is explanatory for the dynamic directedness – for
the deeply embedded desires, motivations and strivings – of the self.
At the most general level, we might state the following about the One’s final
causality: Since the One is goodness and unity, all things aim at 1) the good, 2)
unity. Here we find two rather common, unquestioned starting points within an-
cient philosophy: both human activity and the whole universe are directed toward
goodness and harmony, toward happiness, virtue, unity and good organization –
with varying success of course. For the self, this means a two-fold normative regu-
lation: a human being aims at a good, at what he or she understands as a good or
happy outcome, as well as at harmony or unity rather than fragmentation. That is,
the life of the self fragmented by its temporal continuity and conflicting desires is
nonetheless structured by an innate avoidance of degradation and disintegration.
Due to circumstances and a lack of knowledge, this striving may acquire perverted
expressions that in actual fact lead the self further away from harmony and true
happiness, but nonetheless this basic motivation lies deep within human nature.
Correctly manifested, it brings the human being toward godlikeness. This much
seems rather uncontroversial.
From the point of view of the human being, the final causality of the One may
be divided into built-in or intrinsic aspects, as well as into ideal or paradigmatic
ones. Besides being explanatory of existing things and their certain features, the
One is archetypal for the best possible existence. Sometimes the division seems
to be a matter of degree and nuance. For example, the One is an absolute unity,
whereas human beings are unified in different ways, strive for different kinds of
unity, and succeed in this to varying degrees. Finally, we should leave open the
possibility that there are features of the One which are proper only to its own
nature, that is, which have no direct relation to its creation and hence no explana-
tory role for being. Perhaps there are features of the One that are unsuitable for
selfhood, outside its level of existence and proper nature. If that is the case, then
5 For vertical causation, see Wagner 1982; for a succinct statement of the repercussion
of this for embodied souls, see Dillon & Gerson 2004, xxii.
78 Pauliina Remes
these attributes should somehow be separated from those that are explanatorily
fertile to the study of selfhood.
This problem may be seen as somewhat pressing, taken into consideration
that, far from having an exclusive explanatory role reserved to human beings or
selves, the One is the final cause of the levels of Plotinus’ metaphysical hierarchy.
Each metaphysical level turns toward its source, toward the origin, acquiring a
determinate existence in this reversal. This act of self-constitution combines the
entity’s own act of reversion to the final causality of the One. This is in later Neo-
platonism called the emergence of self-constituted entities, authupostata. (Steel
2006.) One way to deal with this Neoplatonic idiosyncracy is to claim that the
whole universe is understood, if not anthropomorphically, nonetheless through
the model of living, ensouled or reflexive beings. Without going deeper into Neo-
platonic anthropomorphism, one might claim that the study of the implications of
the One for ideal selfhood need not worry too much about demarcating the things
proper to selfhood from those that characterize also hypostases. The burden of
proof seems to lie in the reverse direction. It maybe asked why and how some
features proper to living beings and selves are also descriptively and explanatorily
suitable in metaphysical contexts, rather than vice versa.
The overall strategy of VI.8 is to study potency, freedom and ‘being in our
power’ (eph’ hêmin) first in the level of human beings, in order then to be able to
tell whether something similar can be attributed to the first principle. This is a
general methodological point:
[We must] first enquire about ourselves, as it is customary to inquire into
things, whether anything does happen to be in our power. First, we must ask what
something ‘being in our power’ ought to mean; that is, what is the idea (ennoia)
of this kind in our minds. (VI.8.1.15–18.)
An enquiry must start from human experience and terminology, for these are
the mind’s first resources; then to be corrected, supplemented and polished by
rational capacities and philosophizing by dialectic6. In the case of potency (duna-
mis) or power of a particular sort, namely a power that has freedom (eleutheria),
will (bouleusis) or ‘being in our power’ (eph’ hêmin), we have a closer connection
between the level of human experience and the One. These are not merely concep-
tions and descriptions we have of something external to our own nature. Rather,
these are conceptions and descriptions connected to ourselves, to the experience
6 As Strange (1994, 23ff.) argued, this is, broadly, an Aristotelian approach, even though
the Platonists, obviously, reserve a more important role to the mind’s innate capacities
in the inquiry.
of the boundaries of our actions. They refer to a certain kind of agency, of being
a subject of a particular kind: self-controlled and unrestricted, or something as
such. The treatise shows that the ways these terms are used for human action
harks back to a perfect and paradigmatic use of the same notions in the context of
the One. The One is, as it were, a super agent, or a hyper self. One of the explicit
claims Plotinus seems to make in the treatise is that some such nature lies within
the potential of our selves, and that this is what makes ascent all the way to the
One possible (VI.8.15.14–24).
This gives rise to a new interpretative problem, namely the question of the
direction of explanation. The project of this article was first introduced as a study
of what the One can tell us about human beings or selves, as an ideal self. In
the above methodological quotation, however, the reverse seems to be the case,
namely that human experiences are revelatory of the nature of the One. Which
of these is true? If both are legitimate approaches, then does this not lead into
methodological circularity?7 The two strategies need not, however, be mutually
exclusive. The way that Plotinus describes dialectic (Enneads I.3.4.9–20) involves
an analogical circularity that turns out to be merely apparent. Platonic dialectic
starts from elements on some basic level, proceeding to the unities or essences
they are a part of (‘to weave’, plekô). After that, however, the dialectical method
proceeds again to analyze (analuô) the thing into its elements8. The analysis
results presumably in an enlightened understanding of the elements as parts of
some whole or structure. Rather than circularity, this describes a process of de-
velopment, of ‘going upwards’ (anagô), in which parts or elements on a lower
plane of reality and the relevant, explanatorily primary wholes they belong to are
treated so as to yield a fertile cross-illumination. If successful, then the method
yields an increasing understanding of the subject matter. In the same manner, the
role of the One in explanations can be approached through the appearances of its
characteristics in the sensible realm. These, in turn, come to be better understood
through an increasing understanding of the nature of the One itself.
One last remark about the general features of the descriptions connected to
the One, relevant for our purposes. Some of Plotinus’ chosen descriptions of the
One in the treatise further employ a notion of ‘self ’, or at the very least a reflexive
stance probably foreign to inanimate things or intelligible entities other than souls
or intellects. Recurring is the notion of autos: the One is and remains itself, makes
itself, wills itself, actualizes itself, loves itself, perceives itself, etc. The purpose of
7 I am grateful to Mika Perälä for pointing this danger out to me.

8 For the dialectic in Plotinus, see, e.g., Tuominen 2007.
80 Pauliina Remes
these self-directed stances is, as is familiar, to underline the One’s self-sufficiency

(we shall return to this below), rather than, perhaps, make heavy weather of the
phenomenon of reflexivity itself. Nonetheless, self-sufficiency, too, is a reflexive
stance of having in oneself everything that one needs. The descriptions of the One
are hopelessly enmeshed in self-relations (Beierwaltes 1999, esp. 199), in a feature
usually connected to human consciousness – reflexivity.
Self-Making and Self-Mastery

According to Plotinus, one individuating characteristic of the One as distinct from
the Intellect is its self-making. The One:
…like being together with a substance and, as it were, originating in eternal
activity it makes itself from both, for itself and from nothing (auto auto poiei, kai
heautôi kai oudenos). (VI.8.7.52–54.)
Further, Plotinus contends that the One is what it wants to be (ousan ho thelei;
VI.8.9.46), a principle and master of its own substance and activity (VI.8.4.32–33).
Plotinus calls the One altogether unrelated to anything (pros ouden; VI.8.8.14),
master of its being what it is and being beyond being (tou de einai ho estin ê
tou epekeina einai ara ge kurios autos; VI.8.12.1–2). The One is the master of
its own substance, whereas in human beings substance is the master. That the
master-terminology must be metaphorical in the context of the One is emphasized
by Plotinus, who, following Plato (e.g., Republic 430e–431a), notes that being a
master of something, even oneself, creates a division in the nature of the thing
described. This division, merely conceptual though it may be, is foreign to the
nature of the One (12.28–13.5). The One is, as it were, a form of substance, or the
substance of substances (autousia; 8.15). Unlike any other thing in the Plotinian
ontology, it unqualifiedly makes itself (pepoiêkenai hauton; VI.8.16.14–15) and
gives itself existence (hupostêsas hauton; VI.8.13.55). (For its self-constitution, see
particularly Beierwaltes 1999.)
One evident motivation behind these descriptions is to make the One entirely
independent of all other things – otherwise it would not be an ultimate first
principle – as well as invulnerable and beyond any chance. Describing the One as
a master of its own substance is related to attempting to grasp the self-sufficient
and self-directed nature of the One’s activity. In actual fact, it is a substance only
in a sense peculiar to itself. The One is not delineated, coerced or affected by
anything external to itself.
From later perspectives, however, the way the nature of the Plotinian One
coincides with necessity might well be seen to compromise its freedom. If the
One cannot have chosen to be anything else than what it is, then is it truly free?
The amount and way in which the freedom of the One is truly restricted by ne-
cessity is a matter of some scholarly dispute9. In this context, it must suffice to
say that in choosing and doing what it does, the One does the most perfect thing
available, and hence for it to be something else would amount to imperfection.
Imperfection would constrain its nature much more than being, necessarily, a
perfect thing. In the context of this article, therefore, when the One is described
as self-creating, one should keep in mind that this self-creation is unlimited, but
according to necessity.
Plotinus states explicitly that to the extent that we have a part of ‘it’ [the One] in
us, we may, also, become masters of ourselves. (VI.8.8.14.) The One’s self-creative
capacity is thereby directly relevant for human selfhood: the One is the liberator
(eleutheropoion; 12.19) inherent or connected to our nature. Our liberty or free-
dom inheres in it, and therefore the way that the One is free must be of interest to
us. (See Gerson 1994, 159; Leroux 1996; Ousager 2004, esp. 162–164.)
If the ideal existence of a self is embodied in the independence, self-sufficiency
and unconnectedness of the One, then are we dealing with a helplessly egocen-
tric and introvert understanding of selfhood? It is, admittedly, the case that in
its independence and unrelatedness from everything external to itself, the One
seems a rather undesirable ideal for self. Present theories emphasize selfhood as
social and contextual – closer to number 3) in the typology that launched this
investigation –, constituted in its encounters in the world. Already the Stoic ac-
counts of personality separated the persons’ role vis-á-vis his surroundings, in
both the cosmos and society (Cic. Off. 1.107–121). For many thinkers, interper-
sonal approaches to selfhood seem both descriptively more accurate and ethically
more promising. Plotinus could perhaps be salvaged by saying that ultimately
everything and everyone meets in the One (a move we already saw above, in the
context of ethics). The One is, as Damascius puts it, also One-All (On Principles
II 27, 10–11). To understand it as a solitary being is an anthropomorphic reading.
The One is not an individual in the sense of those individuals that must have a
numeric and qualitative identity distinct form one other to be themselves, to be
things separate and distinguishable from one another. It is everything there is. Its
nature is embracing rather than exclusive.
Be that as it may, the One’s self-creative activity can be approached in other
ways than merely in terms of sovereignty of or independence from other beings.
Its significance for selfhood may also be analyzed in terms of the self ’s role in
the activity and purpose of living. Self-sufficiency is not merely the opposite of
9 For the dialectic in Plotinus, see, e.g., Tuominen 2007.

82 Pauliina Remes
dependency on something external to oneself. Remember that Plotinus called

the One, thought-provokingly, a thing that creates its own substance, and is the
‘source of being’ and ‘the why of existence’. Its relation to itself is ‘from itself and
for nothing’ (VI.8.7.54 above). The context of these descriptions is self-creation
or self-constitution. In creating itself, the One is engaged in an activity that has its
origin, motivation and result all in itself. Given that human beings, too, engage in
some kind of self-constitution, that is, in ethically driven character-formation, it
might not be out of place to suggest that these descriptions of the One, the libera-
tor of our nature, have a relevance to selfhood.
At the level of a regulative ideal, the One’s making of itself ‘for nothing’ might
perhaps be understood with reference to why and for whom human beings ulti-
mately live and try to improve their character. I am here thinking of the experience
that my self and my life are the only possessions that are irrevocably mine. To be
an entity that is or lives for itself and for nothing else captures how, ultimately, I
cannot live nor constitute my selfhood for anyone else than myself. This self-famil-
iarity (rather than self-centeredness) is prior to any notion of an other-concern.
I may wish to live for the benefit of my family or humankind, but the story of
my life is connected to this one composite being, my being, of which only I am
aware, as it were, from inside. This is the only stream of experienced life open
directly, or ‘first-personally’, to me. Moreover, the life of this composite matters in
a unique way for this one stream of consciousness, mine. If I am dissatisfied with
my life and think that I have not lived morally enough, then I engage in reflection
which is directed to changing the course of my character-formation, of making
something else of my self and my life. I want to live my life in some other way, to
develop an identity I am comfortable with, and to express it through my actions.
(Flanagan 1996.) In that sense, I can only constitute or create myself for myself.
The One’s self-sufficient and radically independent existence can function,
thus, both as an analogy and as an ideal for human selfhood. Like the One, the
human self is a self-enclosed unity to the extent that its own existence and life are
the only things available to it directly. Moreover, understanding this fact correctly
may lead into a self-development where one’s concentration is directed, correctly,
to that which is under one’s own dominion, one’s own life and existence.
But can the self not just create ‘for itself ’ but also ‘from’ or ‘out of nothing’ ex-
ternal to itself? In this respect, human beings seem radically different from gods.
After all, the world and my situatedness within it seem absolutely crucial for my
project of self-constitution. My life is embedded in a given society, my conceptual
toolery shared with other human beings in the same language community. This
is not merely a contemporary idea, but a position the variants of which are en-
countered in Plato’s Republic, in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and in the above
mentioned Stoic four-personae doctrine. Unlike the One, a human being can
hardly create her or his life out of nothing. Here the importance of the notions
of independence and invulnerability of happiness and character within ancient
ethical projects seems to seep through in Plotinus. External circumstances and
goods are discussed as potential problems for happiness to the extent that they are
outside the control of the agent. If in my self-creation I rely on something external
to myself, then I become dependent or enslaved to the materials out of which I
am made (VI.9.6.16ff.), and thereby vulnerable to chance. My happiness is no
longer in my own hands. In the context of Plotinus’ notion of self-constitution, this
has the following repercussion: For the self-constitution to yield an invulnerable
virtue and happiness, it cannot be dependent upon activities and things outside
the subject who constitutes herself or himself.
Yet, there is again a sense in which Plotinus could be after something more than
invulnerability of character. He goes further than many other ancient philosophers
in the search of a center in the human being which would be in our ultimate control,
but his motivation for doing so is perhaps not only to secure happiness. When we
explain why a person chose to do something, acted in one way or another, we do
tend give a role to reasons and causes that led to that happening. To distinguish an
action from a happening or an event, we expect a sense in which it is done by an
agent, and of no one or nothing else. That is, there should be some act of volition,
preference or initiation not exhaustively explainable by reasons or causes external
to the agent that lead to the action. Whether or not we are truly free, there must
be, when describing an agency, an explanatory role for the agent’s own choice or
preference – for some way of implying that he or she initiates the action in question.
Aristotle tried to grasp this idea by saying that an action is in our own power when
the cause is internal to the agent. (Nicomachean Ethics 1110a15–18.) In a manner
familiar to the Neoplatonists, Plotinus idealizes this notion, making the One a kind
of entity that acts purely out of causes internal to itself. In this way, he participates
in Aristotle’s discussion of what it is that makes something an agent. Moreover, he
anticipates later theories that claim that a distinctive feature of the human agency
is the capacity for autonomy, a ‘being a law to oneself ’, or being self-governing.
Acting out of causes internal to the agent may, for Plotinus, ultimately escape
embodied human beings who are constrained by the necessities and causal chains
of the material world. It is possible that only pure intellectual contemplation is
really free and autonomous in any sense comparable to the autonomy and freedom
of the One. (See both Remes 2007, 206–207 and Bene forthcoming.) However,
even if the full form of this autonomy was beyond human nature, being what one
wants to be, in the manner of the One, is an aspect that human acting at its best
can exhibit. In the case of the compromised autonomy of the embodied human
84 Pauliina Remes
being, this means that one’s volitions nonetheless have direct relevance for the
kind of life one leads, the kind of existence one creates for oneself. In each life as
well as each action, there is an aspect of the agent’s decision, however compro-
mised the freedom of the action itself might be. Alongside cultural influences
and constraints imposed on me as an agent, I do express something of myself
in each decision I make. This locus of decision and choice is that through which
my actions are mine, and in my own responsibility. The significance of the One
for the Plotinian self is in here. To the extent that human beings can be free or
autonomous, their freedom reflects the self-originated activity of the One free
from all external constraint.
Although admittedly speculative, the above suggestions try to convey the fol-
lowing picture: selfhood and the One share an important similarity. Neither of
the two is a substance of an ordinary kind, determined by or coinciding with an
eternally existing essence. Soul may be or at the very least resemble a substance,
but to separate a notion of ‘self ’ is precisely to separate something more dynamic
from human nature. Both self and the One are self-making. Their activity is at
all times also self-constituting. In the paradigmatic case of the One, the agent is
nothing but what it has made of itself. The self, too, does not just give rise to a
generation directed outside itself – its life or actions – but its activity is also at
all times directed to constituting its own nature. It is a being whose existence is
designed for itself and made, at least to a degree, by itself. For this reason self, un-
like the soul, is not a substance, but something more like a substance of substance
(autousia above). It is not a fixed thing whose fixity would be reliant on something
external to itself. Like the unbounded One free from all determinations, the self
has a power or a possibility of being a self-making not primarily limited externally
but, rather, internally.
In sum, in making itself for itself and from nothing, the One incorporates
what it is for the self to be a self-constituting animal, a rational agent capable of
character-formation. In a sense, the self has her or his own being in her or his
power, because she herself or he himself determines the directions of her or his
life, the way she or he appropriates her or his experiences, how she or he responds
to impulses – what she or he makes of her or his life and her or his being (IV.4.44).
This sense of eph’hêmin is severely qualified, however, because the self ’s liberty is
endangered by her or his embodied existence and its restrictions. The self-making
of the self happens within externally imposed limits. Moreover, the liberty of the
self-making of the self is further qualified since it happens derivatively. What
liberty human beings possess comes from the One, whereas the One is the sole
liberator of things below it. However, postulating an ideal which has a being such
that it has willed implies, nonetheless, two things: That a) at the bottom of each
human being there is the power to desire and choose something and thereby sig-
nificantly contribute in determining the course of one’s life and character, and that
b) ideally, the self actualizes, that is, makes use of this power, and develops into a
thing that is as it makes itself of itself – someone who creates one’s own substance.
This is what I take to be the paramount setting against which the often quoted
Plotinian passage about carving one’s inner statue should be understood. Let us
end this section with this poetic vision:
Retreat to yourself and see; and if you do not yet see yourself beautiful, then,
just as a maker of a statue which ought to become beautiful takes away here and
polishes there, and makes one place smooth and another pure till he has brought
to light the beautiful face [proper] for that statue, so you too must take away
what is superfluous and straighten what is crooked and by purifying what is dark
to make it bright, and never stop on ‘building up’ your statue till the godlike
brightness of virtue shines on you, till you see ‘reasonableness standing on its
sacred pedestal’. If you have become this, and see it, and are united with yourself
in purity, having nothing obstructing you from becoming in this way one, nor
having anything else inside mixed with it, but [being] wholly yourself, only true
light, not measured by magnitude, or defined by shape into [being something] less,
or increased into magnitude by unlimitedness, but everywhere unmeasured because
greater than all measure and superior to all quantity[emphasis – Remes]; if you see
that you have become this, then from this time onwards you have become sight;
feel confident about yourself, for having already ascended you no longer need
anyone to show you; look intently and see. For this eye alone looks at the great
beauty. (I.6.9.7–25. For quotes of Plato: Phaedrus 252d; 254b.)
Granted, Plotinian character-formation is a process of finding what one already
is, rather than choosing freely the course of one’s life. Yet, the ideal goal of that
formation is not something (pre-)determined, but an unlimited and unmeasured
power.
Some Final Remarks

The significance of the One as a telos of human selfhood is in the foundation it
gives to the finite being as a being of its own right. While the personal and bodily
self is for Plotinus a being with a fundamental lack of 1) in the typology, through
the power to choose and create itself, the self is also in one sense a perfect entity:
within each self that suffers from desire toward its lost origin, there is a point of
autonomous power, a power to initiate acts and to determine its own life and char-
acter. As this power, the self is not primarily lacking or deficient, but something
whole and self-sufficient, and hence closer to 2) in the typology.
86 Pauliina Remes
Recent or contemporary thinkers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre or Michel Foucault,

recognized the self ’s possibilities of free self-determination as nearly unbounded.
Famously, Sartre presents an extreme case where for human reality, to be is to
choose oneself. The human reality never pauses in some facticity or in-itself, but
constantly nihilates, chooses, and re-creates itself. For him, the self is not a real
existent, but rather a thing that projects and chooses itself over and over again,
making itself to be but never being able to catch its own nature fully and conclu-
sively. Some of Sartre’s wordings bring vividly to mind the above quoted passages
of the freedom of the One. He states, among others, that Man is a lack, a desire
to be. Moreover, he is a desire to be a God, the supreme end of transcendence,
“consciousness become substance and substance become the cause of itself, the
Man-God” (Sartre 1956 [1943], e.g., 123, 724, 735).10
While the similarities are striking, there are bound to be fundamental dif-
ferences in the two theories. Plotinus’ self-constituting animal is God only in a
metaphorical and aspirational sense; the factual existence it has, as well as the
powers of self-constitution that it possesses are from and because of the One.
In antiquity, moreover, the dynamic power of self-constitution must always fol-
low goodness and good order, otherwise nothing can be truly constituted. From
the contemporary perspective, it may well seem that the self is constrained by
goodness, and hence not supremely free. The development of a positive notion
of evil, as well as of human freedom as freedom to choose evil, happens later in
Mediaeval philosophy11. But the decision-making between good and evil is not,
as we have seen, at the heart of Plotinus’ project. His is a story of how the human
being, through an ethical quest, can become what it truly is – to actualize its best
and most profound nature. Through this real but often unactualized aspect of
human nature, Plotinus’ discussion includes a picture of selfhood as something
with its own integrity, rather than a thing primarily understood through lack and
10 For Michel Foucault, central are two aspects of Plotinus’ theory. First, that personal
identities formed in the world are always also affected by the world and thus not expres-
sions of inner freedom, and, second, that the process toward truth, liberated selfhood
or subjectivity consists of stripping away these identities rather than constructing them.
Here, I rely on the lectures of Alain Petit, Department of Philosophy, University of
Helsinki, April 2004.
11 In Neoplatonism, only goodness coincides with unlimited power, whereas evil is de-
ficient and parasitic upon this power. (The matter has been discussed in detail in the
context of Proclus: Proclus, On the existence of Evil, e.g., 50; 7, 30–31; see also Steel
1998; Opsomer 2001: 183).
deficiency. Through their affinity to the One as a liberator, selves possess a truly
autonomous core.
References
Annas, J. (1999): Platonic Ethics – Old and New. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Aubry, G. (2008): Un moi sans indentité? Le hèmeis plotinien. In: Aubry, G. /
Ildefonse, F. (Eds.): Le moi et l’interiorité. Vrin, Paris, 107–125.
Beierwaltes, W. (1999): Causa sui – Plotins Begriff des Einen als Ursprung des
Gendankens der Selbstursächlichkeit. In: Cleary, J. J. (ed.): Traditions of Pla-
tonism – Essays in Honour of John Dillon. Ashagate, Aldershot, 191–225.
Bene, L. (forthcoming): Causality and Moral Responsibility in Plotinus. (Exists
in Hungarian: https://www.academia.edu/1033096/Causality_and_Moral_
Responsibility_in_Plotinus_in_Hungarian_with_an_English_abstract_).
Bussanich, J. (1990): The Invulnerability of Goodness – The Ethical and Psycho-
logical Theory of Plotinus. The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy
7, 151–184.
Bussanich, J. (1997): Plotinus’ Metaphysics of the One. In: Gerson, L. P. (ed.):
Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
38–65.
Chiaradonna, R. (2008): Plotino: il “noi” e il nous. In Aubry, G. / Ildefonse, F.
(Eds.): Le moi et l’interiorité. Vrin, Paris, 277–293.
Flanagan, O. (1996): Self-Expressions – Mind, Morals, and the Meaning of Life.
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dillon, J. / Gerson, L. P. (2004): Introduction. In: Dillon, J. and Gerson, L. P. (ed.):
Neoplatonic Philosophy – Introductory Readings. Hackett, Indianapolis et al.,
xii–xxii.
Gerson, L. P. (1994): Plotinus. Routledge, London.
Kühn, W. (2008): Se connaître soi-même – La contribution de Plotin à la com-
préhension du moi. In: Aubry, G. / Ildefonse, F. (ed.): Le moi et l’interiorité.
Vrin, Paris, 127–149.
Leroux, G. (1990): Plotin. Traité sur la liberté et la volonté de l’Un [Ennéade VI,
8 (39)]. J. Vrin, Paris.
Leroux, G. (1996): Human Freedom in the Thought of Plotinus. In: Gerson, L.
P. (ed.): Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 292–314.
Opsomer, J. (2001): Proclus vs. Plotinus I Matter (De mal. subs. 30–7). Phronesis
46, 154–188.
88 Pauliina Remes
Ousager, A. (2004): Plotinus on Selfhood, Freedom and Politics. Aarhus University

Press, Aarhus.
Proudfoot, W. (1976): God and the Self – Three Types of Philosophy of Religion.
Associated University Presses, Cranbury.
Remes, P. (2007): Plotinus on Self – The Philosophy of the ‘We’. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Sartre, J.-P. (1956 [1943]): Being and Nothingness. Washington Square Press,
New York.
Steel, C. (1998): Proclus on the Existence of Evil. Proceedings of the Boston Area
Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 14, 83–102.
Steel, C. (2006): Proklos über Selbstreflexion und Selbstbegründung. In: Perkams,
M. / Piccione, R. M. (Eds.): Proklos: Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik. Brill,
Leiden, 230–255.
Strange, S. (1994): Plotinus on the Nature of Eternity and Time. In: Schrenk,
L. P. (ed.): Aristotle in Late Antiquity. Catholic Universities of America Press,
Washington, 22–53.
Tuominen, M. (2007): Apprehension and Argument: Ancient Theories of Start-
ing Points for Knowledge. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, 3.
Springer, Dordrecht.
Wagner, M. F. (1982): Vertical Causation in Plotinus. In: R. Baine Harris (ed.) The
Structure of Being: A Neoplatonic Approach. International Society of Neopla-
tonic Studies, State University of New York Press, New York.
Hans Otto Seitschek
LMU Munich
Christian Humanism: An Alternative

Concept of Humanism
Introduction: Roots of Christian Humanism

Humanism, naturalistic or secular, sees the human being in the center of this
universe. Everything originates from the human and is dedicated to the human
being. This kind of humanism is in general agnostic. Only human needs, not
divine needs or interests or abilities are of interest. Normative systems are made
up only by humans and even human nature can be influenced and improved by
humans themselves, resulting in trans-humanism or post-humanism using recent
bio-chemical and genetic knowledge, and, moreover, Charles Darwin’s theory of
evolution. But is this all possible? Not without doubt.
Christian humanism emphasizes education in general. Of course, Christian
education, like a classic one, incorporates theological or ecclesiastical and philo-
sophical education, and also stresses knowing the Holy Scripture in the original
Hebrew and Greek language. The European University has Christian roots in the
schools in or near monasteries and cathedrals, for instance the School of Chartres.
The basis of the curriculum there was the seven liberal arts (septem artes liberales),
consisting in the trivium, with grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium,
with arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The seven liberal arts – we still
know the degrees “Bachelor of Arts” and “Master of Arts” – have their origin in
Greek antiquity in Plato’s Politeia, book VII, in the work of the Roman rhetor
Quintilian, in St Augustine’s work, and in late antiquity in the work of Martianus
Capella. Christian humanism is a middle way between pure materialistic human-
ism, based on a monistic worldview (only one material substance exists), and a
mysticism without any rational foundation. Christian humanism concentrates on
the human being, but the primary source still remains divine revelation.
Christian Humanism and Charles Darwin

A sharp difference appears between Christian humanism and the thoughts of
Charles Darwin in his books On the Origins of Species (1859) and The Descent of
Man (1871). Darwin explains well the evolutionary development within species
leading to their diversity, but he has only discovered evolution as a natural process
90 Hans Otto Seitschek
based on transmutation and selection, without an intrinsic teleological develop-

ment toward an aim. But for many people today, Darwin’s theory is a kind of
universal teaching, including explanations of being and life. Some critical remarks
on Darwin from an epistemological point of view may be allowed:
1. There is no linear development possible; evolution remains very much un-
predictable.
2. A natural teleology – like Aristotle presumes it in his Politics (book I, 1252b27–
35) – is not possible.
3. Scientific paradigms in evolutionary theory are not really possible. Therefore,
evolutionary theory is not a consistent theory like Isaac Newton’s theory of
physics, for instance.
4. Causality, as well as natural teleology, is not reflected enough in Darwin’s theory
(“too little of Aristotle in Darwin”), therefore gaps of explanation are not avoid-
able in evolutionary theory.
5. Evolutionary theory as a whole is not able to be proved empirically. So, meta-
physical considerations have to be made. But Darwin did not mention these
necessary metaphysical considerations, in contrast to later Sir Karl Raimund
Popper, who spoke of evolutionary theory as a metaphysical one.
6. One last epistemological problem is that one should not take chance as the main
principle for evolution. Otherwise, chance plays a quasi-transcendental role and
makes it problematic to find proper answers to epistemological questions on
the beginning and the end of being and its evolution.
Another problem is the difference between humans and animals. Many evolu-
tionists, referring to Darwin, try to explain humans as a certain species of animal
among other animals. Both humans and animals are, of course, a part of nature.
But, humans have culture and they are in most cases religious beings. Humans
should care for nature and animals in a responsible way. A striking difference
between humans and animals is the ability of humans to speak and to reflect on
something in the mind. Animals often have a voice; Aristotle speaks of phoné in
his Politics (book I, 1253a10), in order to express a certain feeling, grief or joy, or
for warning, but they do not have speech in order to reflect on something or to
discuss with each other. Also in his Politics, Aristotle characterizes the human as
a being with mind and speech (lógon dè mónon ánthropos échei tôn zôon, but the
human is the only animal with the ability to speak and to think, Politics, book I,
1253a9–10, see also 1332b4–5), as well as a political being by nature (phýsei poli-
tikón zôon, Politics, book I, 1253a3). Humans can achieve their nature only in the
city, the pólis, where they can use their mind and their ability to speak. Animals
build groups only for the organization of their lives, not for cultural purposes.
Christian Humanism: An Alternative Concept of Humanism 91
As far as humans are concerned, animals lack a sense of beauty, for they enjoy
it without any interest, according to Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of
Judgment (1790, 1st part, §§ 5 & 6). Darwin, to come back to him, did not want to
explain sources of life as a whole, what he wanted to show is that there are natural
developments, which include human beings. He could not prove that there is a
continual development of animals and humans, going back to one form of being
as a starting point for both. So what Darwin wanted to explain is that there is an
evolution within natural processes; species are not fixed.
The Catholic Church has never condemned Darwin or his theory. In 1950,
Pope Pius XII underlines in his encyclical Humani generis (5, 6 & 35–37) that
Darwin has given a hypothesis on natural processes in his theory, but not a full
explanation of human evolution, which is not continual. Darwin’s theory of evolu-
tion is a scientific theory and should be treated as such. It should not be abused
as an ideology with monistic and pantheistic tendencies, as evolutionism. Later
popes, like John Paul II and Benedict XVI, confirmed this position.
Still, certain gaps remain in the anthropogenesis, some “missing links”. These
gaps can possibly be a metaphor for openness. If humans understand themselves
as creatures, then human openness is directed, directed to the transcendent, to
God. Therefore, this openness can be defined as creatureliness, as the philosopher
Max Scheler did in his book The Human Place in the Cosmos (1928). To be a crea-
ture does not mean to be determined. Humans are free. God wants humans to
be free. They can decide according to their free will, which is based on the good
will, in the sense of Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
(1785, 3rd part). To decide on anything has nothing to do with determination. To
understand herself or himself as a creature of God does not mean to be un-free
or to be inferior to others.
Charles Darwin and Philosophy

In this context, it is important to have a look on the philosophical systems in the
19th and 20th centuries, which are in a certain way influenced by Darwin’s theory:
the philosophy of existence and existentialism. In existentialism, humans have
to give essence or sense to their lives. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, the human
being is existent, before she or he can give essence to her or his life. Existence
comes before essence in human life. Therefore, humans are forced to give es-
sence to their lives, like Sartre points out. Human existence is confronted with
absolute nothingness. This nothingness can be a hidden transcendence or the
absolute nothingness, which Friedrich Nietzsche has in mind, when he speaks of
nihilism. But this nihilism has to be defeated. Over-humans or over-beings have
to fill the metaphysical gap that has appeared after the death of God with their
being and with their values. Also, Heidegger in his middle and late works sees
the sharp difference between nothingness and being. Humans are held in noth-
ingness by their existence. Before Nietzsche and Heidegger, Soeren Kierkegaard
gains a way out of this absolute nothingness in his turn toward God, as the result
of the longing for a life in abundance and without any moral restrictions. The
feeling of absolute nothingness has its reason in desperation, as Kierkegaard has
written in his The Sickness unto Death (1849). But despair and religious faith are
opposites. Faith defeats despair. Humans have to be authentic in their relation to
God. Therefore, Kierkegaard is on his way to Christian existentialism, a pre-form
of Christian humanism.
Christian Existentialism: Maurice Blondel and Gabriel Marcel

The works of Maurice Blondel and Gabriel Marcel show clearly that there is also
a Christian existentialism: Humans have to give essence to their lives, but there
is a best possible direction, the direction toward God as the highest human aim
and as the creator of everything and everyone. But, Christian existentialism is in
danger of falling into pure personalism.
Maurice Blondel was a French philosopher, orientated to Hegel. His main work
is his thesis L’action (The Action) of 1893, and he later published L’esprit chrétien
(The Christian Spirit) in 1946. By acting, people make a foundation for their ex-
istence. They give an outline to their being by their actions, and they are forced
by nature to act. This does not mean that people find their aim in blind action,
without regarding the transcendental. Each action is practice, and has to have an
aim, otherwise it is only a doing. In regarding these aims, humans realize that the
highest orientation ends in God. Each aim has to be orientated to a higher aim,
and to God. This should be the spirit of any human practice. Otherwise, human
practices are not fulfilled.
Gabriel Marcel, also a French philosopher, who authored about 30 plays, has
written the books: Homo viator (1945) and The Metaphysical Journal. 1914–23
(1927). In his book Homo viator, he shows that people are on their way in life, but
in communion. They are not the aims for themselves, and, what is more impor-
tant, people are aware that there is a starting- point and an end-point of worldly
life, like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin points out with his Alpha-point and Omega-
point. At the end-point of worldly life, the eternal existence of the human soul
becomes clear. This transcendental side of human life can only be discovered by
accepting each other as subjects, not only as objects; like Immanuel Kant teaches
us in the second formulation of his categorical imperativein the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals (1785, 1st & 2nd part) and in the Critique of Practical Reason
(1788, I 1, §§ 1 & 4). Objectivization in this way means that it degrades humans
in an effective way, because the human is stripped of the only thing that is worthy
to her or him. The transcendent orientation of humans, which is common to all
people, is also a central thought of the Metaphysical Diary. Materialism and tech-
nology are enemies of the human subject, because both prevent human subjects
from being or becoming a subject. Materialism and technology force humans to
a wrong objectivity, which alienates the human from herself and himself.
Christian Humanism: Jacques Maritain

The great French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, who influenced very
much Neo-Thomism, the re-establishment of St Thomas Aquinas’ thinking, has
written a book titled Humanisme intégral (1936), in English translation Integral
Humanism or True Humanism (1970). In this book, Maritain shows that human-
ism is possible with a Christian face.
This new humanism, which has in it nothing in common with bourgeois hu-
manism, and is all the more human since is does not worship man, but has a real
and effective respect for human dignity and for the rights of human personality,
I see as directed toward a socio-temporal realisation of that evangelical concern
for humanity which ought not to exist only in the spiritual order, but to become
incarnate; and toward the ideal of a true brotherhood among men.1
In this book, Maritain shows that atheism cannot be lived.2 Atheism expresses
itself by anthropocentrism, which leads to a “tragedy of humanism”3 according
to Maritain. Furthermore, Maritain makes clear that humans are related to the
transcendent. He seeks for “the concrete position of the creature before God.”4
The transcendent is for Maritain with no doubt the Christian God. He is the Trin-
ity and He is the God of Love, and, what is more, Love itself, as the Letter of St John
teaches us (1st John 4, 8 & 16). Human nature gives people this transcendental
orientation. Christian humanism also leads to a new way of living and practic-
ing.5 Similar to Maurice Blondel, Maritain let human action play a central role
in his anthropological concept. The basis of human life and ethics is natural law.
Secular humanism does not respect the whole human as a person. What is not
1 Maritain 1970, xvi–xvii.

2 See Maritain 1970, 52–53.
3 Maritain 1970, 20. See also 19–20.
4 Maritain 1970, 2.
5 See Maritain 1970, 295–304.
integrated into secular humanism is the religious nature of humans.6 Integral

humanism includes human spirituality as Christian spirituality. The concept of
integral humanism, according to Maritain, wants to influence politics and society
by Christianity. Humans of different positions can work together on a common
goal. This is the way to bring Christian thoughts into politics and policy7, like
the Christian Democratic movement wants to achieve. A good political and social
future based on a “‘new Christendom’”8 was important for Maritain in the mid
1930s, an age of huge influence by totalitarian ideologies, communism, fascism,
and national-socialism. All totalitarian systems wanted to create a new human.
Therefore, Maritain wanted to establish a real “new human” according to Christian
teachings and to the Christian image of the human being. In a similar way like
Maritain, the Roman Catholic convert Gilbert K. Chesterton in Eugenics and other
Evils (1917), as well as in The Everlasting Man (1925), and the Anglican convert
Clive S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man (1943) defend the Christian concept of
the human.
Natural Teleology
If there is teleology in nature, a natural teleology, then the highest goal of humans
is their creator, who is God. He is the first principle, like Aristotle tells us in the
12th book of his Metaphysics. If humans want to develop their nature and their
possibilities, then they should be orientated toward God as their creator, who
gives them the possibility and the freedom to practice as they want to, in order to
have a successful and moral life. The German contemporary philosopher Robert
Spaemann emphasizes this natural teleology that is characteristic for humans. If
people want to practice successfully, then they should take this natural teleology
seriously:
But once we have to do with teleological structures, we encounter ‘malfunction’, the failure
to accomplish ends, and from that point on nature is in principle relevant to morality.9
Further:
The story of how the person was demolished is the story of the demolition of life – which,
again, is all one with the demolition of natural teleology.10
6 See Maritain 1970, 143–144.

7 See Maritain 1970, 256–259 and 264–265.
8 Maritain 1970, e. g., 1.
9 Spaemann 2006, 98.
10 Spaemann 2006, 136.
By these arguments, Spaemann gives a foundation to Christian humanism in his

book Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’ (2006)11. In this
work, he emphasizes that humans can only accept each other as persons. A person
cannot be defined by another person, but only be accepted. This acceptance can
only be valid, if they accept each other in coming from the transcendent, from
God. Romano Guardini, the Italian-German philosopher of religion, explained
a similar thought in his essay The Acceptance of One-self (1959). This concept of
person is the basis of Christian humanism, which gives essence to humans with
respect to the transcendent God.
The transcendent does not limit freedom for humans, as pointed out before,
because humans have to give themselves essence in freedom, which does also
mean that humans can be unsuccessful in their lives. If one takes freedom seri-
ously, then this does also include failing in life. Often, people are not properly
aware of their freedom. Freedom does not mean to be independent from every-
thing.12 That is absolutely impossible. People must always practice in a context,
in a framework. But, they have got the possibility to choose how to act and what
practice is the best at a certain moment. On the other hand, people feel restricted
by the rules of the church or by the law with a divine origin. On the one hand
freedom seems to be less, but on the other hand freedom is too great.
Conclusion
To come to the two hypotheses of the beginning: The first one was that the human
being is not a closed system in itself. There is a certain kind of openness in every
human. And the second was that there is a naturalistic humanism and a Christian
humanism as well. Christian humanism is a middle way between pure materialistic
humanism, based on a monism (only one material substance exists, as Giordano
Bruno, Baruch de Spinoza and others presume), and a mysticism without any
rational foundation.
The answer has to be found in the concept of the person, beginning with
Boethius and St Thomas Aquinas. Also, Robert Spaemann refers to that con-
cept. The Christian concept of the person as an “image of God”, as an imago Dei,
revealed in Christ underlines the openness of human beings and the rational
foundation of Christian humanism in human nature. Humans are wounded by
sin, based on the Original Sin. They find redemption through Christ in his sacri-
fication on the cross and they are called to eternal life in communion with God,
11 See Spaemann 2006, esp. 96, 98 and 136–137.

12 See Maritain 1970, 171–173.
the Holy Trinity, by following Christ. The sharp difference between Christian
humanism and the thoughts of Charles Darwin has its origin in the false idea of
a “blind” teleology. Darwin has only discovered evolution as a natural and natu-
ralistic process, without a serious teleological development toward an aim, e. g.,
the growing of a plant. The DNA molecule can be considered to be the “code” of
this natural teleology. In the DNA, all natural processes are found and preformed.
Christian humanism, in contrast, has a clear aim in God. If evolution is considered
to be a real teleological process, then one could interpret evolution as an effect of
divine creation. Again Robert Spaemann writes:
“The inspiration for this came from Christian theology. The argument we have seen de-
veloped by many twentieth-century authors: orientation to an end means anticipation,
but anticipation implies consciousness. The aim was not the arrow’s but the marksman’s.
Whenever we meet the phenomenon of something aimed, we must look out for what
aimed it. That there are structures of final causation in the world is the premise for a
proof of God’s existence […].”13
Christians and secular humanists react to the same reality, but in a different way.
Christians consider everything in the light of faith and in the presence of God.
So, Christian humanism is a kind of humanism with a real human face looking
up to the transcendent.
References
Blondel, M. (1984): Action: Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice,
trans. by O. Blanchette. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame.
Marcel, G. (1951): Homo viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, trans. by
E. Craufurd. Gollancz, London.
Maritain, J. (1970): True Humanism, trans. by M. R. Adamson. Greenwood Press,
Westport.
Scheler, M. (2009): The Human Place in the Cosmos, trans. by M. S. Frings, Intro-
duction by E. Kelly. Northwestern University Press, Evanston.
Spaemann, R. (2006): Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Some-
thing’, trans. by O. O’Donovan. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
13 Spaemann 2006, 136.

Ivan Vuković
University of Belgrade
Kant’s Two Conceptions of Humanity
We remember Kant for his radical critique of metaphysics, despotism, church and
aristocracy, and as a visionary of a rational humanity that actively seeks the politi-
cal form that could protect the inborn freedom of men and make sense of their
moral equality. We remember him as a groundbreaking philosopher who gave the
coup de graçe to an entire culture and layed grounds for a new era — our own time.
However, we seem to have forgotten that, at the beginning of his career, Kant
himself was immersed into a metaphysical picture of the world with the very
same rational theology, cosmology, and psychology that he later rejected as self-
contradictory and generally flawed. This neglect seems to be sufficiently justified
by Kant’s own silent rejection of his early theories. In this paper, however, I will
try to prove the contrary. I will argue that Kant’s rejection was not a complete
one, and that our neglect, therefore, cannot be fully justified. I will offer a short
reconstruction of Kant’s early philosophy and try to show how it influenced his
critical conceptions. My first point will be that Kant at first attributed to God the
formative capacities with which he endowed man in his Critiques. My second
point will be that his early conception of God’s creation influenced his later ideas
on human creation. I will conclude this paper by a short comment on the meaning
of the change that occured in Kant’s philosophy.
The Early Conception

In papers and books that he wrote as a young man, Immanuel Kant tried to unite
Newtonian physics and Leibnitzean metaphysics. During the process, he devel-
oped a theology, a rudimentary anthropology, a cosmology, a cosmogony and an
accompanying ontology.1 He described God as an amateur of science who is using
Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics to create a material universe for all
1 Kant developed his theological ideas in the Introduction to his Universal Natural His-
tory and Theory of the Heavens (1755), and in The Only Possible Argument in Support
of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763). He exposed his cosmology in the
first part, and his cosmogony in the second part of the Universal Natural History. His
early ontology, that merged Leibniz’s monads with Newton’s atoms, is contained in the
Physical Monadology that was published in 1756.
98 Ivan Vuković
possible beings to live in and thus to create the best of all possible worlds. As for
man, he attributed him the theoretical task of understanding God’s intentions by
exploring the physical world. The proper theory of the cosmos, Kant believed,
should show that God’s intentions were just and should convince humanity to
accept his will.
According to Kant’s cosmological hypothesis, which latter proved to be true
and earned him a place in the history of astronomy, the universe doesn’t have the
shape of a sphere but one of a disc. According to his cosmogonical theory, the
universe got this shape in a mechanical way, through the antagonistic interaction
of its elementary particles, determined by the laws of Newtonian physics. Taken
together, the hypothesis and the theory depict the universe as a giant system of
solar systems whose fractal structure is in a process of everlasting spatial expan-
sion. Although particular systems encounter occasional revolutions, the expan-
sion of the general order is not stopped because it takes less time for a particular
system to be rebuilt in the same space, then for it to be destroyed when its planets
fall into its sun (Kant 1755a, I, 319).2
As for living creatures that inhabit every planet, Kant thought that God decided
to create every possible kind and arranged things in such a way that different
kinds emerge during different periods of natural history (Kant 1755a, I, 338). In
this temporalized chain of being3, man occupies a middle position. Half animal,
half rational, his destiny is to progress in the direction of rationality. In a very
short final chapter of the Universal Natural History, entitled „Conjectures on the
Afterlife“ (Kant 1755a, I, 367), Kant imagined how rational souls, devoted to the
study of nature, and through nature to the study of God, reappear on other planets
after the end of their terrestrial life. Each time, speculated Kant, they move to a
planet that is one step further from the sun of their system, and one step further
from the central cosmic sun. On those planets, they acquire new bodies made
of matter that is less rough, since it is less subject to the heat of the sun. In those
bodies, scientifically-minded souls can think faster and see further and, as a result,
penetrate deeper into the secrets of nature. In a way, as they fly through the uni-
verse, souls that were once human witness the creation of the cosmic order. Once
they are sufficiently convinced that the intentions that God had when he created it
were good and just, once their anger caused by the existence of individual deaths
and destructive earthquakes has disappeared, their maker relives them from the
2 All references to Kant’s work are made from the Akademieausgabe with volume and
page numbers.
3 I owe this formulation to Arthur O. Lovejoy (Lovejoy, 1964, p. 243).
Kant’s Two Conceptions of Humanity 99
burden of corporeal existence and lifts them up to his throne, to enjoy with him
for eternity the spectacle of the ongoing creation (Kant, 1755a, I, 322.).
Kant further speculated that when he was creating such a world, God had an
all-embracing concept in his mind, which contained the concepts of all inert and
living beings he decided to create, and a master plan of their mutually useful re-
lations (Kant 1755b, I, 413).4 After creation, this concept became the objective
intellectual structure of reality and the starting point of Kant’s favorite physic-
theological argument that deduces the existence of God from the existence of
useful relations among creatures. If we would like to connect these ideas with his
earliest ones, then we could say that Kant thought that this divine concept became
the structure of the universe through the process of quasi-mechanical translation
of conceptual relations into spatial ones, according to the law of gravity that served
as a rule of translation or, as Kant would later put it, its scheme (Kant, 1746, I, 24).
Unlike Newton, Kant attributed universal validity to the law of gravity and the
general laws of motion.5 Newton claimed that an omnipotent God should be able
to prescribe different laws to different parts of the universe, and he limited the
validity of his theory to our own solar system (Newton 1952, Query XXXI). Kant,
on the other hand, followed Leibnitz and thought that God is above all perfectly
rational and wise, and that his creation therefore must be structurally homog-
enous, predictable and fully comprehensible. The universality of natural laws,
in Kant’s early philosophy, is a direct consequence of Gods supreme rationality.
When it comes to space itself, the history of Kant’s doubts about its nature is
well known. In his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, however,
he alluded several times6 to the conception he discovered reading Newton, who
took it from Henry Moore. According to Moore’s conception, space is a sensorium
dei — a place of presence of the divine mind in the world, and a medium of its
encounter with its material creations that allows Him to perceive them by way
of touching them.
4 A New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge, part III, Proposition
XIII, Demonstration.
5 This universalization was made in two steps. In the first part of the Universal Natural
History, Kant ascribed the geometrical shape of our solar system to every other system.
In the second part, he supposed that the shape of our system evolved through move-
ments determined by Newton’s laws, and then, in the seventh chapter of the second
part, he concluded that the entire heavenly system evolved in the same way.
6 For example „die leeren Raum, diesen unendlichen Umfang der göttlichen Gegenwart“
(Kant 1755a, AA I, p. 306), and later in the same chapter.
100 Ivan Vuković
The Late Conception

After a long series of reflections, Kant decided to make a big ménage of his theories
and produced a series of books that became known as his „critical philosophy“.
In those works, he attributed to the human mind the organizational or formative
faculties that he initially endowed in God’s mind: the conceptual structure of the
experienced world became the product of the human mind; space ceased to be the
sensorium dei and, together with time, they became the forms of human perception;
Newtonian physics was no longer the science that God used to create the world,
and became a human science is not destined to help the organization of human
perceptions and, further, the organization of the movements of the human body.7
The price for this activation of the faculties of the human mind was the limitation
of human knowledge: since he became the creator of the frames for the order of the
universe, man was no longer able to grasp the very frames God himself imposed
on it, which meant that he wasn’t able to seize the world as it is and God’s thoughts
exteriorized in it. The path of physical theology closed its doors to humanity.
Instead, however, Kant proposed a more direct way toward God — the path of
moral, political, and juridical practice. In several works devoted to those issues,
he described man as a being of practical rationality who is able to overcome the
animal part of its nature through moral action. The supreme principle he has as his
guide is the principle of universality, described as „wholly“ (Kant 1788, V, 87) and
as a „heavenly voice“ (Kant 1788, V, 35), the same one God used while choosing
the laws of nature in Kant’s early work. Guided by this principle, man is destined
to cover the entire Earth with a system of republican institutions whose fractality
resembles the structure of the universe depicted in the Universal Natural History
and Theory of the Heavens. He is a demiurge, a Weltbaumeister (Kant 1787, III,
417), who cannot create matter but can organize it, and whose task it is to help
God finish his work by imposing order to his own part of the universe.
The history of his attempts, Kant explained in the „Idea for a Universal History
of Mankind from a Cosmopolitan Point of View“, is an antagonistic, quasi-mechan-
ical process, driven by human unsocial sociability and occasionally interrupted by
political revolutions, and it closely resembles the creation of the order of the
universe.
7 Claims about the conceptual structure of reality were developed in the Transcendental
Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason; claims about space can be found in the “Tran-
scendental Aesthetic”, but also in Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation; the attempt to link the
basic concepts of Newtonian physics with the features of the transcendental subject
can be found in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science from 1786.
Kant’s Two Conceptions of Humanity 101
The Meaning of the Transformation

Let me recapitulate. In his early philosophy, Kant told us that theoretical contem-
plation is the highest form of life rational beings such as humans can live, but he
assigned an existential purpose to theory: acquiring knowledge about the universe
should make us understand the goodness of its creator and reunite us with him,
taking us back to the source of our existence. In his critical philosophy, he told
us that the practical life of moral, legal and political action is the highest form of
life that can approach us to our creator. How did this transformation occur? The
main reasons for change were of an epistemological nature: it was Kant’s dwelling
on the nature of space and, later, on the relation between spatial and conceptual
relations that made him adopt the position of transcendental idealism. However,
the scope and the meaning of this transformation widely superseded the field of
epistemology.
According to the great Romanian historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, a similar
change occurs in every religious culture that starts with the interest in heavenly
scenery and at a certain point in its history orients itself towards more wordly
affairs (Eliade 1959, 125). If my reconstruction is correct, the transformation
of Kant’s thought is a philosophical reflexion of such a change in the culture of
European societies that happened in the second part of the 18th century.
References
Eliade, M. (1959): The Sacred and the Profane, A Harvest Book, Harcourt,
Brace&World Inc., New York, 125.
Kant, Immanuel (1746): Gedanken von der Wahren Schätzung der Lebendigen
Kräfte, Akademieausgabe Gesammelten Werken von Immanuel Kant, Bd. I,
Berlin 1900ff.
Kant, Immanuel (1755a): Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels,
Akademieausgabe Gesammelten Werken von Immanuel Kant, Bd. I Berlin
1900ff.
Kant, Immanuel (1755b): Principorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova
dilucidatio, Akademieausgabe Gesammelten Werken von Immanuel Kant,
Bd. I, Berlin 1900ff.
Kant, Immanuel (1787): Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Akademieausgabe Gesam-
melten Werken von Immanuel Kant, Bd. III, Berlin 1900ff.
Kant, Immanuel (1788): Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Akademieausgabe Gesam-
melten Werken von Immanuel Kant, Bd. V, Berlin 1900ff.
102 Ivan Vuković
Newton, Isaak (1952): Optics, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Chicago—London—

Toronto.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1964): The Great Chain of Being, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.
Drago Đurić
Darwin’s Naturalization of Ethics
Historical Place of the Theory of Evolution

„Man is a part of nature“. This is today almost part of the folk psychology, a usual
point of view. As far as the traditions of philosophy and science are concerned,
however, Greek atomists were the first to take this stand. But back then, as in
European modern times, that view was more of a bare metaphysical claim, a fruit
of speculation, without devised argumentation or explanation based on scientific
methodology and facts. Many historians of thought, for example, feel obligated
to remind us of Spinoza and his thesis that „it is impossible, that man should not
be a part of Nature“ (Spinoza 1997, part 4, prop. IV), as well as of his criticism of
teleology, especially the way he elaborated it in the Appendix to the first part of
his Ethics, where he writes that „there is no need to show to at length, that nature
has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments“
(Spinoza 1997, part 1, Appendix). It wasn’t until the naturalists of the 19th century
that someone took an effort to systematically support that thesis. One of the major
preconditions for that was the sudden development of the natural sciences.
At the turn of the 18th century, great effort was invested into the description and
classification of natural phenomena, especially those of organic nature. It seemed
impossible to many, though, that biology would ever accomplish what physics
already appeared to have done successfully. Even Kant, for example, didn’t believe
that a „Newton“ would emerge who would be able to explain the organic world
through the laws of nature—for example, the „creation (Erzeugung)” of a leaf of
grass.“ (Kant 1977, B 338/A 334) Note that Darwin himself, as we will show later,
didn’t think he could explain the origin and early emergence of life, but only its
diversification—the origin of species through natural selection.
Ernst Haeckel was among the first to claim that the „new Newton“ had ap-
peared after all, in the shape of Charles Darwin. Since then, the bulk of philoso-
phers and scientists have valued highly Darwin’s theory of the evolution of the
organic world through natural selection. Karl Marx wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle,
after On the Origin of Species was published in 1859: „Darwin’s work is most
important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science
for the historical class struggle. One does, of course, have to put up with the
clumsy English style of argument. Despite all shortcomings, it is here that, for
104 Drago Đurić
the first time, ‘teleology’ in natural science is not only dealt a mortal blow but its
rational meaning is empirically explained.” (Marx, Letter to Lasalle January 16.,
1861) According to Sigmund Freud, Darwin is not a „new Newton“, but the „new
Copernicus“, since like Copernicus, who had established that the Earth is not a
center of the Universe but merely a part of it, Darwin showed that the human
species doesn’t hold a privileged position in creation, since it originated from
the animal kingdom. The third major breakthrough, of course, Freud ascribed
to himself.
Probably the highest praise for Darwin’s theory was made by Daniel Dennett
who wrote: „If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever
had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a
single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life,
meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mecha-
nism and physical law.“ (Dennett 1995, 21) On the same page, besides stating
that Darwin’s idea is wonderful and dangerous, Dennett wrote that it represents
a scientific and a philosophical revolution, and that one revolution wouldn’t be
possible without the other. Aside from his judgment about the place of Darwin’s
idea in the general history of ideas, which is always hard and unrewarding to sup-
port, the rest of Dennett’s statement seems quite convincing. One could argue that
certain principles and models of thought developed by philosophy had influenced
Darwin to formulate his theory, but tracing those influences would be difficult
and complicated. According to Dennett, Darwin’s theory is „a universal acid: it
eats trough just about every traditional concept“.
Darwin’s Approach to Science

In strong contrast to such high praises for his theory by significant thinkers,
there is Darwin’s extreme restraint in the presentation and promotion of that
idea. Although being aware of his theory’s worth, Darwin used to judge its value
without pomp, without unbalanced enthusiasm and exaltation, so common for
the majority of philosophers and scientists of modern times.
Let us document Darwin’s modesty in self-evaluation. He is full of respect to-
ward his predecessors. Credits to other scientists’ contributions in interpreting
some significant problems connected to certain segments of the theory of evolution
are woven through Darwin’s entire work. He elaborated the role of his predecessors
in formulating the theory perhaps most explicitly, and certainly most concisely, in
the short chapter titled An Historical Sketch printed in the second edition of On
the Origin of Species. (Darwin 1962, 15–24) Even when he showed proofs for his
point of view quite clearly, and proved his opposition wrong convincingly, his tone
Darwin’s Naturalization of Ethics 105
was not for a moment triumphant. Moreover, he was almost never categorical in
his claims.
In spite of thorough and detailed argumentation, Darwin’s tone is hypothetical
in many places. Here are some citations to illustrate this. In his The Descent of
Man, for example, he wrote:
„In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms, is as
hopeless an enquiry as how life first originated. These are problems for the distant future,
if they are ever to be solved by man.” (Darwin 1871, 36)
At the beginning of his preface to the second edition (1874), he wrote that he had
corrected many things according to the suggestions of his readers and to the latest
scientific research, while at the end he predicts that it is „probable or even certain“,
that many of his conclusions will eventually prove to be wrong. It is peculiar that
almost none of Darwin’s modesty and relaxed attitude survived in his passionate
and aggressive followers and opponents.
Because of everything said above, it is not easy to systematize what we can call
Darwin’s ethics. His elaboration of ethical problems has all of the above mentioned
characteristics. In the beginning of the chapter Moral Sense in his book The De-
scent of Man, he says: „This great question has been discussed by many writers
of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it is the impossibility
of here passing it over, and because, as far as I know, no one has approached it
exclusively from the side of natural history.“ (Darwin 1871, 71)
Darwin’s Evolutionary Approach to the Question of

Moral Sense
Right at the beginning, we have to keep in mind a few assumptions implied in
Darwin’s approach to the question of moral sense. As we have stated before, he
didn’t know and didn’t discuss the origin of life, like he didn’t know and didn’t
discuss the origin of intelligence. He had left those matters to future research-
ers, with little hope for their success. One can say with much confidence that he
didn’t discuss the origin of a moral sense, as well. He is interested, above all, in its
preservation, development and mode of functioning. Darwin himself explained
his method at the very beginning. He took the task to apply his theory of evolu-
tion, developed in On the Origin of Species, to man. While fulfilling that task, as
he wrote in the above cited work, he couldn’t, because of its role in evolution,
neglect the question of morality.
Darwin presumed that a moral sense or conscience is the single most sig-
nificant difference between humans and the lower animals. But, of what kind
106 Drago Đurić
is this difference? He doesn’t regard this difference, however, as a difference of

kind, but as a difference of degree. As a matter of fact, Darwin specifically stated:
„Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great
as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind.“ (Darwin 1871, 105) If man
is a part of nature, then he is a part of nature in a matter of the moral sense as
well. A consistent application of the evolutionary method should show, hence,
that the moral sense has continuously evolved from lower animals to humans.
On the other hand, the researching for a moral sense in lower animals can show
us the true basis of a moral sense in humans. This basis is of the same kind, it only
evolved in degree. However, it could be more easily analyzed in its elementary
condition. Because of that, Darwin says:
„The investigation possesses, also, some independent interest, as an attempt to see how
far the study of the lower animals can throw light on one of the highest psychical faculties
of man.“ (Darwin 1871, 71)
Darwin searches further, not for the way a moral sense and conscience emerged,
but for those preconditions for its existence and preservation, and for the spot
in which its presence in its simplest form can be detected. While characterizing
his thesis at the beginning, Darwin was more like a patient scientist, and more
hypothetical than resolute. He wrote:
„The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any
animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a
moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well devel-
oped, as in man.“ (Darwin 1871, 71–72)
Darwin developed this basic thesis through four observations important for the
preservation and evolution of a moral sense.
1. The fact that animals feel pleasure in company, that they have a certain degree
of sympathy for members of a group, and that they do favors to one another
is significant. All these phenomena are founded, according to Darwin, on the
social instinct. Here Darwin already, politely, takes a stand opposite to the one
taken by John Steward Mill. Namely in his work Utilitarianism, Mill tried to
determine the neutrality of moral feelings, saying that „if, as is my own belief,
the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, [then] they are not for that rea-
son the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to reason […], though these
are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our nature“.
(Mill 1980, 28)
This is not the place to discuss if Mill’s analogy, or his attempt to define neu-
trality, is good. Anyway, Darwin deems that the root of human morality lies
in social instincts. Instincts are innate or inherited. Darwin bases his line
of argument on the fact that „it can hardly be disputed that the social feel-
ings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they
not be so in man?“ (Darwin 1871, 71)1 Naturally, analogy has sense only if
we suppose some common moral traits for man and the lower animals.2
Hume had stated earlier that some animals have properties characteristic for
morality. Regarding the presence of morality, Hume, like Darwin, makes the
difference between our species and lower animals one of degree only. According
to Hume, „every animal has sense and appetite and will, that is, every animal
must be susceptible of all the same virtues and vices, for which we ascribe praise
and blame to human creatures.“ (Hume 1966, 176)
The most rudimentary advent of a moral sense Darwin illustrates by the be-
havior of lower animals: in caring for young offspring, in a feeling of sympathy
for members of the immediate and wider community. Social instincts are, for
example, present in birds (their offspring cannot survive without parental so-
cial instincts), but not in amoebas. At the earlier stages of evolutionary history,
parental responsibilities are unnecessary (for example, in living beings which
reproduce by division).
2. With the development of higher mind faculties (intelligence), human beings
acquired the capacity to reflect on their own past actions. Because of that,
according to Darwin, conscience had developed which became a monitor of
these actions. He particularly emphasized the importance of memory through
which „images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing
through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which
invariably results […] from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it
was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded
to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature,
nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression.“ (Darwin 1871, 72)
1 Ever since Lamarck, a discussion has developed about the relationship between in-
nate, i.e., inheritable, and acquired, i.e., learned, behaviors. Lamarck was too much of
an optimist regarding the inheritance of acquired behaviors, while Darwin was very
cautious. Modern aspects of this discussion are clearly elaborated by David Papineau,
on the example of the so-called Baldwin effect (see: Papineau 2006, 40–60).
2 Today, this discussion essentially revolves around the dilemma whether some acquired
or learnt moral traits could be inherited. Some authors are speaking of a so-called
genetic and cultural co-evolution. The most common interpretation model of this co-
evolution is based on the idea of Richard Dawkins, who distinguishes between genes as
units of natural evolution, and memes as units of cultural evolution. (Dawkins, 1989)
108 Drago Đurić
In this matter, as well, Hume had a point of view similar to Darwin’s, so much so
that this concept of morality is often rightfully dubbed the Humean-Darwinian
ethics. The presence of intelligence is not the condition for the appearance of a
moral sense or social instincts. The fact that lower animals don’t have a higher
degree of reason doesn’t mean that they have no morality. Reason, according
to Hume, cannot produce anything, because it is a passive and not an active
power. The want of a sufficient degree of reason by animals „may hinder them
from perceiving the duties and obligations of morality, but can never hinder
these duties from existing; since they must antecedently exist, in order to their
being perceived.“ (Hume 1966, 176)3 Darwin’s standpoint is, as we will see,
almost the same. In every case, according to Darwin, social instincts are dif-
ferent from other instincts because they are „enduring and always present“.
3. Darwin also emphasizes the role of common opinion in the shaping of a moral
sense. The inception of speech made this possible. Nevertheless, though common
opinion has a significant role, since it expresses the will of the community and
exerts social pressure, directing the way members of a community should act
for the common good, at the basis of our approval or disapproval of our mates
lays sympathy. It is, according to Darwin, the cornerstone of social instinct.
4. At the end, Darwin focuses on the influence of habit in guiding the conduct of
members of a society. All previous causes, including sympathy, are additionally
amplified by habit.
Moral Sense by Humans and Lower Animals

Darwin was unusually indecisive about the nature of the difference in the moral
sense of man and lower animals. Although he, as we have already said, thinks that
this difference is a difference in degree and not in kind, and on that assumption
bases his analysis. He however first of all says that he didn’t mean „to maintain
that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as ac-
tive and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral
sense as ours.“ (Darwin 1871, 73) Therefore, an animal has a moral sense, but
not „exactly same […] as ours“, even if it has „intellectual faculties […] as highly
developed as in man“.
Later, in the same text, Darwin claims something what looks like a contradic-
tion. What is it? Moral action can be performed only by a moral being. Though
3 On the same page, Hume writes: “All the difference is, that our superior reason may
serve to discover the vice or virtue, and by that means may augment the blame or
praise”. This is also very close to Darwin’s point of view.
animals „may be seen doubting between opposed instincts, as in rescuing their

offspring or comrades from danger; yet their actions, though done for the good
of others, are not called moral.“ (Darwin 1871, 88) Why? Besides that, Darwin
claims that humans, if they did the same without deliberation or hesitation, which
would be difficult to differentiate from instinct, would nevertheless be regarded as
moral beings. As these actions we cannot distinguish by motives, he says that we
should rank as moral the actions „performed by a moral being“. What is a moral
being? Darwin provides something like a definition by saying:
„A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives,
and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the
lower animals have this capacity“. (Darwin 1871, 88)
According to Darwin, even if some animals have the capacity to deliberate, hesitate
and doubt, we cannot call their actions moral. It seems that for man, he supposes
some higher degree or different properties of intelligence, because deliberation,
hesitation and doubting are not sufficient for a comparison of „past and future
actions and motives“ and for „approving or disapproving“ of them. If it is so, then
this difference in intelligence between humans and lower animals is not a differ-
ence in degree, but a difference of kind. But this is a question of minor importance.
Essentially, it doesn’t violate Darwin’s general theoretical assumption and it could
be resolved within it, with certain corrections.
Darwin’s Ethical Naturalism

Darwin and his theory were under the great influence of Hume’s philosophical
naturalism. It is very well known that he systematically read Hume’s philosophy.
Hume firmly believed that moral values are the product of certain natural hu-
man desires. Providing to some degree a modified Aristotelian way of reasoning,
Hume argued that human passions set the ends or goals to behavior. At this point
of view, passions determine what is desirable or valuable for people. Hume thinks
that humans have natural dispositions to act „in the common good“. According to
that, Mackie, for example, says that „it is not for nothing that his work is entitled
A Treatise of Human Nature, and subtitled, An attempt to introduce the experimen-
tal method of reasoning into moral subjects; it is an attempt to study and explain
moral phenomena (as well as human knowledge and emotions) in the same sort
of way in which Newton and his followers studied and explained the physical
world.“ (Mackie 1980, 6) From that point of view, Hume’s moral philosophy can
be considered along the direction of a suggestion that „moral philosophy should
begin with the investigation of the moral passions and, as such, should be seen as
a branch of biology, psychology or anthropology.“ (Curry 2006, 235)
110 Drago Đurić
As we have seen, Darwin attempts to investigate the question of a moral sense

and present it from „the side of natural history”. In Darwin’s time, the term history
and the term science were almost synonymous. Therefore, he provided us with
the scientific investigation of moral or ethical concepts.
For some interpretations, of greater importance is the question of Darwin’s
attitude toward central ethical concepts—the normative concepts. At the level of
so-called descriptive ethics, things are relatively clear. On this level, ethical beliefs
can be described as a result of evolution. From a point of view of survival, good is
what, through natural selection and adaptation, contributes to survival. Darwin
explains not how moral beliefs and behaviors emerged, but which conditions for
their emergence are necessary, the matter we have already discussed to a point,
and what is the destiny of groups and species that harbor moral beliefs.
In Darwin’s work, it is possible to find, explicitly or implicitly, his own moral
beliefs. He too, as other people, had moral beliefs. It is not of crucial importance,
as most of his interpreters believe, if he is under the influence of a kind hedonistic
utilitarianism, or in other words, if he thought that an action can be judged as good
if it leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, by either increasing
pleasure or decreasing pain. From the point of view of the theory of evolution,
his beliefs are the result of natural selection, as are the beliefs of other people that
are different from his. It is possible to conclude, of course, that the moral beliefs
advocated by Darwin intimately proved to be evolutionarily successful, but it is
not necessary. We cannot a priori exclude some kind of personal invention or
moral behavior which is not evolutionarily successful. Later contemplations and
investigations show that it was most probably so-called reciprocal altruism.4
When he, at the beginning of the chapter Moral Sense, spoke that a moral sense
or conscience „is the most noble of all attributes of man, leading him without a
moment’s hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow-creature; or after due de-
liberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in
some great cause“, he didn’t have to deduce that claim, specifically and indirectly,
from his evolutionary theory. The proof for that is a mere fact that individuals and
species with such moral beliefs are present today. These are products of natural se-
lection and they have survived as a result of a kind of moral sense of his ancestors.
However, humans, as well as some lower animals, even when they are not
under the practical pressure of real-time decision-making, are unable to predict
4 The problem of successful evolutionary strategies was particularly developed in the sec-
ond half of the 20th century, in the so-called evolutionary game theory. This topic was
most complexly elaborated on in: Axelrod, R. M. (2006) The Evolution of Cooperation,
Basic Books, New York.
the ultimate consequences of their own decisions. Sometimes we act without

hesitation, and sometimes after deliberation, but in both cases we cannot ignore
the „brute fact that we are all finite and forgetful“. (Dennett 1988, 123) As a result
of deliberation, we have a decision, not a detailed calculation. This has been often
used as an argument for the thesis that a great part of our capabilities for behavior
in specific situations is inherited, or based on habits. In everyday life, philosophers
and moral philosophers do so as well. They too have their own moral beliefs or
habits, and they too don’t make broad metaethical considerations before concrete
decisions or behaviors.
Darwin writes that a moral sense or conscience „is summed up in that short
but imperious word ought“. But is that Humian ought or Kantian duty something
supernatural, or is it a product of natural selection? It has been frequently asked
how evolutionary naturalism in ethics can resolve this Humian problem or how
it can justify the move from is to ought, as well as Moor’s problem of the natural-
istic fallacy? Can this theory bridge the gap between facts and values? A general
evolutionistic answer can be that: this „justification“ or „move“ is needless. From
this point of view of biological naturalism, there is no such gap. Actually, the
object of consideration is not a question of the philosophical definition of good,
as it is in Moore’s case.
None of these problems is an obstacle for a Darwinian scientific „meta-ethics“.
Values and oughts are products of evolution. These are the facts, as all other facts
of life. The solution for the naturalistic fallacy in ethics, considered not in Moore’s
way, but in a scientific sense, depends on a standpoint taken in general metaphys-
ics and the philosophy of mind. In evolutionary theory, there is a kind of biologi-
cal reductionism. Some authors think that at the base of the naturalistic fallacy,
considered in a broader sense, there is an implicit reliance on a so-called analytic/
synthetic distinction and that, by eliminating that distinction, Quine (1964, 20–46)
cleared the way for a naturalistic solution. (see: Casebeer 2003, 15–27) If analyti-
cal statements are not a priori statements which seem independent of empirical
experience, but represent solidified syntactical experience, then they are syntacti-
cal statements which, to put it vividly, became a part of our „nature“. If our moral
beliefs, and especially our basic social instincts, seem as something independent
from our experience, then they are the result of a long-time experience in terms
of natural selection.
The Darwinian theory of evolution is not teleological, because it has no final
ends or values. My thesis is that evolution as a general science or theory cannot
provide humans with norms of behavior or moral beliefs. As Darwin didn’t dis-
cuss how or when life, intelligence, or a moral sense emerged, he didn’t discuss
the purpose of evolution either. If one is allowed to say so, then evolution is a
112 Drago Đurić
theory and the science of process or of the middle. His theory provides the best
scientific explanation for the complexity of the biological kingdom, but not the
explanation for the beginning of the world itself and its complexity, in the way
of William Paley’s teleological argument for God’s existence does. Unusual for
his approach, Darwin without hesitation states that the main laws of biological
kingdom are „impressed on matter by the Creator“. At the end of On the Origin
of Species, Darwin sets the simplest forms of life which are created by God at the
beginning of all this complexity. Namely, there he says:
„There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.“ (Darwin 1962,
484–485) [Editors’ Note: This reference to the Creator was not Darwin’s original intent,
but it was added in later editions in order to appease his religious critics.]
I could agree that an „evolutionary moral naturalist […] is a kind of moral natu-
ralist who holds that the sort of scientifically respectable facts that ground moral
values and obligations are facts about natural selection.“ (Joyce 2006, 145)That
is the reason it seems to me that anything like prescriptive evolutionary ethics
is impossible. All previous attempts to establish it have failed. Most often, they
ended in making ideologies and violence over the theory of evolution. The theory
of biological evolution can only determine how morality emerged and what was
the effect of this, and to some degree predict the consequences of future behavior
based on certain moral beliefs, but it cannot prescribe general moral precepts.
However, can that make any ethical theory? The main concepts of Darwin’s theory
lead to some kind of moral skepticism.
References
Axelrod, R. (1984): The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, New York.
Casebeer, W. D. (2003): Natural Ethical Facts, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts.
Curry, O. (2006): Who’s Afraid of the Naturalistic Fallacy? Evolutionary Psychol-
ogy 4/2006.
Darwin, Ch. (1962): Origin of Species, Collier Books, New York.
Darwin, Ch. (1871): Descent of Man, John Murray, London.
Dawkins, R. (1989): The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dennett, D. (1995): Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, New York.
Dennett, D. (1988): The Moral First Aid Manual. In: Tanner Lectures on Human
Values, Vol. VIII (ed.) McMurrin, M. S, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Hume, D. (1966): A Treatise of Human Nature, Dent, London/Dutton New York.
Joyce, R. (2006): The Evolution of Morality, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Kant, I. (1977): Kritik der Urteilskraft, Werkausgabe Bd. X, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt
a/M.
Letters of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for 1860s. http://www.marxists.org/
archive/marx/letters/date/1860s.html.
Mackie, J. L. (1980): Hume’s Moral Theory, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Mill, J. S. (1980): Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Considerations on Representa-
tive Government, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, Melbourne and Toronto/
E. P. Dutton & Co Inc, New York.
Papineau, D. (2006): Social learning and the Baldwin effect. In: Evolution, Ration-
ality and Cognition (ed. Zilhão, A.), Routledge, London.
Quine, W. V. O. (1964): Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In: From a Logical Point of
view, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Spinoza, B. (1997): Ethica, MTSU Philosophy WebWorks, Hipertext Edition.
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Spinoza/ethica-front.html.
Una Popović
University of Novi Sad
Heidegger’s Transformation of Traditional

Concept of the Human Being
Regarding the question of humanism and posthumanism from a philosophical

point of view, one can turn to Heidegger as one of the most prominent philoso-
phers who offered an extraordinary perspective on a human being as such, that
is on understanding of what a human being is. This choice, however, presupposes
that the main theme itself, humanism and posthumanism, is approached in terms
of revealing some traditional ways of understanding the human being and the
human condition, that is, some new ways of conceiving them. This dialogue be-
tween old and new responses to the connection of these two concepts marks the
continuity expressed by the term ‘post’ - humanism.
As a philosopher who was very concerned with the history of philosophy, and,
of course, especially with concepts of history and time, Heidegger offers a unique
account of these problems. As a true historian of philosophy, he considered the tra-
ditional philosophical problems and gave some interpretations of various philoso-
phies, starting with his own philosophical views and developing them at the same
time. This aspect of his interpretations was one of the main motifs for discerning
them as well. However, Heidegger did offer a new conception of a human being
that marked his philosophy as a whole, and, in addition, marked the questioning
of metaphysics as the main philosophical discipline.
When speaking on Heidegger, it would be incorrect to say that he had a special
interest in studying the human being, that his philosophy was developed with a
wish to investigate only one discipline that would be concerned with human be-
ings, i.e., that he wanted to develop a philosophical anthropology. This was the
expectation that his friend and mentor, Edmund Husserl, had for him: he expected
that Heidegger, on the basis of phenomenology as their common ‘way of entrance’
into philosophy, which Husserl founded, would concentrate on the exploration of
the phenomenological way to investigate the human condition, on expanding phe-
nomenology as a method further on, revealing one of a few ‘regional ontologies’.1
1 See, von Hermann 1985, 16–20; for a more critical view on Heidegger’s interpretation
of Husserl’s stance toward the essence of a human being, i.e., as a subject, see, Carr
2002, 270–286.
116 Una Popović
Heidegger did not meet these expectations in the way they were formed and con-
ceived. He turned to philosophy understood as a fundamental ontology, and the
leading question about Being itself, i.e., Being as such in its meaning or sense
marked his complete work as a main theme. Phenomenology was accepted as the
method of philosophy, such a method that is in compliance with the very concept
of philosophy, with what it, as itself, demands.2
However, although philosophical anthropology is not to be ascribed to Hei-
degger, this does not mean that his attention was not brought to the human phe-
nomenon. On the contrary, his philosophy is often understood as a philosophy
of existence, similar to Kirkegaard’s or Sartre’s existentialism. The reason for this
lies mostly in the position that man, a human being, occupies in his philosophy,
especially in his main work Being and Time. This positioning of the human almost
goes along with Husserl’s expectations, but, as it is often the case with Heidegger,
these frames intended for his work are crucially changed with respect to his fun-
damentally changed position in philosophy as such. In his ambition to reveal,
describe and mark Being as such, Heidegger argues that a man as a being is the
only being that is attuned and opened to understand Being as such (Heidegger
1967, 12).3 This means that humans as such have the opportunity to understand -
first to understand themselves in what they are (we use this term here, although
Heidegger would insist on a formulation of who we are), and second that this kind
of understanding is not an ordinary way of understanding, but that it refers back
to the very structure of our being. This characteristic is found only in humans,
while the other beings are not in a position to be aware of themselves in a similar
way. However, the reference back to the structure of our own being opens a new
register for philosophy: it is formal and universal, although it stands on the basis of
concrete being. This new realm was the main goal for Heidegger, and only in this
perspective does the human being occupy the central position in his philosophy.4
In this small description of the crucial characteristic a human being, we can
easily recognize one of the most important themes concerning the understanding
2 „Die Philosophie als Urwissenschaft ist der phänomenologischen Methode verp-

flichtet, jedoch so, daß Heidegger die reflexive Phänomenologie bereits am Beginn
seines eigenes Weges zur hermeneutischen Phänomenologie umgestaltet. Diese ist
nicht mehr reflexive, sondern ‘die verstehende, die hermeneutische Intuition’, weil sie
das Leben in seinen Umwelterlebnissen nicht reflexiv-vergegenständlichend, sondern
verstehend-auslegend und darin in seinem Ereignischarakter belassend thematisiert.“
(von Hermann, 1994, 9)
3 See Marion 2002, 11–13.
4 See von Hermann 1985, 92–94.
Heidegger’s Transformation of Traditional Concept of the Human Being 117
of a man – reflection. Although we can trace some signs of this idea earlier on, it
was primarily emphasized with modern age philosophy, starting with Descartes
and his project of seeking for the solid ground of any valid knowledge. A man
with his cognitive features was put in focus and taken as a grounding-point for
any theoretical investigation. This is where the reflective turn makes its entrance –
for, to be able to relay ourselves on some certain knowledge, it was necessary to
primarily secure and investigate the domain of possibilities given with our own
ontological as a structure of a being that can gain knowledge. That is, we are try-
ing to gain knowledge of that same gaining of knowledge. For Descartes, this was
the basis for certainty, for he accepted that this turn as such is transparent and
obvious. However, this kind of knowledge is not on the same level as the usual
knowledge of particular things and states of affairs. The problem here is not that
we do not know the object of our investigation and that we struggle to gain some
new facts about it, and not that it stands far from our reach. On the contrary, the
main problem is that this object is, in fact, too close and too familiar: that the
object is exactly the same as the one who questions, the subject who is conducting
this radical research himself (Heidegger 1967, 15).5 Thus, the real obstacle here is
not the insufficiency of knowledge, but the way of approaching it, of recovering
it, of discovering it yet again, of clarifying it.6 As such, it also confirms itself as the
problem of a theoretical approach to the human being in its crucial characteristics,
i.e., the problem of conceiving the human being.
Humanity Occupying a Central Position

So far it seems familiar and traditional: a human being is conceived according to
her or his understanding – she or he can be easily related to reason and reason-
ing, being conscious of its actions, according to its own structure essentially con-
nected to the possibilities of knowledge, and so on. These are traditional concepts
that mark a history of the philosophical understanding of a human, that are best
known in the form of a definition of the human as an animal rationale. Starting
with the Roman and Middle Ages’ translation and understanding of Aristotle, they
5 See Marion 2002, 3, 8.

6 Already here one can recognize some of Heidegger’s main themes: description, the
hermeneutical circle, the problem of the subjectivity of a subject, and pre-theoretical
understanding. Adding to it, this kind of reflective turn to ourselves is not self-evident:
not only in the structure of the reflective turn itself, but also the subject and object
of knowledge are problematic and confusing, given that they overlap, erasing the gap
between themselves.
118 Una Popović
developed together with philosophy itself, gaining the edge with Descartes and
the Modern Age’s way of thinking. Not only that man was conceived primarily in
frames of its cognitive features, but also on that basis he was ascribed power to be
the final judge and major actor among other beings: the only authority that had
power over him is the mind, that is, the one feature that makes him the human he
is. This would represent the founding of a man restricted from any dependence
on some supreme being, that is restricted through a reflective move, which brings
him back to find his balance on the very thing from which he started from, that
being the dignity and power ascribed to a human and to humanity. The period of
the Enlightenment, it seems, promoted certain values that could be called human
values, as they are derived from an understanding of and respect for the essence
of a human.7
However, Heidegger is much more restrictive. The position that he gives to the
human being, although sorted out from other beings and in a crucial place for
an intended understanding of Being as such, is not a position of power or special
dignity. In fact, it is far from the way of thinking that would ascribe any such
or similar characteristics to a human. It goes beyond such qualifications, which
doesn’t mean that it would choose one rather than the other. Even considering the
special epistemological position of a man, we must see a great difference between
the subject of knowledge, understood with Descartes as self-transparent and self-
evident, and Heidegger’s Dasein, which has the possibility for the transparency
of the structure he is, but has to reveal it to itself and is in a constant referring
back to its factual foundation, which he is to interpret. The position of a human
being in Heidegger’s thought is largely dependent on his turning to ontology as
the primary field of philosophy, and is formed along with the conceptualization
of philosophy itself – and this is the case with the other philosophies he considers:
in conceptualizing philosophy, we conceptualize an understanding of a human
being and vice versa; in conceptualizing an understanding of a human being, we
lay the ground that bears the possibilities of a new kind of philosophy.8
Heidegger’s well-known critique of traditional philosophy in the form of meta-
physics, in light of a forgottenness of the question of Being as such in its meaning –
which represents the horizon that enables its ‘presence’ and openness - largely af-
fects his attitudes toward the conception of a human being. The main argument
7 See Harr 1993, 83–84.

8 So we can trace this model of interpretation back to Aristotle’s definition of zoon logon
echon, see Imdahl 1997, 201–204; see also Heidegger 2002, 45–53. The main point here
is that there is a fundamental connection between Dasein’s understanding of itself, its
own existence, and the possibility to understand and open itself to Being as such.
would be that, although it can not be avoided that the understanding of the Being of
beings and of Being as such rests upon the possibilities of one of them, the human
being, to be open to such an understanding and, for that matter, to philosophy, it
is also the case that these conditions may not be recognized. Although this under-
standing is the main feature of being human, and it cannot be without it, it is not
the case that a human being is always completely aware of it – this understanding
is not obvious and transparent in its character to start from.9 In its attempts to gain
ontological and metaphysical knowledge, the human being may be, and mostly was,
led to accept some other being, and not his own nature, as a model that guided
the understanding of Being as such. The first condition for this to happen is the
structure of the field that opens with an understanding of Being as such: it is not
only an understanding of being a human, but also the understanding of the whole
of beings, that is, the Being of beings that are not of the same character as a human
being.10 This implies that for the different beings, there is a significant difference in
the way of their being. And it is just this point, this significant difference, that marks
the problem with being led to develop a philosophy with the intended stronghold
in non-human beings.
This choice of model being for the understanding of Being, may it be explic-
itly ontological, or simply the usual everyday way of coping that implicitly bares
possibilities for an ontology, directs the practice, and also remains preserved in
philosophical theory and its terminology. That is to say, Heidegger’s critique of
traditional philosophy often uses its concepts as conceptions that are to show
themselves as crucial for the constitution of a field of understanding specific for
that philosophy – this field of understanding is, according to Heidegger, more or
less emphasized, but always the field that opens with Being in whole, Being as
such. Starting with ancient ontology, categories for the articulation of being were
focused on essence and existence, where essence would be concentrated on the
question what?, that is, on some set of qualities that would define the thing in
question, that would be necessary for that thing to be what it is. Existence would,
as counterpart, emphasize the very ‘there is’ – does it actually exists, or not. When
we apply this apparatus to the being of a human being, we get the above mentioned
formulation of animal rationale – something equipped with specific features, but
in such a way that the understanding of it was structured the same as with others.
Here we find the crucial point for Heidegger: it is not the what that is in ques-
tion, but the question of how. This how is what determines our way of approach,
9 See Becker 1984, 261–262.

10 For some clarifying interpretations, see von Hermann 22–23, 93–94.
120 Una Popović
the possibility of which is in advance given as a specific topos of the human un-
derstanding of Being. Being is our ontological-epistemological a priori that al-
lows for the understanding of other beings, and also for the understanding of
Being as such. This understanding is an understanding of how the other beings
are structured in their Being, and in so far it is the transcendence, while it allows
us to go beyond a reflection that confines us to our own being.11 The reflective
move necessary for one to think about himself takes on here an ontological turn –
the circulus of that movement is inscribed in the ontological structure of a man,
while he is the only being that understands the being that he himself is (Heidegger
1967, 152–153). Although reflective, this move leads far beyond the human, it
transcends toward other beings – and thus we no longer have the conception of
being human as self-dependent, self-determining or in itself constrained. An im-
mediate connection with its transcendence, with other beings, is understood as an
ontological condition of being human. This is why Heidegger no longer speaks in
terms of what something is: whatever the way of approach may be, it would still
be some way of approach to Being, even if it is the one that does not take this,
now transparent, structure into account.
Therefore, it is no longer a question of what the human being is, but the ques-
tion of how it understands itself, how it approaches to itself – and, as essentially
connected with the understanding of Being as such, this question is always present
in any philosophy, either as a theme, or as the subtext. (Revealing this crucial
position of the human for philosophy, Heidegger has a way of showing how this
‘reference on human’ persists in different epochs of thinking – even in the Middle
Ages and Antiquity, although in a different way, determined by the specific stance
toward Being as such.) This is why Heidegger changes his concept of the human
to Dasein. The new concept is intended to avoid the conceptual traps between
essence and existence together with them underlying theories, and on the other
level the concept of subject opposing the object. As it is, the ruling concept for
interpretation of being human in the Modern Age, both as a subject of knowledge
and the articulation/interpretation and subject as substance. It is supposed to give
an account of a way of thinking in the reflective turn to circulating the structure
of being human, which would at first glance show and mark the organization of
11 ’Existieren heißt daher Transzendieren. Existierendes Transzandieren heißt: Immer

schon verstehend sein in der Erschlossenheit des eigenen Seins, der Welt und des
Seins des anderen Seienden, bevor ich mich selbs als mich verhaltenden Menschen
und bevor ich das Seiende, zu dem ich mich verhalte, verstehe’ See von Hermann 1985,
94; see also Gethman 1993, 107–108.
that structure. It emphasizes ‘there’ (da) as that feature which is the place for our
special attunement to Being (Heidegger 1967, 132–134).
The Change in the Understanding of Being: Dasein

The concept of Dasein is one of the central characteristics of Heidegger’s early
philosophy, although it was completely formed, in the way that we have described
above, only with his main work Being and Time. During his early lectures that
he gave in Marburg and Freiburg, this concept was in development and can be
traced through an intermixing of various motifs. One of the most important turns
in its development was taken when it replaced the term life (Leben) as a central
term for the description of a human condition.12 Already in this concept one can
find some ideas that mark the conception of Dasein. For example, the idea that a
human being is not opposed to the world in which it lives, and other beings that
it lives with, but that it is closely connected with it, in a way that affects the very
structure of a human being as such. The other important example is also the rea-
son for the use of the concept of life in the first place: with this concept, Heidegger
accentuates the fact that we already are immersed in life when we start thinking
about it or about ourselves (Heidegger 1993a, 21). That is the fact that we cannot
have an isolated starting point for understanding ourselves, that we always already
carry with us some presuppositions, some preconceptions and a way of think-
ing that in advance determines our approach to ourselves. Those preconceptions
can be related to some theories that we’ve learned, for example, to the history of
philosophy, or to an unconscious web of meanings and ideas through which we
understand and live our ordinary everyday lives.13 The important thing here is that
we are not advancing in terms of a being clear on the matter of what determines
our turn to ourselves, but that it can be clarified and investigated, and taken into
account in a further investigation of our own immanent structure. This aspect of
our condition, primarily conceived as life, was later on transformed and composed
into a concept of Dasein, as Befindlichkeit and Geworfenheit.
The above mentioned ‘there’ (da), as the feature of Dasein which is the place
for our special attunement to Being, can be resolved in two modes of compre-
hension — Verstehen and Befindlichkeit — ontological disposition, the finding of
ourselves in an already-given position and situation. These two features cover the
same field of understanding, but in different ways, and they are inseparable and
not subordinate to each other (Heidegger 1967, 139, 144–145). They represent
12 See Imdahl 1997, 108–116.

13 See Pöggeler 1994, 29.
122 Una Popović
two inseparable ways in which our whole relationship to Being takes place, and
they mark every understanding. Befindlichkeit, which is essentially rooted in the
facticity – the fact that we are, that we always found ourselves in that we are in
some way, however, is one aspect of the human condition that accentuates an im-
portant difference in the conception of Dasein and other conceptions of a human.
It puts us in a situation that we are always in advance included in some web of
connections and relationships, some patterns of meaning and sense, and that we
are dependent on both in our ontological grasp and in everyday behavior.14 This
web of relationships is the way in which our understanding is in advance put into
some field of meaning, of significance, which allows for pre-understanding: not
thematized, but always present. This is the point on which a human being shows
itself in its finitude – it is not its own master, nor authority, nor the still-point of
knowledge. There is always given, in advance, a very complex starting point for
that turn of understanding, taken as a theme of philosophy, which is somehow not
thematically always before, always in advance understood. This dependence on
the openness of Being, as a crucial condition for this kind of understanding and
the being of a human, is not dependence on some thing, some being, especially
not on some realm of eternal, ideal world or being – given that Being as such is
not a concrete, individual being of any sort. Being as such as transcendence is
comprehended as the ontological condition which, in turn, depends itself on a
human being, as the one and only being that can reveal its presence.
The realm of ontology is the realm that we can grasp only through an analysis of
our own ontological structure, and this we can discover through a reflective turn
to ourselves. However, the reflection in question here is not a simple turn back
that allows seeing some simple object or a structure. For Heidegger, this turn is
somewhat more complicated. Firstly, the main question here is not what is to be
found as a result of turning, but how the turning itself is structuralized and how
its structure affects the mentioned result. Therefore, it is not a simple turning back
to ourselves, but the turn that has to be repeated over and over again, because it
never reaches some solid ground to rest upon. It is constantly circulating between
what we know and what we do not know, discovering deeper and deeper levels of
self-awareness and self-knowledge. The foundation that demands this constant
turning is rooted in a phenomenon that Heidegger first called life: a constant
change of the factual conditions that we are living in and that are given to us with-
out our choice, or better, that are thrown to us. This constantly-moving ground
is, however, not a reason for abandoning the idea of solid-grounded knowledge,
14 See Kisiel 1995, 117–119.

but is a challenge to the further investigation of its conditions, that is of those

same grounds. This exactly marked the development of Heidegger’s philosophy,
as he turned to the question of Being from a perspective of history, that is, form
a perspective that unites both the direction from a human, Dasein, to Being and
from Being, in its opening and giveness, to a human being. Heidegger’s term for
this is Ereignis, the Event, and it takes over the primary position in his philosophy,
instead of Dasein.15
Secondly for Heidegger, the Being as such provides a relevant horizon for this
reflective turn. Therefore, it is the final layer that one can reach in investigating
one’s nature and ontological structure. The turn itself is, with Heidegger, from
the start explicitly shaped by his questioning of Being, and this direction deter-
mines the path he is taking. However, it is also the truth that in other cases the
direction of questioning and expected answers direct the conceptualization of the
reflection and reflective subject. This is why the ontological circle, inscribed in
Dasein’s ontological structure, finds a human being not as some substance with ac-
cidental features, not as some being similar to others, but exactly in its ontological
structure, as Dasein. Understood correctly, this is not the end of a road, but only
its beginning, while the reflective turn reveals itself as the ontological turn, and
while in the understanding of ourselves as human beings we discover the basis
for the ontological, that is, formal and given possibilities for the understanding
of everything else.
Technicity and Art in Revealing the Human Condition

Trying to further reveal the conditions for dealing with the realm of ontology,
Heidegger emphasizes the problem of truth, which he understood as a formal
frame of possibilities for any knowledge and gave it ontological status. The dif-
ference between Heidegger’s and the traditional (especially in the Modern Age)
concept of truth is in recognizing that these formal conditions of any knowledge
and understanding, including an ontology, are always individually determined
for a specific epoch. This, of course, implies that there are some historically speci-
fied conditions for a philosopher, in order for a human being to understand and
approach itself (Heidegger 2000, 6).
Describing his own epoch, Heidegger often refers to technicity (Technik) as a
predominant way of understanding that encompasses the everyday way of think-
ing and behaving. Speaking of technicity, Heidegger does not refer to a set of
15 See von Hermann 1999, 21.

124 Una Popović
things or methods, to ‘weapons’ that are at our disposal and are developed to rule
and conquer the world of nature, but instead to the way of dealing with the world
and beings that belong to it (Heidegger 1977a, 4). The modern world of technique,
knowledge and communication focused on information marks the way of ap-
proach that we are now positioned in. This predominant way of understanding is
understood as the ultimate danger for Dasein, while it is blind to the question of
Being in such a way that it finalizes tendencies of traditional metaphysics.16 Tech-
nicity is not open to revealing its own structure and sense, while it is the highest
form of rationality: calculation is the main approach to any being, including the
human being. Calculating and measuring represent the way in which we push the
beings to show themselves as suitable for our purposes, neglecting their being as it
would show in itself (Heidegger 1977a, 5, 12–13). This violence creates a ‘picture’
representation of the world as a realm of manipulation, which in turn shows the
human being as a creator or the reference-point of all possible relationships that
this world can provide (Heidegger 1977a, 128–131). However, here Heidegger ac-
centuates the loss of authenticity, of a suitable way for the human to comprehend
itself: the predominant way of understanding covers the authentic one, in the
form of an un-personal, non-individual ‘one’ of everyday averageness; therefore
revealing the subject as a concept of the human being as a non-transparent, not
in a possession of knowledge, and non-evident.17 The destruction of traditional
philosophy can be interpreted as destructing Dasein’s understanding of itself.
The immediate philosophical frame that this refers to is a Modern Age para-
digm of philosophy, revealed in the period of Enlightenment, that opposes the
subject and object of knowledge, and therefore of practice. This is, in Heidegger’s
terms, described as the world as a picture: our approach to beings is characterized
by presentation, by having everything clearly in front of ourselves, referring back
to the human as a subject of knowledge. This is why Heidegger asserts that human-
ism emerges in the epoch of the world as a picture: contemplation and learning
about the world explicitly become a contemplation on the human. Humanism,
in turning to the human as a theme of philosophy – not the human as a theme of
study for the natural sciences or the human as god’s creation – interprets Being
as a whole, starting from a position of the human and referring back to him. In
Heidegger’s opinion, this is one way to the presence of metaphysics, as it forms an
epoch giving one a specific interpretation of beings and the conception of truth:
the understanding of humanitas, that is to determine what the human being is,
16 Dreyfus 2002, 102–104.

17 Ibid. 116–117.
is always referring to some already stiffed and accepted way of interpretation –

it is not free for the questioning its essence (Heidegger 2000, 13). This is why
Heidegger demands for an ‘improved’ humanism – the one that would correct
this mistake, and consider the essence of a man not presupposing any frame of
possible answers. (He explicitly says that he does not argue for the inhuman, as
opposed to the human, but that humanism does not put humanity high enough.
See Heidegger 2000, 39–40). This is why he insists on a new concept of a man,
and why he explores new possibilities to describe what a man essentially is and
to determine ways that would allow us such a description.
These paths of approach to ourselves, apart from the necessary condition of the
openness of Being as such for understanding, are also determined by the use of
words and language. Language has a very important role in Heidegger’s philoso-
phy, given that it, in its ontological version of Rede (which is the very essence of
the language we use in communication in the form of voice or letter - Sprache),
runs through the complete realm of Dasein’s turn to Being as such. It resolves the
understanding of Being, making the web of meanings and pattern of relationships
and their structure, articulating and interpreting Being as such in its opening of
being into a whole (Heidegger 1967, 160–166). Aristotle’s definition of a human
being as zoon logon echon partially relies on a similar understanding, but its trans-
formation to animal rationale largely ignores it. Heidegger’s own transformation
of a concept of the human (being), motivated by his insights into the structure
and history of philosophy, implicitly takes into consideration those possibilities
of speech and articulation that are given to us together, with facticity, with our
understanding of Being as a somewhat determined framework. Considering these
motives further in his latter philosophy, he gives us a hint of the path to be taken
to bring these considerations from negative, restrictive and critical standpoints
toward traditional philosophy and the consequences it has on everyday under-
standing, to the positive possibilities of an improved, more transparent and more
truthful view of humanity. The path he suggests is art, primarily poetry, as a way
to mobilize possibilities given by language, and its field of revealing the under-
standing in a specifically productive way.18 According to Heidegger, poetry in
the broad sense of the word is to represent the essence of all arts. (See Heidegger
2002b, 44–45). This does not mean that philosophy is supposed to abandon its
own demands and become art. On the contrary, Heidegger is always concerned
with the essence of philosophy, and during his life as a philosopher had tried to
lay down the foundation for philosophy in accordance with its own concepts. The
18 Guignon 2002, 54, 56–57.

126 Una Popović
interplay of philosophy and art is supposed to open new possibilities for the use
of language and for the understanding of Being, in such a way that it would not
neglect either philosophy or art.19 In this approach to Being as a whole, both phi-
losophy and poetry, in turn, become questioned in what they are – their interplay
mobilizes their inner, formally-structural possibilities.20 Poetry in its attunement
emphasizes not only the cognitive, but also all aspects of language, allowing for its
essence to show itself transparently, giving philosophy a hint to explore those nu-
ances in articulating its own conceptualizations, without abandoning its strictness
and methodology. Finally, these aspects are closely connected with facticity and
throwness as the constituent features of Dasein: the new possibilities for philoso-
phy are placed within a field that acknowledges the situation or position in which
we are in, that is already given to us. Art is here understood, as it usually is, as
opposite to science and technicity, and therefore as possible in a truth-dependent,
new way to avoid problems of traditional philosophical terminology.
This new possibility is one of a few, although the preferred one. It shows how
a human can search for the freedom of thinking in philosophy, accepting the
respect for theoretical thought. Such exploration always threatens to disturb the
already known, or the well-known conceptions and foundations that a human
being is almost unconsciously trying to secure. The disturbance of concepts is
a sign of a disturbance of the methods and ways of thinking (Dichtung/Poesie,
Denken/Philosophie)21 – Heidegger would say, of thinking about Being. Accord-
ing to him, any change in language or any other aspect of philosophy has to take
into account the realm that has opened itself in advance of revealing the world,
with the understanding of Being as such, and this means that the only authentic
way of approach to ourselves must be in compliance with this. The human being
starts from what is already given to her or him, and thinks of herself or himself
as in a constant turning to these factual conditions, from which she or he derives
meanings, and which she or he is revealing in layers. Heidegger is one of the phi-
losophers who had the courage for this kind of disturbance, and it does not stop
19 See von Hermann 1999, 160–169.

20 Ibid. 30, 113–115.
21 “Um der neuen Wesensbestimmung von Philosophie und Poesie und ihres Verhältnises
auf dem neu gelegten Boden einer gewandelten Wesensbestimmung des Menschen
auch terminologisch gerecht zu warden, spricht Heidegger nicht mehr von ‘Philosophie
und Poesie’, sondern von ‘Denken und Dichten’. In dieser Wendung besagen nicht nur
Denken und Dichten anderes als Philosophie und Poesie, auch das ‘und’ nennt jetzt ein
wesentlich anderes Verhältnis von Denken und Dichten als dasjenige von Philosophie
und Poesie.“ See von Hermann 1994, 225.
there – he has pointed out the possibilities for developing a more daring stance
toward philosophy, as well as an understanding of the human being. This is why
today we can consider Heidegger to be the philosopher who can still inspire us to
explore philosophy as something relevant to our own human condition.
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Nenad Cekić
Humanism, State and Freedom:

Nozick’s Minimal Humanism?
A common understanding of the concept of humanism is in many senses unclear.

The first impression is that this concept must be “maximal” in its content. The
underlying notion is that humanism is a value, which at all costs must be defended,
theoretically or otherwise. This kind of humanism we could label as maximal or
ideal humanism. There is no doubt that humanism is a value, but the real question
is: what kind of value? One possible interpretation is maximal or radical human-
ism. This point of view implies that humanism is an essential or even supreme
goal. However, in the philosophical tradition, we can probably find a much more
significant and less demanding form of humanism. That is minimal humanism,
which is an important part of philosophical and political theories.
First, it is worth mentioning that any kind of humanism is incomprehensible
without some notion of humanity. Essentially, any concept of humanity presup-
poses some kind of conception of man. Of course, we can see a man as a subject of
moral virtues. Virtues are ideal values that must be reached in moral life. They are
at the same time character traits. If we see an individual’s life as a path to the goal
of an ideal of humanity, then we are dealing with a position that I shall call radical
or maximal humanism. Another option is to understand humanity as a set of for-
mal and minimal conditions (criteria) which must be satisfied if a living creature
is to be called “human”. This understanding is a position of minimal humanism.
In this article, we would like to explore (to a certain extent) the notion of
minimal humanism and its relation to the concept of a minimal state. “Minimal
state” must be followed by “minimal humanism”. The humanism that can justify
the existence of a state power is not maximal humanism, but a minimal one.
Nevertheless, it is sufficient to explain the current state of affairs in the modern
world. Furthermore, it may be the most viable humanism these days.
In his well-known book Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), Robert Nozick tried
to defend his view that real humanism cannot and must not be protected by the
so-called “maximal state”. Maximal state has two main powers: a) monopoly over
legitimate use of force and b) power to re-distribute various goods via some tax
system (not only material goods, but also the means and opportunities, as well).
Nozick is opposed to that idea. The reason is that the maximal state directly leads
132 Nenad Cekić
to some form of totalitarianism. A “good argument” in favor of a maximal state

(which has both a protective and a re-distributive role) is irrelevant, because the
maximal state is unavoidably the direct path to the violation of what he called the
“moral side constraints”. The idea is simple. The maximal state that has the power
to redistribute what John Rawls called “primary goods” is too dangerous. (Rawls
1971, 1989) It is an a priori path to let the government redistribute not only ma-
terial goods, but also even freedom or physical beauty. Moreover, the patterns of
state distribution, however just or efficient they seem, do carry a danger of flaws
and abuse by officials. The idea is also simple. Why does a minimal humanist like
Nozick see maximal humanism, radical humanism, and maximal state as a threat
to real humanity? The reason is pretty simple. The maxim “the (Supreme?) end
justifies (all?) means” can easily be used to endanger personal freedom and even
the right to self-defense. Any supreme end inevitably carries that danger.
Rights, Humanism and the State

Nozick’s idea of a minimal state is usually interpreted in terms of rights. (See, e.g.,
Scanlon 1982; Clayton 2010). However, the term “rights” does not have only one
sense. We could easily accept the following characterization:
“Despite their popularity, the meaning and the foundations of rights in general, and hu-
man rights in particular, are unclear and controversial, with little evident philosophical
agreement or underlying common usage to be found within or beyond cultural bounda-
ries.” (Campbell 2010, 669.)
A usual understanding is that various rights could be divided into four classes:
claims, powers, liberties, and immunities. “The dominant meaning may well be
‘claim’ and in this, which is also its narrowest sense, it is the correlative of ‘duty’.”
(Almond 1991, 262). It is important to notice that there are some kinds of ‘rights’
with no correlative ‘duties’. However, those rights are not essential for the explana-
tion of minimal humanism and the minimal state.
How could we be sure whether (“natural” or otherwise) rights actually exist?
It is legitimate not to presuppose the existence of any kind of rights:
“The view that morally desirable actions are either ones motivated by a good1 intention
or ones presumed likely to secure desirable outcomes, in no way implies that such actions
include respect for others’ rights. It is entirely consistent with the view that others might
not have rights or, indeed, that there might not be any others…there might not have been
moral rights.” (Hiller 2006, 459.)
1 A more appropriate expression might be “right”.

Humanism, State and Freedom: Nozick’s Minimal Humanism? 133
Could the concepts of minimal humanism and minimal state rest upon the idea
of human rights? Our answer is negative but only because of the ambiguity of the
term “rights”. The real reason is that the idea of minimal respect needed for estab-
lishing the concept of the minimal state is Kantian and thus directly corresponds
to the concept of duty. Even writers benevolent toward the theoretical use of the
term ‘rights’ recognize that social rights are those rights that correspond to respec-
tive duties. Moreover, the idea of respect is the key notion for the understanding of
(theoretical or/and practical) the dynamics that leads to the concept of a minimal
state based upon the idea of minimal humanism.
According to the vocabulary of rights, a minimal state protects substantive
liberty rights, a form of claim rights:
“…that is, rights which correlate either with the duty of others to refrain from preventing
someone from acting (negative claim rights), or with the duty to assist someone in doing
or achieving what they have a right to do (positive claim rights).” (Campbell, T., 2010, 673)
Claim rights are the paradigm type of rights. In most cases, the analysis involves
the identification of who has the right, irrespective of whether the correlative duty
is positive or negative and who has that duty. The protection of certain kinds of
claim rights is in the “job description” of any state. However, it is still an open
question whether rights as such lie in the foundation of any state. It is possible that
the concepts of integrity, “self-ownership”, respect, and duty (all leading to the
concept of minimal humanism) can provide a better justification and explanation
of the mechanism of a state.
Self-ownership, Integrity and Moral Side Constraints

In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick explicitly rejects Rawls’ idea of “justice as
fairness” based on a redistributive role of the state and claims that “…taxation
of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor” (Nozick 1974, 169). His
rejection of taxation for the purpose of redistribution is based on the premise
that individuals own themselves. Mathew Clayton believes that “the principle of
self-ownership generates a set of rights that make it impermissible for others, in-
dividually or collectively through state institutions, to force the supply of labor for
the benefit of others.” (Clayton 2010, 695) Obviously, Clayton sees Nozick’s theory
as a right-based theory. The fundamental right here is the right of self-ownership.
However, we shall see that it is possible to express the same idea without using a
“rights” terminology. The inviolability of personal freedom could be understood
in the Kantian way. Key notions in that interpretation would be integrity, duty,
and respect. The key principle is a minimalistic definition of the concept of man
as an end-in-itself.
134 Nenad Cekić
It is not easy to clarify what the term “integrity” means. However, it is clear that
the concept presupposes two main ideas: 1) some action is valuable regardless of
what consequences it has (including harmful consequences for the agent himself);
and 2) the agent’s action must have a direct link to the agent (the agent’s action
must be his action, not an accidental result, i.e., action must be an intentional
action of an agent who has full consciousness of his responsibility for any conse-
quence). The core idea of integrity is the idea of a resistance to any calculation of
effects in determining the value of an action. The best way to understand the idea
of moral integrity is to get to how it relates to consequentialist moral standings.
The best way to understanding the idea of moral integrity is to get to how it is
related to ethical consequentialism, i.e., any normative ethical theory that evalu-
ates acts and sets of rules exclusively in terms of their consequences.
“The most familiar kind of conequentialism is the kind of utilitarianism maintaining
that an act is morally right if and only if no alternative act has consequences containing
greater welfare (or net benefit), impartially assessed.” (Hooker 2010, 444)
However, we have to understand:

“…A strictly impartial perspective might seem to require me, in my ethical deliberations,
to accord no special priority to myself or my concerns as against those of others. But, it
seems doubtful whether I could function as a human being at all unless the mere fact that
the given project of mine was allowed to have some weight in my deliberations. If each
day I was to consider how every moment could best be spent furthering, for example,
global utility, without according any special priority to the fact that certain projects are
the ones I have made my own, then it seems that I disintegrate as an individual.” (Cot-
tingham 2010, 620; Williams 1981, 4).
Utilitarianism, therefore, alienates a person from his or her moral identity. On

the other hand, “integrity, fidelity to one’s commitments, is not itself a value to be
weight against other values […] Rather, having such commitments is a necessary
condition of a being moral agent at all.” (Norman 1998, 196)
Nozick believes in the idea of moral integrity. He does not use this term ex-
plicitly. He used the expression “moral side constraints”. The idea of “moral side
constraints” is somewhat different from the (widespread, but notoriously unclear)
concept of human rights. It is a formal idea without any specific content and the
underlying concept of an ideal “man”. It could be said that Nozickian “side con-
straints” and the concept of man lack any “substantive” content. However, the idea
of integrity is, in fact, the concept of minimal humanism. In his book, Nozick of-
fered a well-known example of an “experience machine”. He wrote: “There are also
substantial puzzles when we ask what does it matter how other people experience
’from the inside’. Suppose there is an experience machine that would give you any
experience. (…) All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes at-
tached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming
your life’s experience?” (Nozick 1974, 43) For Nozick, the answer is: categorically
no! The main reason he gave us is as follows:
“First, we want to do certain things […] The second reason for not plugging in is what
we want to be in a certain way. Someone floating in tank is an indeterminate blob. There
is no answer to the question of what a person is like who has been for a long-term in
the tank. Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It’s not merely difficult to tell;
there’s no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a form of suicide.” (Nozick 1974, 43;
Smart and Williams, 1973, 22, 114).2
Let us put this differently in order to clarify substantive “humanity”: if we conceive

“humanity” as an ideal or maximal one, then we could imagine which character
traits the ideal man must have. An experience machine could be a means to that
goal. All we need to do is to program our brains to be virtuous, but only in our
imagination and quasi-perceptions. That is not a “real” man. Recall: we have to
do certain things and to be in a certain way. In addition, to be some kind of man
presupposes the existence of freedom. (If not, we are only machines!) In what
kind of freedom does Nozick believe?
Nozick explains his idea of moral side (libertarian) constraints in many differ-
ent ways. Maybe this is the clearest one:
“The moral side constraints upon what we may do, I claim, reflect the fact of our separate
existences. They reflect the fact that no moral balancing act can take place among us; is
there no moral outweighing of one of ours by others so as to lead to a greater overall social
good? This root idea, namely, that there are different individuals with different lives and
so no one may be sacrificed for others, underlies the existence of moral side constraints,
but it also, I believe, leads to the libertarian side constraint that prohibits aggression
against another.” (Nozick 1974, 33)
The underlying idea is the idea of moral space:

“A line (or hyper-line) circumscribes an area in moral space around an individual.”
(Nozick 1974, 57).
That is a borderline and no transgression is allowed. The exception is self-defense.

Moreover, self-defense is the only reason some state should exist. That state is a
minimal state.
2 This is a well-known idea used by film-makers. Remember Matrix.

136 Nenad Cekić
Why did Nozick choose the firm idea of so-called libertarian constraints? The
answer lies in the fact that at the foundation of Nozick’s just state is a Kantian
(formal and minimal) concept of man.
Nozick’s Kantianism, Freedom and Humanity

Essentially, Nozick’s idea is compatible with Kant’s idea of freedom. Freedom is
a necessary presumption of morality. Without the presence of the idea of a free
agent, there would be no concept of responsibility. Moreover, responsibility is a
key notion in our understanding of morality. If we are not free, then we are not
responsible for our actions. (In that case, we really would be machines.) Kant’s cat-
egorical imperative does the same theoretical “job” as Nozick’s “side constraints”.
It does not prescribe anything in the form of a goal or an ideal. It works via nega-
tiva, setting constraints that define the area of allowed maxims. That is, roughly
speaking, Nozick’s idea: an agent is free to choose any course of action that does
not violate “moral side constraints”. Other people have a duty not to interfere with
an individual’s freedom.
In Nozick’s view, political philosophy is concerned only with certain ways that
persons may not use others; primarily, physical aggression against them. Side
constraints express the inviolability of others, in the ways they specify. However,
that is not a goal, but only a limit. There is no desirable “end-state” (favorable
outcome) which has to be achieved. Moral side constraints determine “… modes
of inviolability which are expressed by the following injunction: ’Don’t use people
in specified ways’.” (Nozick 1974, 32). It does not presume any outcome or “end-
state” because the concept of a favorable end-state is necessarily consequential.
However, moral side constraints do not work in that way. Here, Nozick explicitly
invokes Kant’s formula of the categorical imperative, which is often called the
formula of humanity:
“So act that you use humanity, whether in your person or in the person of any other,
always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” (Kant 1998, 38)
It is worth noting why Kant does not tell us: “Minimize the use of persons as
means” or “maximize the personal freedom of everyone”. The reason lies in the
very fact that Kant is not a consequentialist of any kind. His categorical imperative
poses the idea of boundaries for allowed maxims that determine particular action.
The categorical imperative is the criterion that determines what kinds (classes)
of actions are allowed and what kinds of actions are prohibited. It is formal and
substantively empty. However, the formal nature of the categorical imperative
secures an individual’s freedom. Nobody, not even the state, has the vital right to
impose its own values on others. However, we must bear in mind the simple fact
that Kant’s idea of “humanity as an end in itself ” is a minimal concept. A well-
known interpreter of Kant’s work, Allen Wood, warns us:
“Much is sometimes made of Kant’s claim that we must treat humanity as an end in itself,
never merely as a means. Far too much, in fact. One fallacious pattern of reasoning begins
with the proposition is being treated as a means, and concludes merely from this that
they are not being treated as an end in itself. However, it is possible to treat persons as an
end in themselves and as a means, as long as you respect their rights and dignity. This is
not only possible, but Kantian ethics positively enjoys it […] In the realm of ends, every
rational being would…be treated as an end in itself and at the same time as a means to
the system of shared ends.” (Wood 2008, 87)
Kant usually writes as if humanity and personality are coextensive. Wood thinks
that they are coextensive:
“For setting ends according to reason is an act of freedom – involving at least freedom in
a negative sense, because no impulse or inclination can necessitate my setting its objects
as an end.” (Wood 2008, 94)
However, Kant also holds that the concept of positive freedom, the capacity of
giving oneself laws and having a reason that is of (in?) itself practical, flows from
that of negative freedom. (Kant 1998, 52)
On the other hand, the non-Kantian (and non-Nozickian) idea of maximal
humanism presupposes the concept of a man who is virtuous (ideal man). This
goal has to be achieved. However, no supreme goal, not even the ideal of maximal
humanity, allows a transgression of Nozick’s “moral side constraints“. Moreover,
that is a fact, as we want neither to be an “experience machine” nor to be abused
in a “holy war” for ideal humanism.
Minimal State
In Nozick’s theory, the basic rights of other people define a moral borderline.
Moral borders define the area occupied by an individual in the “moral space”, so
they function as prohibitions or constraints. The real idea is that all individuals
have the one fundamental duty of non-interference with others’ freedom. How-
ever, Nozick believes that they do not operate by precluding any “use” of another
person or some form of “cooperation”. It is sufficient for the other party to get
enough from the “transaction” to be ready to agree to it, despite having certain
objections to some ways of using the generated benefit.
Under such conditions, the other party is not in that respect used only as an in-
strument, Nozick believes, thus giving an entirely Kantian tone to his arguments.
138 Nenad Cekić
The Kantian request not to use others exclusively as tools imposes on the party,
initiating some form of transaction, an obligation to provide the other party with
the complete information on the intended goals and method in which the other
party is to be “used”. To put it more simply, Nozick is certain that an individual
is abused if a form of transaction is conducted forcefully, i.e., without an explicit
and voluntary consent of all parties participating in the transaction, regardless of
whether this occurs by force or by some hidden fraud, disguised in various social
schemes of “justification”.
Nozick accepts Weber’s thesis that each state must meet the following condition:
“a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate
use of physical force within a given territory.” (Weber 2004, 33)
Nevertheless, although the concept of moral constraints and rights could be rec-
onciled with the traditional idea of the social contract as a method of creating a
morally justified state, Nozick’s state monopoly of force is created from the natural
state quite spontaneously and without any general contract. Furthermore, Nozick
does not assume that individuals must surrender in advance a part of their free-
dom or any individual right to the state. The invisible-hand explanation provides
this possibility. Unlike the contractual theories of the state, the invisible-hand
explanation does not imply any intention or attempt to create the state structure.
A state created in the manner of the Nozickian dominant protective agency is
limited solely to the physical and material protection of individuals. The state
force must not be blind: it has to be used for protecting freedom.
Nozick, without stating specific reasons, adopts Locke’s description of the natu-
ral state according to which there is “the state of perfect freedom to determine
their actions and dispose with their property and persons as they see fit within
the limits of the natural law, without asking for a permission of another person
or depending on his will.” (Locke 1980, Ch. II, §4, 8. Cf. Nozick 1974, 10)3 Locke’s
natural law prescribes that no one should inflict harm against another person’s life,
health, freedom, or property. Certain individuals still overstep these boundaries,
so people have the right to protect both themselves and others from such attack-
ers. However, in the natural state, there is a danger of overestimating one’s own
3 Interestingly, at the same place, Locke also talks about the natural state as the state of
equality, but Nozick fails to mention that. The reasons can be discerned only after the
insight into his entire theory: namely, he explicitly rejects the possibility that a request
for equality can be morally justified.
damage, and thus the danger of excessive retribution, which may lead to counter-
retribution (retribution due to excessive retribution). In the state of nature, such
conflicts can endlessly extend because there is no way of resolving the conflict
so that both sides become aware of the fact that the problem has been resolved.
The injured party and those authorized by him to represent him have a right to
collect damages (compensation) which is equal to the amount of the compensa-
tion for the damage he suffered. Thus, the individual might be prohibited from
privately exacting justice because his procedure is known to be too risky and
dangerous. The reason is that both sides can always suspect that they have not
received full compensation, or that (in the process of excessive compensation)
they have sustained additional damage. Apart from that, individuals sometimes
do not possess sufficient funds or strength to exercise their rights fully. A logical
resolution of the problem of efficient protection and provision of full compensa-
tion seems to be the formation of protection associations by individuals. In the
first stage, such associations present mutual protection societies. This move may
lead to two additional problems. First, in mutual protection societies, everyone
is obliged to participate in the protection of others. Second, each member of
the association can “activate” other members by a simple call for the protection
of threatened rights. The latter difficulty may have far-reaching consequences
because it points to a possibility for paranoid or unscrupulous members to abuse
the society and inflict undeserved damage on others (i.e., non-members). In this
situation, a method for the resolution of conflicts between the members of the
same society is unclear. Therefore, there is a need to establish the procedure for the
determination of guilt, regardless of whether the individual is complaining about
someone who is or is not a member of the relevant protection society. Despite
the possibility of these procedures being entirely arbitrary, Nozick believes that
it is logical to assume that those associations that follow a procedure for a proper
determination of the validity of anyone’s request will have the largest number of
members. Furthermore, in order to avoid the general obligation of “serving” the
association, it can be assumed that, in the second stage of the development of
associations, a division of labor will be conducted and that some people will be
hired to perform protection functions.
It is obvious that in such a situation, a certain number of protection associa-
tions will offer their services in the same territory. What will happen if, in the
event of conflicting requests of their clients, they reach different conclusions so
that each agency decides to protect its own clients? Nozick thinks that three main
scenarios are possible: 1) agencies engage in a fight, one of them wins, so the
other agencies’ clients, for the purpose of better protection of their rights, decide
to become clients of the victorious agency; 2) one agency establishes practical
140 Nenad Cekić
power in one area and another agency in another area. Each agency wins those
battles that are close to its seat, with its power decreasing proportionately to the
distance from its seat; and 3) after the fight or even without it, for the purpose of
avoiding detrimental and frequent conflicts, the agencies reach an agreement on
the conflict resolution procedure. Although two agencies are operational, there is
a single system of rules – the legal system, in which the two agencies participate
as components. Two agencies would act as one or, in the second possible sce-
nario, they would reach an agreement as to which agency has the effective power
within a defined territory. (Nozick did not literally say that, but it is the spirit of
his concept of a minimal state.)
All three scenarios lead to the same outcome – the formation of state-like struc-
tures, which do not have the necessary monopoly of force-protection agencies.
They are the nucleus of the minimal state. We can ask various kinds of questions:
1) How could, we morally justify the appearance of Weber’s monopoly of physical
force? 2) Is such a state not redistributive? 3) Is the minimal state, a dominant
protection agency, really based upon the idea of respect for humanity? Etc.
Nevertheless, it is clear that some protective associations must be created. In the
end, within a certain territory, there will be only one association that really mat-
ters – the dominant protective agency that can claim the legitimate use of force,
i.e., the minimal state. This process is natural and spontaneous, but the result of
that process – a dominant protective agency – meets the Weberian criteria of a
“monopoly of force”.
Minimal Humanism, Respect and the Minimal State

Nozick’s minimal state that preserves freedom may be strange to followers of the
idea of an ideal (maximal) humanism and the maximal (re-distributive) state.
Social taxes in Nozick’s view are a form of robbery. In order to explain how a just
state (a state without freedom violation) could emerge we have to discern two
already mentioned kinds of humanism.
Maximal or radical humanism requires the reform of man and humankind.
That kind of humanism is a direct path to totalitarianism. (That is, strictly speak-
ing, an idea shared by both liberals and libertarians) Is an ideal man “out there”?
No! For that reason, the moral man conceived as the Aristotelian set of virtues
can exist only in theory. In practice, we can only seek virtue, because we are,
ultimately, limited creatures. Human individuals are not God, and nobody has
any right to ask a man to play God. There is neither a “new man” nor “new educa-
tion” which could create such individuals. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that it is
a state with minimal authorizations regarding security, which does not have the
right even to collect taxes, except for the fee for its security services. Essentially,
the principle of voluntariness can hardly be observed in the event of a creation of
the redistributive government. Furthermore, there is no realistic or hypothetical
scenario according to which national states would give up their identity in favor
of a global state.
Maximal (ideal) humanism and a maximal (ideal) state require the idea of
“new” or “reformed” (entirely virtuous) man. This idea is widely abused by Marx-
ists. However, we must have in mind the fact that fallibility is a constitutive prop-
erty of the concept of man. As Kant puts this: A man can only have a good will
but cannot have a holy will.
Another and different position is the position of minimal humanism based
on the notion of freedom and consequently a respect for the humanity of others.
This conception leads us to the idea of a minimal state.
The libertarian state is created and maintains its stability by restricting in-
dividuals to their “moral space”. Precisely because of these constraints, it can-
not transform itself into a tyranny. Essentially, this is the minimal condition
required by the position of minimal humanism. The state in the minimal sense
cannot be created in individual transactions because the state is formed in a
competitive process between competing protection agencies. On the macro
level, we have some necessity that does not exist in strictly interpersonal com-
munication. A just state emerges on the macro level of organization. This idea
surprisingly corresponds to the idea of a Platonic just state. Obviously, the ex-
istence of rebel (terrorist) agencies is always possible, as well as a secession
or division. For that reason, other agencies (minimal states) play a regulatory
role. We can treat states as maxi-persons. Every “state person” has a legitimate
monopoly of force within its territory. Moreover, just as “moral side constraints”
set boundaries to an individual’s moral space, physical borderlines define the
territory of a state.
The idea of a minimal state is apparently derived from an idea of the freedom
required by minimal humanism. Essentially, it is based on the Kantian idea of
“man as an end in himself ”. The point is the following. We do not respect each
other because we like each other or because we all have desirable virtues. We re-
spect others because they have the same faculty that we have – practical reason or,
generally, rationality. This idea is compatible with the idea of minimal humanism.
Essentially, that idea is formal and Kantian in its nature, because individuals are
not described as virtuous, but only as free and capable of rational thinking and
deciding. This principle in its essence is formal. We do not have to ask for more
than we already have. We have freedom and rationality. Those formal properties
make us human.
142 Nenad Cekić
More than Minimal Humanism and the State:

Ideal Humanism or Utopia?
It seems that minimal humanism, which constitutes the core of a minimal state,
would not satisfy more-than-minimal humanism proponents. “More-than-min-
imal humanism” does not necessarily presuppose totalitarianism. We can find
that idea in Nozick’s concept of the so-called framework for a Utopia. The idea
of freedom and moral side constraints imposes the prohibitions of certain kinds
to all members of a society. Utopia by definition must be the best of all possible
worlds. Best possible, but the question is best for whom, given the idea of moral
side constraints and minimal humanism? Moral side constraints do not allow
imposing values on others. Therefore, a Utopia is the world that must be, in some
restricted sense, the best for all of us: the best world imaginable, for each of us.
Nozick calls on us to:
“Imagine a possible world in which to live; this world need not contain everyone else now
alive and it may contain beings who have never actually lived. Every rational creature in
this world you have imagined will have the same rights…as you have. The other inhabit-
ants of the world you have imagined may choose to leave it and inhabit a world of their
own imagining. You may choose to leave an imagined world, now without its emigrants.
This process goes on; worlds are created, people leave them, create new worlds, and so
on.” (Nozick 1974, 299)
Will this process go on indefinitely?

If there are stable worlds, then each of them satisfies one simple criterion:
none of the inhabitants of the world can imagine an alternative world in which
they would rather live. A world that all inhabitants may leave is an association. A
world in which some rational inhabitants are not permitted to emigrate to some
association is east-berlin. Obviously, because freedom is necessary for any choice,
any association is more attractive than east-berlin.
Are there any stable associations? No stable association is such that everyone
but one in it jointly would leave for their own association. This reasoning applies
to two, three…n persons. This reasoning is a model of Utopia.
The realization of this model would involve the satisfaction of various con-
ditions. We cannot satisfy all the conditions. According to Nozick, this model
must be projected to our (real) world. That projection Nozick calls the frame-
work. The framework diverges from the possible world (ideal model) in some
respects. For example, in the actual operation of this framework, there will be
only a limited number of communities, so that for many people, no one com-
munity will exactly match their values and the weighting that they would give
to them.
Nozick considers two following kinds of thesis:

I) For each person, there is a kind of life that objectively is the best for him.
a) People are similar enough so that there is one kind of life, which objectively
is the best for each of them.
b) People are different, so there is not one kind of life, which objectively is the
best for everyone; and
1. The different kinds of life are similar enough so that there is one kind
of community (meeting certain constraints) which is the best kind for
everyone.
2. The different kinds of life are so different that there is not one kind of
community that is objectively the best for everyone.
II) For each person, there is a wide range of very different kinds of life that tie as
best.
Thesis Ib2 and II serve Nozick’s purposes.
Imagine a community whose members are the following: Wittgenstein, Elisabeth
Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Picasso, Hugh Hefner, Socrates, Buddha, Frank Sinatra,
Freud, Einstein, Moses, Columbus, Bobby Fischer, Gandhi, Peter Kropotkin…you
and your family. Is there one kind of life that is the best for each these persons? What
kind of society would it be? Would it be an agricultural or an urban society? Of great
material luxury or of austerity with only basic needs satisfied? Would it be monoga-
mous? Would there be any institution similar to marriage? Will sensual pleasures
or intellectual activities predominate? Would technology play an important role?
What will the attitude toward death be? And so on. The idea that there is one best
composite answer to all these and similar questions seems to be an incredible one.
What could be a Utopia? Nozick’s idea is that the framework for Utopia is the
only possible Utopia. Not surprisingly, this framework is a minimal state. In real
life, that is the freedom to leave one state and to go to another one. However,
the real problem of immigration in the modern world may prove that even that
“minimal” idea is impossible. Most men and women all over the world must stay
in their own states, either because they have no material means to emigrate or
because foreign countries act as “reverse east-berlin”. Immigration in developed
Western countries is either forbidden or strictly limited.
Concluding Remarks
In this brief overview, an attempt has been made to explain the main differences
between maximal (radical, ideal) humanism and minimal humanism, and their
relation to the idea of a state. A patient reader could notice that we do not attempt
144 Nenad Cekić
to give any interpretation of humanity in terms of virtues. There are two main
reasons for this. First, our focus was on the correlation between “minimal human-
ism” and a “minimal state”. The second reason is that contemporary virtue ethics
in its main aspects is a very specific kind of “anti-theory” which does not offer a
specific answer to the question of humanism. (See: Slote, 2010, 470–489.) We also
do not attempt to explain humanity based on the idea of contract. The reason is
simple: the idea of a contract is itself a consequence of the Kantian idea of respect.
We recognize and respect free will in others and ourselves. We respect humanity.
If we respect others’ will, then we have to make contracts. That is why any social
organization based on the Kantian idea of humanity implies the idea of a contract.
What can we say about the idea of humanity that we all intuitively have in mind
in unreflective conversations about humanism? What can we say about ideal hu-
manism and the concept of an ideal (perfectly virtuous) man?
Probably the best possible answer to those questions is the following. Maximal
humanism in everyday morality plays a regulative role, in the very same way in
which God is a regulative idea in Kant’s system. Namely, the reality of ideas can-
not be proven, but ideas can regulate the operations of our judgments. Maximal
humanism defines the horizon of our ideal moral prospects and expectations.
On the other hand, minimal humanism defines moral boundaries, which must
not be transgressed. Therefore, we can say that minimal humanism is a necessary
condition for reasonable thinking about an ideal man and, consequently, an ideal
society (“just state”). However, it is an ideal. Every horizon is something we can
gravitate toward, but it cannot be reached.
That is the regulatory role of any ideal.
References
Almond, B. (1991): Rights. In: Singer, P. (ed.): A Companion to Ethics. Basil
Blackwell, Oxford, 259–269.
Campbell, T. (2010): Rights. In: Skorupski, J. (ed.): The Routledge Companion to
Ethics. Routledge, London, 669–679.
Clayton, M. (2010): Justice and Redistribution In: Skorupski, J. (ed.): The Rout-
ledge Companion to Ethics. Routledge, London, 692–703.
Hiller, S. (2006): Moral Rights. In: Copp, D. (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Ethical
Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 459–476.
Hooker, B., (2010): Consequentialism. In: Skorupski, J. (ed.), The Routledge
Companion to Ethics. Routledge, London, 444–455.
Kant, I. (1998): Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Cambridge Univeristy
Press, Cambridge.
Locke, J. (1980): Second Treatise of Government. Hacket, Indianapolis.

Norman, R. (1998): The Moral Philosophers, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
Nozick, R. (1974): Anarchy, State and Utopia. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Rawls, J. (1971): A Theory of Justice, rev. ed., Harvard University Press, Cam-
bridge.
Scanlon, T. (1982): Rights, Liberty and Property. In: Paul, J. (ed.), Reading Nozick.
Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Slote, M. (2010): Virtue Ethics. In: Skorupski, J. (ed.), The Routledge Companion
to Ethics. Routledge, London, 478–489.
Smart J.J.C. and Williams, B, (1973): Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Williams, B. (1981): Moral Luck. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Weber, M. (2004): Politics as a Vocation. In: The Vocation Lectures. Hackett,
Indianapolis.
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Evanghelos Moutsopoulos
Academy of Athens
Is a Renewal of Humanism Possible Today?
One often wonders whether a universal mind of the fourth century B.C., Plato,
say, or Aristotle, would be startled if confronted with our own civilization, our
technological achievements and our cultural preferences; in short, our way of life.
The general aspect of our civilization, as it would appear to Plato or Aristotle,
is markedly homogeneous. For it clearly reflects a common tendency toward two
main goals of mankind: an easier and happier life for the individual, and greater
organization and prosperity for society. Plato and Aristotle would also find that
humanity has been in continuous evolution, something they had already noticed.
They would however consider that, evolution being not necessarily identifiable
with development or progress, our moral achievements do not seem to adequately
match our technical achievements, as far as respect for human beings is con-
cerned, and they would have made a striking note of this gap. They would have
tried to point out the significance of this gap in retarding the harmonious growth
of our societies, and would have concluded that the gap was the most prominent
manifestation of a deep and lasting historical crisis.
History seems to be moving ever-faster forwards today. To speak of the next
phase of the world means that we see our contemporary world as a world of
transition toward a future new world, likely constructed on an equally essential
base of technological, cultural and moral accomplishments. In this sense, „world“
should be taken to mean, firstly, our (natural, terrestrial, or extraterrestrial) envi-
ronment, with all the changes entailed in making it profitable for human society
to meet human needs; and secondly, the complex of institutions through which
such a process may be faced and realized for the happiness of humankind, within
a certain system of freely and universally accepted principles and values.
We see, then, the need for a new world which cannot be anything else but the
outcome of the process of transforming our present world. Five propositions fol-
low: (a) The new world will result from further evolution of the present world,
which is itself the result of the evolution of a succession of past worlds, the suc-
cessive phases of a unique world. (b) This evolution is somehow constant, in spite
of history’s ups and downs, accelerations and decelerations, and is itself the true
historical essence of this world. (c) It remains possible, at any time, to decide on
a new way of life, as part of a complete and permanent change that qualifies the
148 Evanghelos Moutsopoulos
world in its various aspects. (d) To adapt this world to human society and the
renewal of the individual’s attitude to the world and other human beings needs to
be subject to an order of consensual principles and values, a point which must be
emphasized. (e) All this being so, the new world entails the adaptation of the old
world to its renewed image. The old principles and values should also be thought
of as subject to their renewed conception – not so that they may be adapted to
the new world, but so that they may become the models on which the latter will
be fashioned. In other words, a new dimension of an old ethics based on eternal
values is needed in order to make possible the conception of the model of at least
one new dimension of the old world. A “new morality of the new world” obviously
means, in this sense, a the renewed humanistic morality of the world of tomorrow.
The future interplanetary societies will undoubtedly have some common fea-
tures, and these can already be imagined and described with some accuracy, bear-
ing in mind the prevailing trends of present societies.
The main features of future societies will very probably be: (a) Pragmatic uni-
versalism tending toward a real planetary and interplanetary unification when
modeling scientific, technological, economic, cultural and institutional structures,
notwithstanding eventual differential tendencies. (b) Intensified analysis of lan-
guage and language comprehension as a function and means of communication,
stemming from a need for a greater and better unified system of mutual human
metalinguistic relations that can truly claim cosmic validity and based, for ex-
ample, on a thorough knowledge of Greek, which has proved to be, besides a
diachronic vehicle of humanistic ideas, an excellent toll in informatics. (c) Gen-
eral acceptance of the need for even economic growth and cultural development
of every society through planned programs and a heightened feeling of proper
measure. (d) A burning conviction that a total respect for human individuality
and freedom is necessary within the bounds of the need to blend individual and
group preferences, so as to ensure an accurate general planetary policy. (e) A
federalist, or better confederalist, conception of human and social relations, so
as to avoid or offset any danger arising from a preponderantly technocratic and
bureaucratic organization of life; noting that, in any case, the organization of life
will lay increased emphasis on leisure and on cultural and spiritual activities.
There is the risk of a deep and prolonged crisis, if, within such a universal
humankind, organization is not carefully adjusted to the features of each and
every specific society. It is helpful to analyze the two chief ideologies of yesterday’s
industrial world: Marxism and Christianity. As an ideology, Marxism undoubt-
edly had elements of humanism. But it entirely subordinated them to one central
and all-important concept: that of the class struggle. It thus reduced the notions
of individuality and hence of freedom, literally submitting them to the notion
Is a Renewal of Humanism Possible Today? 149
of collectivity. Under these conditions, humanism was no longer of any value to

Marxism. The latter eventually proved to be its own negation. The other ideol-
ogy, Christianity, is something more than an ideology; it is a religion, and must
be treated as such, even when it is the religion of about a quarter of the world’s
total population. We should never forget, however, its origins. As a revealed faith,
Christianity is the extension, not the polar opposite, of Judaism, itself a religion
of a nationalistic and prophetic kind. There are significant ideological differences
between Judaism and Christianity, as we all know. One of these is in ecumenical-
ity. Furthermore, Christianity, unlike Judaism, preaches loving forgiveness, not
revenge. But if Christianity is to be consistent, then it can hardly (nor should it)
surrender its religious character, with all the prestige of twenty centuries of church
worship, to become a mere ideology. Whatever ideological values there are in
Christianity should be fastened on and prized, without giving them a Christian
label; but they cannot in themselves form a coherent ideological basis for further
enlargement and for global universalization. The moral is clear. Christianity, a
major and prominent religion (and all other religions, even Islam, a religion whose
„success“ clearly results from its practical assets), is unable to provide a proper
basis for working out a universally acceptable ideology, one able to philosophically
underpin the global ethics needed for the world of tomorrow.
To look now at philosophical ethics, these may be sorted into one of three cat-
egories, according to their criteria of moral action: sensualistic, sentimentalistic
and rationalistic. Sensualistic theories may be divided into three categories, he-
donistic, eudaemonistic and utilitarianistic. Hedonism may lead to a continuous
search for pleasure, and hence to saturation and disgust. Eudaemonistic theory
sees in pleasure the absence of pain. The disadvantage of such a conception is
that what is sought is only in the interest of the individual. Utilitarian concepts
transfer sensualistic ethics to a higher level. For Jeremy Bentham, what counts
is the intensity - the quantitative importance - of pleasure, since individual and
general interests are not to be distinguished. Such an ethical theory does not rise
above the level of a subjective evaluation of interest. The sentimentalistic concep-
tion of ethics presupposes a kind of sympathy for the object of moral behavior.
However, in order to be ethically valuable, sympathy must be allied to reason.
Rationalistic conceptions of ethics presuppose the objective existence of good,
whether immanent or transcendent.
For Plato, good is the reality toward which every consciousness tends. The form
of good can be conceived, with an effort, at its root. For Aristotle, on the other
hand, good is conceived through measure. Both these theories treat good as a
potential that can be realized by action. Kantian ethics is based on the notion of
a good will. For Kant, a moral act is not valuable because of its aim or because of
150 Evanghelos Moutsopoulos
an inclination of whatever kind. It is not easy, however, to accept Kant’s assertion

that everything except the intention is insignificant. Of the principles proposed by
classical ethical theories, none is sufficient in itself to be the guide to a moral life.
But while philosophical ethics is the best foundation of morality, there is evidently
no philosophical ethics that can in itself be the substrate of universally accepted
morals, and can be wholly and totally adaptable and acceptable by the world of
tomorrow such as it has been described. There are two further possibilities. The
first is to take the eclectic view. The problem is then how to conceive this eclecti-
cism. The second possibility is to avoid eclecticism, and look for a conception of
life that is neither specifically philosophical nor generally ideological, but both
practical and theoretical; a conception of life that has proved universally efficient
in the past and can be eked out by absorbing elements from the standard moral
practice of our own day.
If we opt for this second route, then the most exact moral conception would
seem to be the classical Greek humanism. It is only is it profoundly universal, so
that it has proved adaptable to both past and present civilizations, but also adapt-
able to the world of tomorrow, already depicted in outline. Greek humanism is free
of any kind of national or nationalistic ties. At the same time, it is broad enough
to absorb elements from any other culture in the world. Such a conception of life
seems to be the one that should be preferred.
There are three reasons for this. First, the strength of Greek humanism, his-
torically speaking, is its theoretical flexibility, and hence the ease with which it
adapts to various contexts. Greek humanism, in combination with Christianity,
with other religions and ideologies, or with philosophical theories, has provided
the underpinning for a platform of thought. It seems well able to continue doing
so in the future. Second, Greek humanism has an intellectual weight that rests
on its claims about scientific activity. It proposes that scientific activity must not
be subordinated to the aims of the moment, but must remain open to any kind
of desire for knowledge. Since truth is not an interpretation of need, but - in the
Aristotelian sense - an adequacy of mind and reality, Greek humanism is under-
standably resistant to schemes about the future. Greek humanism is neither a
philosophy nor a religion. Strictly speaking, it is something less than a philoso-
phy, and something more than an ideology. This is why it is able, in its eventual
enlarged and renewed form, to meet the actual intellectual and spiritual needs
of a renewed universal society. Third, Greek humanism is the combination and
outcome of certain tendencies that were valid for the Greek world, and continue
to be so. It is founded mainly, if not exclusively, on a sense of measure and the
freedom of the individual, or rather the concept of the free person freely integrated
into a free society of free citizens. There are no limits to the freedom of the Greek
Is a Renewal of Humanism Possible Today? 151
human being, other than those suggested by respect for the freedom of everyone
else, individually and collectively.
To conclude: If what we are looking for is a new morality for the world of
tomorrow, then we should above all search for it within Greek humanism. One
will find there the patterns needed for humanity to face the world in a contem-
porary way, as it endeavors to secure the continuity of established human values
in a human society in constant change. But humanity needs to be safeguarded
from further unconsidered evolution, if there is still to be a constant relationship
between society, with its universal vocation, the human environment and human-
kind itself. In this regard, what is essential is a wholehearted looking back to Greek
humanistic ideals, since we prepare today for a future world that will harmoni-
ously meet our material and spiritual needs, and will be just as harmonious an
expression of the historical and actual presence of human beings in the universe.
This explicit requirement is, I think, fully and implicitly present in the prevailing
international mood, as exemplified in the founding charter and philosophy of our
latter-day Amphictyonic Council, the United Nations. But there is (it seems to me)
still much to do before the United Nations is strong enough to be able to apply its
theoretical ideals in practice; before it can achieve its aim of imposing moral law
universally in the face of all inhuman tendencies to break this law. Greek human-
ism has proved compatible with universal values. Besides, since ancient times,
Greek humanism has strongly influenced non-Hellenic thought. These various
categories of systems have the power to join together through a dialogue between
cultures for the purpose of confronting and solving the problems of humankind
today, in order to establish the world we are seeking to create tomorrow.
References
Lamont, C. (1977): The Philosophy of Humanism. Humanist Press, Amherst.
Moutsopoulos, E. L’univers des Valeurs, Univers de L’Homme: Recherches Axi-
ologiques, Academy of Athens Center for Research on Greek Philosophy, Athens.
Moutsopoulos, E. (2006): Thought, Culture, Action: Studies in the Theory of
Values and its Greek Sources, Academy of Athens Center for Research on
Greek Philosophy, Athens.
Nerlich, G. (1989) Values and Valuing: Speculations on the Ethical Life of Persons,
Clarendon Press, Okford.
Boris Bratina
University of Priština, Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia
Other or The Other?
It may once again be posited: “What does it still mean today to ask about The
Other?” Anyone “normal” would answer that The Other is one who is not them.
As for people, I exist and (all) the others also do, indeed. Conversely, if observed
from isolated consciousness, then I and (all) other things exist. According to the
former proposition, I is situated in the multiplicity of what other is. I is in opposi-
tion to all which is simply other. However, both these propositions describe the
two main situations in regard to the existence of I. Therefore, the question about
The Other acquires the sense of a triangle, consisting of I (ego), The Other (alius),
and that which is simply other (aliud). Still, what do these terms primarily mean?
Although these concepts can hardly be conceived of as isolated from one an-
other, they must be differentiated somehow; thus, let it be understood that when
“I” is in question, all that can be spoken of it is “I” itself. Therefore, when one says
“I”, one always means “Me”. In other words, I is all that has consciousness about
itself, i.e., self-consciousness, and that which possesses it is to be considered as
personality. In this sense, The Other is also “Me” and thus is something which can
also be the same in itself. However, it is not one’s own “Me”, but another’s (alter
ego), another’s self-consciousness. The Other and I create the realm of personality,
self-consciousness, or, if desired to be put in such a manner, “intersubjectivity”.
Relations in this realm formally differ from relations in which the I inter-steps
with that which is simply other. This other differs from I and The Other through a
lack of self-consciousness, which I and The Other cannot find in other. Now, if a
community formed by I and The Others is established - a community which one’s
own natural language suggests - this is a community between The Other and that
which is simply other. Formally speaking, this unity creates a realm which Fichte
defined as non-I, which is literally opposed to I. If the thread of this suggestion
in language is followed, then all the objects of the so-called “exterior world” and
all of its phenomena are able to be subsumed through that which is simply other,
even including The Other itself. The Other as an object belongs to that which is
simply other. Moreover, if I for an epiphenomenon of matter (a certain “ontology”
of positivism) is not taken into consideration, then one’s own body can be thought
of as something different from ourselves. This is often the case in modernity. No
matter how all of one’s impressions and feelings (exterior and interior) belong to
154 Boris Bratina
oneself (yet exactly for this reason), they can be different from oneself. Even one’s
own thoughts can be separated, putting them into one’s own possession (main-
taining them, as in Be-grief). Thus, I can be easily conceived of as of difference to
all that which is simply other and this difference bears the greatest significance.
Only by relating to oneself does one think of something other or of The Other.
Nevertheless, in the same instance, one feels that I exists independently from
everything else. For any reason, if I were to explain what exactly it comes across
to itself, and if it would explain its own self, then it could search the ground of
such an existence that is either exterior to itself or (again) inside its own self. Not
only does this question of a universal foundation already represent a cosmologi-
cal question, but also it is the most well-known form of the question which all
of philosophy posits; that is: “What is?”. Together with Fichte and Schelling, if
the former were to be called attitude dogmatism and the latter idealism, then it
would seem that no “middle path” between them would be possible. (If it were
possible, then it would reduce the latter attitude to the former.) Putting I in the
centre of the order of things often or always results in solipsism. Here, however,
the only strategy which is under consideration is that which posits the universal
foundation in some non-I, in connection to one’s own self.
This specific conclusion can be readily found in the beginnings of philosophy,
when the “natural philosopher” Thales posits water being down in the ground.
Indeed, when doing so, it is more likely that what is in mind is the foundation of
all that which is alive, of that which has soul. To a certain point, Aristotle under-
stands this (Metaphysics, 983), which is similarly understood by Anaximenes and
Anaximander as well - mutatis mutandis. Though it must be noted that water is
certainly not the only matter from which life originates (meaning that water also
has its own other), it is still paramount for life. Life itself recognizes water as its
other, even if it stands at its roots. This positing of Ur-matter asthe foundation
of everything which is (for all that exists is only accomplished through it [mean-
ing: through Ur-matter]), is also the first positing of non-I as the foundation in
the sense of what is simply other. This is valuable for philosophy, due to the fact
that philosophy essentially differs from religion, even when its own results are
theological. (Religion a priori puts the personalized non-I, The Big Other, God or
Gods into a universal foundation – in which all are similar, at least in as much as
it pertains to their personality.)
However, in ancient philosophy, the idea of Sameness is much more typical.
Parmenides’ teaching states that being and speech concerning one thing are the
same. As though a lie is not indeed possible on the basis of this understanding,
the identifying of being (to on) and Sameness (tauto) abolishes every possible as-
sertion whatsoever. It is a fact that, through speaking, things are named as being
Other or The Other? 155
identical with themselves and different from one another at the same time. In other
words: what is mutually other becomes the Same in speech. Therefore, if being is
to be differentiated from speech in order to be able to convey it in any relation at
all (to think and speak about these, even at the cost of their own identification),
then not only should Sameness, but also Otherness (to heteron) belong to being as
well. It would not be possible to name the being, nor to pose a proposition of the
type “S is P” without this condition. Plato (Sophist, 258d–260b) did not stray from
the dialectics of Sameness and other; for him, just as for Heidegger, life did not
crystallize in relation to Me/The Other as humankind’s dwelling in the light of the
Same. Additionally, at the end of the dialogue, Parmenides implicitly introduces
the primacy of the Same upon other through the establishment of multiplicity as
other from The One (Parmenides, 166a-b). This relationship between the Same and
other has become a pattern in modern philosophy, by which it measures and thinks
through the relationship of I/The Other. It remains to be shown if the reason for
this analogy has other motives, but its consistent review is the work of idealism.
It seems that the constant historical conflict between philosophy and religion
has led to the victorious emancipation of the former from the latter. From the
ancient Greeks to today, philosophy has been in a continuous step of immanence
in transcendence. The process certainly commenced with the most important
cognition of modernity (the cognition of ego cogito), which further progressed
through Spinoza’s depersonalization of God in the definition of natura natur-
ans, and culminated with Fichte and his demand for the immanence of all that
is non-I. Therein, philosophy has often regarded religion as an anthropocentric
adornment of natural phenomena, and as a result of fear and superstition. Owing
to ignorance, religion has also been regarded with a tendency toward prejudice,
particularly toward authority carefully nurtured by the Church and led by its in-
terests in power. The second abolishment cycle in the transcendence of philosophy
culminated during the 60s and 70s of the last century, with the dissolution of I
as understood as interiority, having its redefinition into a transparent unit of the
system. This “postmodern state” is the reality of the present.
This short recap of the relationship between religion and philosophy is merely
provided in order to show which activity of the human mind has established the
non-I in view of The Other on its own grounds and on the grounds of everything
otherwise, even if this Other be God. This has meant an emancipation from The
Big Other and a greater dominance of that which is simply other, where the found-
ing role has been denied to The Other in every sense. Therein, not only did the
simple other gradually reign within its own place in the realm of philosophy, but
also in science, art, etc. Even those who have permitted The Divine Other (such
as Descartes and Leibniz) have also simply stood for the former option. Not until
156 Boris Bratina
Buber and Levinas (not yet in the works of Husserl and Heidegger, but surely to
their credit) was the question posed of The Other as the foundation for all knowl-
edge and every reality. For this precise reason, this question has been implicitly
woven into almost all the important issues of philosophy; not only in “What is?”,
but also in the relation of the infinite and the finite, one and multiplicity, and in
the relation of time. Standing so beyond the theoretical realm, it was actually
held beyond the founding realm as well. Even when this question emerged in
philosophy, it remained all there was until Hegel transferred it from its practical-
ity to its theoretical.
Hegel was the first to posit The Other as being constitutive for all knowledge.
Indeed, Hegel did this on the former grounds in that which is simply other. In spite
of all reversions, this kind of access did not change in Marx, who claimed that one
could clearly come to see what The Other meant from one’s relationship toward
that which was simply other; this is as convincing as it is ironic, concerning the
primacy of the two (Marx 1988, 136). Yet, both Hegel and Marx were inheritors of
the Enlightenment (with Rousseau at its head), which identified I with The Other
in the realm of that which is simply other, situating both of them in the form of
the individual citizen (which also included their differences). However, more im-
portant here is that they were the successors of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, which
related to the field of consciousness, the field of the concrete relation of vivid real-
ity, in which the identity of everything was to be found and exhausted in mutual
co-determination. When I is removed from consciousness (its absolute basis) or
if this absolute basis is removed from the scope of I’s contemplative power, then
this partly represents the return to the Eleatic idea of Sameness. From a slightly
different point of view, this is the same as the assimilation of everything, even The
Other as other, in as much as it is dissoluble in what is the Same.
In my opinion, the crisis of modernity began with Marx’s materialism and his
infamous action of “positioning Hegel upside down”. Marx’s recognition of the
importance of physical, industrial, and techno-scientific production becoming
independent, as well as of the alienated relations between those who participated
in such production, practically deprived The Other of its transcendence. Yet, in
regard to the philosophy of consciousness, it was probably Nietzsche who has
landed the most blows against it. Almost all of his important themes are aimed at
its destruction, from preferring the Dionysian to the Apollonian, the re-evaluation
of all values, and the two centuries of nihilism which he had predicted and whose
time is not yet over (this prophecy, which is undoubtedly being fulfilled, in either
reality or philosophy, is still looked upon for wanting its interpretation); not least
of which in these ideas is the motive of the “death of God” as the symbolic death
of every transcendence, or the development of the idea of will as the implacable
will to power. In a greater sense, Nietzsche inspired not only Heidegger, but the
authors of poststructuralist provenience as well. The “death of God”, for instance,
implies the abolishment of all other forms of transcendence, relativism, or the
erasing of morality, even the death of man. In the same manner, the theme of
value that Nietzsche opened is probably one of the most important questions of
today’s theory.
The following blow came from psychoanalysis, which robbed the modern
subject of its power; not only concerning one’s exteriority, but also (and more
importantly) concerning one’s self. The matter which has definitely split the ego
and the unconscious in twain, has become the object of massive abuse in terms of
power (naturally, upon The Others). Such manipulation has been made possible
by a certain economy of desire and passion, which Freud saw in the unconscious
and which coincided with De Saussure’s establishment of the economy of signs
in language.1 Still, the idea of a general economy later rose, both in structural-
ism (Strauss, Bataille, Althusser) and in philosophy, which relied on the logical
analysis of language (Wittgenstein, Austin, Strawson) or on the method and re-
sults of natural science. It rose as meta-subjective: by itself, without subject, as
the systemic which took a general form of the game and became a transcendental
frame for subjectivity as such.
As for psychoanalysis, the final grounds of its economy were established in
theory (not in therapy) with the acceptance of the hypothesis of the death wish,
which abolished the domination of the pleasure principle. This establishment
finalized the necessary game of opposites that made this theoretical movement
possible, and which was very much in accordance with the representative mod-
ern tradition of opposing. The idea manifested great influence with Lacan and
after him. Yet, for Freud, this (understood herein to be) completely constructed
assumption represented a theoretical regress from problems concerning war
neuroses and masochism, which themselves were seemingly not soluble on the
basis of the pleasure principle. As the first principle for the human soul in its
functioning, this principle not only established psychoanalysis on a bad name
footing, but also simultaneously released the potential of desire (with respect to its
social production/suppression), and, subsequently, suggested some revolutionary
and emancipative practice.2 Therein, it is of interest to note that Wilhelm Reich
1 Lacan’s famous later determination, by which the unconscious is structured as a lan-

guage, illustrates this connection best; however, it would be even more precise to say
that a language and the unconscious are both structured as economy.
2 Surrealism is one obvious example of this kind of practice in art.
158 Boris Bratina
(a much exploited, silenced, and avoided writer) gave a consistent explanation for
masochism, while still not assuming any opposite principle.
What is more important is that psychoanalysis has indirectly proven the consti-
tutive significance The Other has for I, as that which does not reside with The Other
does not become the I. The pleasure principle has meant a veritable “springtime”
of The Other; in it, the survival of desire has been possible both as the desire for
The Other and of The Other. With the death drive in play, through all its reversions,
desire has become the death of the object of desire and has contemporaneously
degenerated into an unrestrained will to power, into a “I want to be able to…” -
whatever or everything, no matter, anything could be desired, since (it has seemed
that) everything has been possible. Desire and will have become one and the
object of desire has become an object without its own. In all actuality, the death
of the object is the death of The Other and the death of I, and death of the subject
is its consequence. If this need not be so, then psychoanalysis might have not yet
exhausted all its interpretative possibilities, even though it has been present on
the theoretical stage for more than one century. Its concepts, such as the uncon-
scious or suppression, are still fully in use. However, the most important fact is
that psychoanalysis has convincingly demonstrated an outbreak of The Other into
the interior of I, as well as an almost original dependence of I on The Other, until
the point where practically every structural part of the subject’s psyche gives The
Other independent existence.
Phenomenology started its campaign in philosophy more or less simultane-
ously with psychoanalysis. If nothing else, then early phenomenology did make
the actual question of The Other, which it meant to posit generally. In any case,
it might be stated that phenomenology shed more light on the matter. On the
one hand, if the question did not appear in Husserl’s works within the scope of
transcendental reduction, then it did appear in the reconstitution of the exterior
world. However, such a return to the Cartesian method and genre, which has
meant to derive the world out of I (the transcendental ego) without the assistance
of The Eminent Other, has not been possible, at least when the transcendence
of The Other is in question. On the other hand, Heidegger had already met I as
“thrown-into-the-world” and found The Other only after doing so, next to all that
which is simply other in its own surroundings. This pre-datum of the world has
the sense of giving an ontological advantage of the Same prior to that which is
simply other. What Levinas later called the “imperial character of ontology” can
be clearly seen here; of course, his criticism only bears weight on the condition of
seeing the relationship between I and The Other in a different manner than that
which has been defined here. As a result, this means that I is now doubly separated
from The Other. For Heidegger, The Other is wholly exhausted in his phenomenal
accessibility to the “thrown-into-the-world” I; i.e., The Other is better signified by

function then by personal relationships.
As Husserl and Heidegger encountered The Other as a problem, it may be said
that something of a similar nature also occurred to Sartre. For him, The Other
only appears in the construction of the so-called “being-for-itself ”, as this term
is counted as being in its significant determination, which is not “this” being.
Stemming from the original duality of the data of I for itself versus the way in
which all other is given to it, Sartre sees a duality in the cognition of The Other.
On the one hand, every Cartesian procedure shows that The Other may not be
derived when originating from the I of consciousness. On the other hand, if cogito
is extended and The Other comes to be known by acting upon oneself, then only
the transcended “being-object” of The Other is seized by this engagement, as a
“transcended transcendence”. The existence of The Other is not deduced, it is only
probable. Sartre tried to accommodate for this gap by introducing some important
issues, such as body, hand, sadism, language, and solipsism; some of these issues
have even inspired some degree of research by other phenomenologists (Merlau-
Ponty, and Ricoeur). However, ambivalence still remains at the end of Sartre’s own
research, since the multitude of consciousnesses shows up as a synthesis whose
totality cannot be imagined. The Other remains a “facticity”, an irreducible coin-
cidence in being. What is left is an important determination that it is not enough
for The Other to exist where I “lets it be” (as Heidegger had done), and where one
must also claim that they themselves are not The Other. Therein, The Other still
remains a “closed box” (Sartre 1997, 314).
Nevertheless, even previous to Sartre and in concurrence with him, Buber and
Levinas carried out their own respective research on The Other from a changed
perspective, which assigned the problem to crucial questions of continental phi-
losophy. Particularly due to these changes, their approaches were alike, and it may
be said that they presented an antiparallel to Fichte’s method in Wissenschaftslehre.
Namely, instead of searching for The Other in the world, the world itself was
made open due to The Other. Refusing to obey the simple opposition of I and
non-I, Buber turned to language, in which he differentiated “the basic words” of
I-Thou and I-It (instead of: Him). By use of these words, Buber wanted to avoid
the consequences of the aforementioned double position of the human-self. “The
basic word” I-Thou is essentially different from the word I-It in that the former
relies on the presence of the non-object of its action, while the latter does not. The
I–Thou-word originally establishes and enables the idea of relation in general and
the relation with Thou (i.e., The Other) is always mutual and direct. This is not the
case in relation to that which is simply other, as this relation is made by help of the
means (media). Conversely, the relationship with The Other transcends all means,
160 Boris Bratina
which leaves it not able to be captured by any of them or by any procedure. Yet, as
soon as The Other is liberated from the claws of the Same and the relation with it
is defined as an “encounter”, Buber ends too soon in evoking God and subjecting
everything to God, even the relation in question.
Although himself a religious man like Buber and yet contrary to him, Levinas
developed a minute analysis of the relation with The Other and was in fact the first
to pose the problem in its entire rigors. It is not only that he criticized traditional
ontology as an “imperial” action of the assimilation and dissolution of transcend-
ence in its immanence, but also that he followed the topic of the relation of I/The
Other in its many aspects. Contrary to the relation with what is simply other and
is exhausted by its phenomenal qualities, both of the members in the relation
between I and The Other are defined as being in relation, while still being located
outside of it. The symmetry of the determination which accompanies every rela-
tion in the phenomenal world will appear as asymmetry in another place, i.e., in
the face of The Other. As Levinas terms it, the “face-to-face” relation is an event
of the phenomenal order, though it does happen in the world and refers to the es-
sential otherness of The Other, which resides beyond both phenomenon and being.
The deduction of this proposition shows that it is not a necessary proposition (for
one is not obliged to admit The Other) and, hence, cannot extend to the sphere
of ontological transcendence. Nevertheless, in view of ethical transcendence, an
exit in the practical sphere must be sought instead. Out of this, Levinas concludes
the primacy of The Other, not only concerning that which is simply other, but also
concerning I, which has given its pattern of every future relation in the original
anarchy and direct relation with The Other, and finishes its structure in the world
of “the third” or multitude; in other words, in a world of language and consensus.
Levinas’ position has provoked numerous and contradictory reactions, from
underestimation to uncritical acceptance, and various syncretisms.3 However,
determination by which The Other infinitely evades knowledge has become a
nightmare or obsession for many writers and the ethical transcendence which
establishes the primacy of The Other has either been ignored or simplified. This
eagerness in defining a new place for The Other is the inspiration for asking the
question: what does it mean to establish The Other instead of that which is simply
other as the foundation of entire reality? Indeed, the question of primacy between
3 The most important reaction to Levinas’ work originated from phenomenology, the
school from whose shelter Levinas distanced himself, and from post-structuralism
(Derrida, Liotar, and Baudrillard). His understanding of The Other as an all-establishing
category can be understood to be not only his personal opus, but also an expression of
epochal maturity (or perhaps a crisis) of philosophy as well.
the two emerges from the essentially double position of I, regarding how it is given
to itself and how everything else is given to it. If the possibility for I is excluded
as being the only source of everything which is (the solipsistic option), then the
ontological primacy of the remaining options shall then decide the interpretation
of the totality of experience and of the world.
References
Aristotle: Metaphysics, (2005): Nuvision Publications, Sioux Falls.
Buber, M. (1958): I and Thou. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.
Cooper, J.M. [ed.] (1997): Plato, Complete Works. Hackett, Indianapolis.
Fichte J.G. (1992): Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy. Cornell University
Press, Ithaca.
Fichte, J.G. (2005): The Science of Knowing: J. G. Fichte’s 1804 Lectures on the
Wissenschaftslehre. State University of New York Press, New York.
Heidegger, M. (1962): Being and Time. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Husserl, E. (1980): Phenomenology and the Foundation of the Sciences. Third
book: Ideas Pertaining to Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy. Martinus Nijhov, The Hague.
Lacan, J. (1996): Écrits. The First Complete Edition in English. W. W. Norton,
New York.
Levinas, E. (1979): Totality and Infinity. Martinus Nijhov, The Hague.
Levinas, E. (1991): Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Dordrecht.
Marx, K. (1988): Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Com-
munist Manifesto. Prometheus Books, New York.
Sartre, J.P. (1997): Being and Nothingness. Washington Square Press, New York.
Schelling, F.W.J. (1978): System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). University
Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Mikhail Epstein
Emory University, Atlanta
Creative Disappearance of the Human Being:

Introduction to Humanology1
The Death of Man?

In the beginning of the 21st century, the destiny of a man is usually perceived in
the framework of his historical death and entrance into a Posthumanism era. The
idea itself is not new. Already in the beginning of the 20th century, posthumanistic
groups were inspired by the superhuman philosophy of Nietzsche and later by
the poststructuralist episteme of the “end of man” (M. Foucault). However, at the
beginning of 21st century, the idea of an exhaustion and the overcoming of a hu-
man being gained a new impulse in the impressive success of the technical and
especially cyber civilization.
Transhumanism had emerged in the USA in the 1990s. This movement is
trying to merge discoveries in IT, genetics and a philosophy of the overcoming
of fundamental human limitations. The stage of a slow evolution of the human
intellect is coming to an end, followed by the new stage of an accelerated evolu-
tion of the intellect in the form of constantly-changing and improving cybernetic
systems. Transhumanism is aimed to create the singularity, a breaking-point of
development, which, according to contemporary futurologists, such as Raymond
Kurzweil, is predicted to start in the middle of the 21st century, when cyber sys-
tems, created by the human intellect, will surpass their creators and will guide
them as less developed (and even resisting) beings. In the most positive case,
the human being as a biological intellect can rely on his inner technologization,
which will complement the cybernatization of the whole society. Artificial ageless
organs will replace imperfect biological ones, and thus the process of information
and energy exchange between posthuman cyber beings and the environment will
be established. According to Kurzweil, by the end the 21st century, the world will
be inhabited mostly by artificial superintellects existing as computer programs,
moving around electronic nets from one computer to another. In a physical world,
these computer programs will be able to represent themselves as robots and to
control and synchronize their various programmed bodies. Meanwhile, individual
1 This article has been translated from Russian into English by Vladimir Zotov.
164 Mikhail Epstein
intellects will constantly merge and separate, and thus it would be impossible to
recognize the exact amount of “humans” or “intellectual beings” living on the
Earth. The new flexibility of consciousness and the ability to move from one intel-
lect to another will bring serious changes to the nature of self-identity. Physical
contacts between two human beings will become a rare occasion. An individual
agency will dissolve in information flows and electronic nets. Self-controlled com-
puter programs will communicate with each other just like Tyutchev’s “deaf-mute
demons”.2
Transhumanism is a non–academic stream of cyber intellect enthusiasts. The
interest for the new technologies and their influences on humanity is increasing
in academic circles as well, creating a new research field often referred as “posthu-
man studies”. A good example of this is the book by Hayles N. Katherine How we
Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.3
Posthumanism and Humanology. Kenosis of the Human:

Theological Parallels
Now, I will make a critical introduction into the new scientific field, which I have
called Humanology, rather than Posthumanism. The main point here is not the
death of the human being, but instead an extension of the definition of “human-
ity”, which applies to human creations, even to those going beyond human exist-
ence as a biological organism and active individual. Even though the perspectives
of human extinction in the cyber civilization seem frightening, it is necessary to
realize that this extinction is a part of the human kenotic nature: the ability of self-
transcendence as the transference of human essence into something completely
different from it. Let me remind the reader that in theology, the act of kénōsis is
explained as the self-emptying of God, who first creates a world separated from
Himself and later limits Himself by becoming a human (the Greek word kénōsis
means an emptying, and it derives from the word kenos which means empty).
How does this kénōsis reveal itself in human creative activity?
Human beings create forms of techniques which are able to exist autonomously,
almost or completely independent from human interference. Is not God similarly
creating forms of being, even such a form as a human being, which are able to
exist without His interference? The natural laws of creations and the free will of
a human are not arguments against the existence of a Creator. On the contrary,
2 This conception of the new era is described in: Kurzweil 1999 and Kurzweil 2005. For
more about Kurzweil’s ideas, see Эпштейн 2006.
3 See Hayles 1991.
Creative Disappearance of the Human Being 165
Jewish-Christian theology is based on these suppositions about a sovereign crea-

tion. In the same way the humanologic approach to the human being is based on
its radical capability for self-alienation, the creation of self-existing cyber beings
as based on the algorithms of artificial intellects. If an independent human is cre-
ated in the image of God, then is a human not able to pass this freedom onto his
own creations, providing them with the same sovereignty of thought and action
he received from God? This is all about passing the baton of creativity first from
God to a human, and then from a human to an artificial intellect.
The theory of intellectual baton passing explains why the acknowledgment of
the independence of future highly developed cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) does
not necessary lead to the humiliation of the human position, dehumanization,
antihumanism, or Posthumanism. The recognition of both human autonomy and
freedom in creation does not have its consequences in atheism and the denial
of the existence of a Creator. Jewish-Christian theology emphasizes deep and
inherent human freedom as a proof that the human being is a son of God and
possesses a part of His freewill. Furthermore, in the same way, the recognition
of autonomy and even “self-will” of cyborgs may deepen our conception of the
human being and show new ways for enriching Humanology. In other words,
Humanology is related to Posthumanism in the same way as theology is related
to atheism. For an atheist, the one who fights against God, the independence of
the human is understood as the death of God, while for a passionate posthuman-
ist, who fights against the human, the independence of cyborgs is recognized as
the death of the human. Meanwhile for a theology scholar, “the death of God” is
just a sign of His infinite creative force and mercy toward the human being, His
ability of self-exhaustion in Creation and, through the mystery of God-man, His
denial of death by death and His ability to be resurrected and to resurrect. The
same applies to the human: he disappears and exhausts himself in the more perfect
and autonomous creations of his intellect and, by providing them with human
abilities (calculation, communication, modеlling, construction, accumulation and
the exchange of information), he receives a new superhuman life in his creations.
Theology explores an image and will of God even in radical forms of His self-
alienation, such as becoming a human and dying, becoming as immanent as his
creation. God-man is a core of Christian theology. In the same way, a technohu-
man is a core of the new Humanology, which studies humanity in the most radical
transformations, which go beyond nature. Even in these cases, when the human
intellect is being completely transformed into an artificial intellect of his creations
and is released from its primal belonging to a biologically active individual, it is
still in the sphere of Humanology. In other words, compared to traditional spheres
of the humanities, which study the creative activities of humans (art, history,
166 Mikhail Epstein
language, and philosophy), but leave behind scientific practice and technologies
as if they were not a testimony about the human being, Humanology extends and
widens the field of humanism. Is not human self-alienation, self-exhaustion and
even self-abandonment a quintessence of humanity? Humanology goes beyond
the humanities in such spheres, where the human is not faithful to himself, but
at the same time remains himself.
At the same time, Humanology refuses to join the funeral banquet of human-
kind, which are being held by short-sighted technocrats and futurists: for them, the
increase of the information power of machines, its integration (among themselves)
and autonomization (from human) serve us as the evidence for an end to the hu-
man historical era. Is the main definition “posthuman” legitimate if it sounds and
almost means the same as “posthumous”? Do we have to bury a man, identify-
ing him with a biological subtract, anticipating a new “post-biological” stage of
civilization? Or does being a human mean to go beyond “humanistic, too much
humanistic”, as the image of the Creator, who gained this title because He goes
beyond “divine, too much divine” creating a world and a human?
Superhuman: The (Self) Creation of a Man

Transhumanism seems to be a more relevant definition than Posthumanism, for
the word “trans” means: going beyond humanity. Moreover, since it is characteris-
tic of a human to become more and less than himself by going beyond his limits,
there is no contradiction between Humanism and Transhumanism. Both terms,
humanism and Transhumanism, describe the same human attitude toward himself,
while at the same time being subject and object. A transhuman being, or generally
speaking, superhuman, is a subject in the relation with an object, which is human.
When Nietzsche in the words of Zarathustra proclaims the overcoming of the
human, he emphasizes that the creation of a superhuman is the task of a man,
where a man himself is just a bridge between an ape and a superhuman.
“I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done
to surpass man? All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye
want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass
man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same
shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame”. (Nietzsche 1990, 8)
Zarathustra is wrong just at one point: have those creatures created something su-
perior to themselves before? What are the creatures: fishes, snakes, or deers? What
have they created superior to themselves? It is the unique ability of the human
to create something more precious and durable than himself. And the uprising
superhuman, despite all his physical and intellectual superiority is just a creation
of a human, of his ability to overcome his limits. It is only essential for a human,
the creator of arts, techniques and civilization, as well as the new potential forms
of life and intelligence, to go beyond himself serving as a bridge to the supreme
goal. In Nietzsche’s sermon about the superhuman, there is basically nothing new
compared to the famous Renaissance oration of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
about human dignity:
“[…] He made man a creature of indeterminate and indifferent nature, and, placing him
in the middle of the world, said to him ‘Adam, we give you no fixed place to live, no form
that is peculiar to you, nor any function that is yours alone. According to your desires
and judgment, you will have and possess whatever place to live, whatever form, and
whatever functions you yourself choose. All other things have a limited and fixed nature
prescribed and bounded by our laws. You, with no limit or no bound, may choose for
yourself the limits and bounds of your nature. We have placed you at the world’s center so
that you may survey everything else in the world. We have made you neither of heavenly
nor of earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and dignity,
you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose. To you is granted the power
of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the
power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the
divine’”. (Pico Della Mirandola 1962, 507–508)
If we would exclude the religious part of Renaissance humanism, then we would

receive the human of Nietzsche on his way to the superhuman:
“to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into
the higher forms […]” (Pico della Mirandola).
“All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves […]” (Nietzsche).
Nietzsche’s idea is based on the same humanistic ground, but he only interprets
it less precisely, for he refers to the unknown “all beings”, while according to Pico
della Mirandola only the human is able to be reborn (to transform himself) into
something superior.
Although a religious ingredient of human dignity is not missing in Nietzsche’s
concept, but it becomes even more intensive. In Pico della Mirandola’s concept,
the human being is placed by God into the center of the universe as a “superbe-
ing”, while Nietzsche insists that a human is trying to become the superbeing and
to overcome himself by gaining divine attributes. This is another approach to the
Renaissance idea of a transcendental “divine-endless” entity as a part of the human
being, which now comes out of him as “superhumanistic”, what Gilles Deleuze
calls “superfold” (fr. sur-pli) in his book about Michelle Foucault (in Appendix
“On the death of man and superman”).
Deleuze shares the Posthumanistic concept of Foucault and explains it. In the
classical period of formation during the 17th and 18th centuries, Leibniz, Spinoza,
168 Mikhail Epstein
Pascal perceived a human being as a “fold”, a wrinkle on the Infinite image, which
should be smoothed to uncover the infinite and divine human nature. In the „his-
torical“ formation of the 19th century Darwin, Adam Smith and Marx believed
that a human „folds“ into a radically finite historical being inscribes himself into
the context of language, evolution, and industry, as well as becomes limited by
time and space. Finally, in the “future formation”, whose forefather, according to
Deleuze, was Nietzsche, the “fold” is multiplying and the human being is trans-
formed into a superbeing without losing his finality, which he constantly multi-
plies in the perspective of “endless reflexivity”.
“Superfoldness” as infinitity can be discovered in the self-reflection of contem-
porary literature and art, growing spirals of genetic codes, in self-organization of
chaos and in other complicated and accidental processes, as well as in constantly
divisible and self-repeating patterns of fractals. It is not transcendental (theologi-
cal) infinity, folded into the human being but is still able to smoothen out and
uncover its divine nature (the same as in the 17th and 18th centuries). And this is
not simply an earthly and transiently human (19th century) historically secluded
in itself. It is an infinitely multiplying finitude and historicity, which transcends
itself aiming for a maximum permissible intensity as superhumanity. According to
Deleuze, the creative potential of this new formation discovered in the 20th and 21st
centuries is not lower than in the previous two cases and even might exceed them.4
If we share this view, then it becomes clear that it is not adequate to speak
about the death of a human, rather of the very beginning of its self-multiplying
as “superfold” or “superhumanity”. Being human means becoming superhuman.
The human is being placed on the higher level of intensity; it extends the range
of its being by creating a second, self-acting and self-thinking supernature. Hu-
manology is a science about the human who overcomes the borders of his species;
it is the science of the transformations of the human in the process of the creation
of artificial forms of life and intelligence that are potentially superior to biological
Homo sapiens.
Ecology of the Human

Until recently, scientists had the opportunity to operate with one natural form of
being and one kind of human intellect, present in the singular only, and it made
it impossible for scholars to reach a generalization about the nature of being and
intelligence, for a generalization is always based on a comparison of different
4 Boundas 1993, 95–102.

variations of the same phenomenon. Humanology perceives a human being not

only as a part of an non–rational life species (plants and animals), but also as a
non–biologic intellect species and an element of a more general paradigm: as one
of the humanoids, or cyborgs (cyber organisms).
Step by step in this wider context, the entire humanity acquires specification
which was previously typical for its subdivisions, nations and ethnos, within hu-
mankind. Globalization, the unification of nations in techno-economic-cultural
wholeness within humanity, is happening at the same time with the specification
and even “natiofication” of humanity as being only one of the intelligent species.
Human phenomenon receives a grammatical form, a “declination” with its precise
meaning, while before it was just a phenomenon out of a system, and the only
subject and object of human science. Now, we are able to perceive the human as a
figure of the noosphere, where he receives additional differential signs. Humanology
enriches the language we use in order to speak about humans; it brings to the hu-
man sciences a new paradigm — a human which is different from the other intel-
ligent species. Thus, humanology stands out against a background of the traditional
human sciences and constitutes itself as a new discipline.
As technology, machines and computers move into the traditional domains
of human thinking and action (calculation, construction, modulation, building,
accumulation and the exchange of information), the human being is perceived
more and more as something rare, strange, irregular, and surprising, with an ad-
ditional flavor of nobility and distinction, like a fine old wine. A more advanced
technical civilization is necessary in order to start seeing humans as part of the
ecological system. In the past, we used to assign only plants and animals to this
ecological system. The body manifestations, such as touch and handwriting can
now be viewed as belonging to the paleonoic era of civilization, when humans
mostly functioned as natural beings.
Following this new world perception, Humanology appears as a discipline
related to the human sciences in the same way as ecology is related to the natural
sciences. Physics and biology study nature as it is, whereas ecology considers it
in a relation to humans and as a part of a human-created environment. Similarly,
the humanities study a human as he is, whereas Humanology views a human as
a part of the technically-created environment and as a species of intelligent be-
ings. Humanology also studies the ways of communication between biospecies
and technospecies within a human perspective, including the technization of an
organism and the humanization of a machine.
Following nature, which is increasingly integrated into the growth of global
civilization, a human will be more and more perceived as a specific biocenosis
170 Mikhail Epstein
included into a more powerful technical environment. It is possible that the prop-
erty of humanness will function in artificially isolated and protected territories or
“anthroparks”; the same way as nature in its virginity now is cultivated in national
parks and other artificial preserves. Everything natural becomes an object of culti-
vation and conservation. These plantations, or reservoirs, or natural museums of hu-
manity will function as non–computerized islands of ancient “natural civilization”.
For example, a newly created humanological object is handwriting as a small
reservoir of humanity in the world of typing. My hand is already used to press
letter buttons, and when I am using a pen, I start feeling again my humanity.
In the recent past, the process of writing was not perceived as typically human,
for it had a function of informational transmission. In the cyber era writing,
transferring the informational function to computers, rediscovers its physicality.
The process of writing is a way of touching paper and symbolic contact with an
addressee, the future reader; it is a revelation of a personality and intimate dis-
covery of the psychomotor abilities of an author. An act of writing is something
“wild” comparing to typing: it is a ritual dance of a hand, a kind of art. Although
the act of writing has been existing for a long time, now it becomes an interest of
Humanology for the first time, in its disappearing and newly discovered way: as an
archaic way of communication, as a manifestation of tactile and gesture abilities,
as a rudiment of humanity in „posthuman“ civilization. It is not accidental that
a new term “wet signature”, the traditional ink signature, emerges contrary to an
ordinary signature (without epithet), which is already understood as an electronic
digital identification. The technization of human abilities and their transmission
to a machine fosters the process of archaization and ecologization of the human
as a natural being.
Humanology in the System of Human Sciences

At the turn of the 21st century, a new relation had been revealed among three ma-
jor disciplines of human studies: anthropology, the humanities and Humanology.
The difference among them lies in the three main eras of human development:
prehistoric, historic, and posthistoric.
Anthropology studies humans as a biological species, whose uniqueness is built
into their cultural evolution. The objects of anthropology are the physiological,
racial, ethnic, genetic, and cultural properties of Homo Sapiens, its origins and
transition from nature to culture. Anthropology deals mostly with the early, prim-
itive, syncretic forms of culture, in its connection to, and contrast with, nature.
The humanities study humans as the creators and masters of the cultural, se-
miotic universe. The humanities deal with the purposeful endeavours of humans
in various developed and specialized cultural areas, such as philosophy, literature,

art, history, or psychology. Hence the very term humanities, being plural, indicates
the variety and differentiation of human capacities.
Finally, humanology (or techno-humanology) studies humans as part of the
technosphere, which is created by people, but which outgrows and controls them.
If anthropology studies the distinctive features of humans among other living
creatures, especially higher primates and hominids, then humanology studies
their distinctive features in comparison to other intelligent beings, such as cyborgs,
robots, and their gendered varieties, e.g. androids and genoids. Humanology is
a mirror-image of anthropology since both disciplines deal with humanness in
a liminal position: the latter focuses on humans evolving from nature, while the
former focuses on humans evolving into artificial forms of life and intelligence.
Humanology is both the ecology of humans and the anthropology of machines,
i.e. a study of the mutual redistribution of their functions. Humanology studies
what happens to humans after their functions are taken over by thinking machines,
as well as what happens to machines in the process of their intellectualization
and humanization. Thus, humanology has a dual subject: the human outside the
machine, and the human integrated into the machine.
Thus, Humanology is in relation of mirror symmetry to anthropology, for
both disciplines address the border-breaking situation of the human between the
natural and the technical environments. The subject of anthropology is humanity
developing from nature; the subject of Humanology is humanity integrated within
the technological world that our species creates.
Humanology deals with humanity in the spheres of its integration with and
contrast to machines. Humanology studies the irreducible properties of humanity
after the transition of its intellectual functions to an artificial intellect, and then
the development of the machine in the process of its humanization and ever-
increasing rationality. Humanology is a human ecology and, at the same time, it
is a machine anthropology, a science of the co-evolution of their unique functions,
and of both human technologization and the humanization of technology. The
term “human-like” could not be applicable to machines in previous times, since
such mechanisms as the steam engine, lever or telescope were just imitating and
strengthening special functions of the human organism such as the hand (lever)
and eye (glasses). Even though from the outside intelligent machines do not look
like humans, they have all the main characteristic of the human brain, and thus
they are worthy of being called “human-like”, or „anthropoid“.
Thus, Humanology emerges as a consequence of the human transition into a
new phase of active, technically guided evolution. A human as merely a biospecies
is left to the past, but it enters the future as a technospecies; as a cyber-organism
172 Mikhail Epstein
(a cyborg) and a free genetic or technical fantasy. The subject of Humanology is

humanity integrated into machines and humanity beyond machines.
The dichotomy of Humanology reflects a two-sided evolution of the human
species as natura naturata and natura naturans, i.e. as a natural creation and the
creator of the second, artificial nature (culture and technology). The human be-
ing simultaneously undergoes two processes: ecologization and technologization.
Human destiny, within this perspective of a radical transformation, encounters an
existential choice between a bio–sanctuary and the techno–universe5.
Accordingly, humanology can be divided into:
Eco-Humanology, dealing with the specificity of humans irreducible to ma-
chines, and Techno-Humanology, dealing with human functions capable of being
transferred to machines.
Eco-Humanology deals with the human, originating in a “conservative” natural
environment: suffering, mortal, physically imperfect, talented, culturally daring
and prone to mistakes and self–destruction;
Techno-Humanology deals with human functions that are transferrable to ma-
chines and integrated with the new techno-organisms, which are able to develop
independently of humans.
A human is a biologically and intellectually limited being: his senses have a
narrow span of perception, his brain has a weak memory and a slow rhythm of
information processing, and his body has limited resources that maintain only a
short period of existence, which leads to a decrease in the evolutional potential
of our species. Overcoming the borders of its species, a human is becoming greater
than and at the same time lesser than it is. He becomes lesser because he cannot
already be viewed as a crown and the goal of creation and the peak of evolution,
as he imagined himself since the Renaissance era. Rather our species is now per-
ceived to be at a transformation point from the organic to the technical era, where
new independent and self-acting intelligent systems emerge. On the other hand,
a human exceeds himself in his superhuman creations. This happens at the same
time: the emaciation and exhaustion of the human species, and the promotion of
humanity beyond its biological limits.
5 Of course, there is a third option: a successful synthesis of the biological and technologi-
cal could be found, which would keep the living on the same level as a rational being,
providing her or him with an information exchange and an universal expansion. Perhaps
genetics could serve as a mediator between the organic environment and a technical
intellect, by creating new forms of deathless, infinite information volumes and physically
adaptive, fast evolving beings. This option, discussed by Lemm in his Summa Tehnologii,
is worthy of additional attention which goes beyond the scope of this article.
Similar to the kenosis of the divine incarnating in the weak and mortal hu-
man flesh in order to provide humans with a gift of becoming divine, human
beings emaciate themselves in the creation of intelligent machines, in order to
give them their humanity, rationality, and dreams of omniscience, omnipotence
and immortality. In the 21st century, the human sciences might experience the
same crisis as theology had during the 20th century. The kénōsis of God, and His
self-exhaustion in humankind, is followed by the kénōsis of the humans and their
self-exhaustion in new technologies.
Humanology is an attempt to apprehend the perspective of human “creative
disappearance”. It is possible to imagine that similarly to “a-theology” which stud-
ies God in the form of his absence, silence, non-involvement, and even the “death
of God”, there will be the “a-humanities” research of human phenomenon in the
forms of its alienation and degradation, such as colonies of computer viruses gen-
erated by error or evil intention. This way, Humanology goes beyond the human
sciences that had dealt with the “human, all too human”. „What does it take to be
human?“ Now the category of humanness itself is being questioned, in this new
discipline. Humanity for the first time in history discovers the magnitude of its
potential: the capability of creating something superior to itself 6.
References:
Boundas, C. V. (1993): The Deleuze Reader. Columbia UP.
Epstein, M. (2001): The Role of the Humanities in Global Culture: Questions and
Hypotheses, Bowling Green University, Ohio.
Hayles, K. N, (1991): How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, et al.
Kurzweil, R. (1999): The Age of Spiritual Machines, Penguin: New York.
Kurzweil, R. (2005): The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.
New York. Viking.
Ницше, Ф. (1990): Так говорил Заратустра, Мысль, Москва. (The English
translation: Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra, In: http://www.rose-
noire.org/archives/Nietzsche,_Friedrich_Thus_Spake_Zarathustra.pdf.
Эпштейн, М. (2006): Нулевой цикл столетия. Эксплозив - взрывной стиль
2000-х, Звезда, 2.
6 About Humanology in the context of other methodological problems see Epstein 2001.
№ 2. http://www.rhizomes.net.
Regine Kather
University of Freiburg
Humans and Nature: Modern Society

between Cultural Relativism and the
Ontological Foundation of Values
I Humans as Animal Symbolicum

Is human life a mere fact which has happened accidentally and which can be
explained scientifically, or does it imply a normative dimension? Is a survival and
beyond this even well-being a goal or even an intrinsic value? And if so, what are
the necessary conditions?
Obviously, every living being strives for survival and tries to avoid pain. The
theory of evolution tells us that the struggle for life has at least an instrumental
value for the survival of the individual and the species. Only if bodily or psychic
suffering becomes too strong, death may be preferred. Also, human identity can-
not only be based on mental acts which follow the laws of logic; humans, too, are
living beings, which distinguish between pain and pleasure. And they would be
dissatisfied if life were reduced to mere biological survival. Nearly everywhere in
the world the social dynamic is driven by the hope that the conditions of life will
steadily improve and bodily and social well-being will be attained. Obviously,
the survival and fulfillment of interests are highly appreciated. But has the life of
humans also an intrinsic value? And, is nature a mere resource for human needs
or has it also an intrinsic value? Yet, the instrumental as well as the intrinsic value
of human life leads to the same fundamental question: What are the necessary
conditions for survival and physical, psychic and social well-being? Can humans
preserve their life, if values are based only on cultural traditions, social needs,
political interests or rational consensus? Can we accept cultural relativism as an
ethical orientation, if humans everywhere in the world are striving for survival
and even for well-being?
In the framework of this paper, I will focus on human life, not on life in general.
My favorite philosophers are Ernst Cassirer, who has developed a philosophy of
culture, and Alfred North Whitehead, whose cosmology is the basis for a modern
philosophy of nature. I will try to develop a synthesis of the main ideas of both
thinkers.
176 Regine Kather
Humans are endowed with consciousness and with self-consciousness. They do

not only feel what is happening, they also can reflect on it. They must no longer
be identified immediately with their feelings, but can judge them from an external
viewpoint; they can understand their causes, their effects and their meaning. But
feelings do not remain enclosed in one’s own mind. Humans express their inner
life bodily, by means of gestures, sounds, and gazes and, in contrast to other living
beings, also by symbols. Symbols are constituted, when meaning is expressed sen-
sually, when a material substrate implies meanings. (Cassirer 19909, 109) Neither
can the meaning be separated from its material substrate, nor vice versa. A word or
gesture cannot be split into a physical basis which is governed by the laws of physics
and chemistry, and the spiritual meaning which can be understood and analyzed
hermeneutically. Meaning is expressed physically, and colors, sounds, and mo-
tion become meaningful. Therefore, symbols mediate between the mental and the
physical dimension of reality, in anthropological respect between body and mind.
(Kather 2001) Already at this point of argumentation, it is obvious that the scien-
tific interpretation of the human body as physiological mechanism and empirical
basis for mental acts, especially as the analytical tradition supposes, is inadequate.
However, humans do not express themselves by scattered and isolated sym-
bols. They are connected to each other by complex rules.1 The variation of their
combination leads to different symbolic forms. Each of them represents a very
special interpretation of reality. They differ in respect to the concept of time,
space, substance, and causality, and in respect to the relation of subject and object.
While science and technology try to separate subject and object completely from
one another, they are intertwined to a certain degree in art, language, religion,
and myth. Human life depends essentially on the symbolic expression of feelings,
thoughts, and actions. The meaning of symbols and their combination is not bio-
logically inborn, but handed down from one generation to the next. Symbols are
created by humans; they are the medium through which they express their inner
life and communicate with fellow humans. In an ongoing process of interpreta-
tion, humans as animal symbolicum create a very special sphere of life: culture.
Every culture is based on the interplay of different symbolic forms. However, their
respective importance varies in different ages and cultures. At least at this point of
argumentation, a cultural relativism seems to be inevitable: Every culture develops
its own schemes of interpretation, its own system of goals and values, and its own
modes of explanation. However, at least in one respect, humans are equal: Every
human being is embedded in culture, which is produced by the interplay of the
1 Cf. Plümacher (1997). – Schwemmer (1997).

Humans and Nature 177
activities of all members of a community both in past and the present. Though
the tradition and the goals of cultures vary, their anthropological foundation is
the same.
But though the symbolic forms are based on interpretation, they cannot be
regarded as merely a construction as Nietzsche, postmodernism, and constructiv-
ism suppose. Survival and the prospering of cultural development do not depend
on mere mental acts, but on decisions and concrete actions. Cassirer, who was
strongly influenced by Kant and Neo-Kantianism, was well-aware that the symbol-
ic interpretation of reality has a pragmatic implication. The symbolic schemes are
clues to successful actions. If they fail again and again, then a new interpretation of
reality is enforced. On the one hand, the schemes of interpretation determine how
humans understand their surroundings and they deal with it, and even how they
interpret themselves; yet on the other hand, new challenges change the schemes
of interpretation, as Cassirer and Whitehead argue. Therefore, the symbolic forms
are not static; they develop in accordance with the challenges they respond to. To
that point, Cassirer compares the symbolic forms with the organs of an organ-
ism (Cassirer 19948, 7): They do not reveal how reality is in itself, but they select
and transform the information they receive from outside. Nevertheless, their
functioning depends on the input from the surrounding, to which they must be
adapted at least to a certain degree. Organs mediate between the external and the
inner world. Already in the literal sense of the word, humans can survive only by
means of bodily organs. But even they do not receive mere sensual data; they are
transformed by the specific functioning of the organ. The eyes of humans, for ex-
ample, are adapted to other frequencies of light than the eyes of bees. Beyond this,
the data are also selected and interpreted by mental schemes of interpretation,
by categories and symbolic forms. They determine, for example, if any abstract
scheme of time can be developed, and which concrete temporal order is chosen
for the explanation of events within the frame of categories: a scientific, mythic
or religious one. On the one hand, symbolic forms depend on the functioning of
the human body and its organs, which select and transform sensual data from the
surrounding; on other hand, symbolic forms interpret the meaning of sensual data
under a specific mental perspective. (Cassirer 19909, 155f) Organs in their bod-
ily and mental meaning open up reality, they are windows to the world, but they
show it only under a specific form of interpretation. (Cassirer 19948, 210–217)
II Humans as Unity of Body and Mind

Already the indispensable meaning of communication and of concrete actions
for human life show the limits of mere relativism. Human identity is essentially
178 Regine Kather
related to fellow humans and to its surrounding. (Kather 2007) Identity can
neither be based on an invariable substance, nor exclusively on mental acts,
as Descartes thought. It has to be defined, as Plato has argued in the Sophist,
by its relation to otherness. And this relation is by no means static. It has to
be developed in an ongoing process. Data are perceived, transformed, judged,
and finally connected with former experiences. After this, the individual will
express its point of view in speech and actions which transform its relations to
the surrounding. On the one hand, an individual responds to challenges from its
surrounding; on the other hand, it transforms it by its own actions and creates
new challenges. Slightly, but nonetheless inevitably, every individual changes the
conditions of future life. To conceive human identity as an ongoing process also
implies that its surrounding must be interpreted dynamically.
But what is the surrounding to which human actions respond? As we have
argued above, culture is a necessary condition for the development of human
identity. It has, as especially Heidegger and Plessner have argued, a historical
dimension. Exactly the same conditions will never occur again. Every event and
its meaning are singular and cannot be reproduced.
However, we have to take into consideration the second part of the definition
by Cassirer: As animal symbolicum humans are living beings in the Aristotelian
sense of the word. Already the expression and the communication of their inner
life by symbols depend on the unity of body and mind. Nevertheless at this point
of argumentation, we have to transcend the philosophical framework of Cassirer’s
philosophy. As living beings, humans depend on real processes in nature.
Also in this respect, human identity has to be conceived as an ongoing process.
An organism can preserve itself only by metabolism. Certain substances are se-
lected from the environment, transformed, and then integrated into the organism;
waste-products are given back to the environment. If this process comes to an
end, then an organism dies. Therefore, all living beings can only exist far away
from the thermodynamic equilibrium.
But an organism does not only re-act to external conditions, and its function-
ing cannot be explained by the accidental overlapping of incoherent events. It
depends not only on the quantity of elements and their causal interaction, but also
on its structural and functional integration. An organism has to be conceived as
a whole, as an inseparable unity in the multitude of different functions. Without
any doubt, the definition of certain diseases may be based on cultural defini-
tions. Yet, the survival of an organism depends on the dynamic integration of its
parts. Self-preservation has an ontological foundation; it is based on a process of
feed-back between whole and parts. (Maturana 1998, 27) In contrast to the open
dynamic of historical processes, an organism can preserve itself only if it returns
again and again into approximately the same state. The environment cannot steer
its dynamic and its development; it can only be helpful or harmful. Organisms are
endowed with an intrinsic dynamic order; they are, as Kant and Schelling have
argued, ‘cause and effect in themselves’, they are ‘organizing themselves.’(Kather
2003)
Again, we have to take into consideration two different aspects: An organism
cannot exist completely through itself. It cannot be conceived as an isolated sub-
stance, which is related to the environment only by external and accidental rela-
tions. Biological survival is based on a fragile balance between the physiological
needs of an organism and the order of the environment. Self-preservation depends
on permanent self-transcendence to the environment; to be open to the world is a
necessary condition for life. (Whitehead 1985, 155; 133) Though separated from
it by an internal dynamic, an organism is an integral part of the environment;
and at the same time, the world is present in the inner life of an organism as data
for needs and aims, and as opportunities for actions. It is related essentially to
the environment, in which it is embedded, and it transforms the environment by
its own actions.
But, as we have already mentioned, the body of an organism, the human body
included, cannot be conceived of as an empirical object that can be localized in
space and time, and described analytically by an external observer under the
perspective of a third person. It cannot be defined as the physiological basis of
mental life which is either reduced to physiological processes or explained by
completely independent mental laws. The body transcends itself in a twofold
manner to its environment: by metabolism and by the expression of qualitative
perceptions and intentional acts. The body is by no means a passive instrument
of ones will and actions; it cannot be conceived of as a mechanical instrument
which is used for mentally-conceived goals, as Descartes had supposed. It is
felt from within qualitatively. Therefore, no event appears as mere fact; it has a
meaning for an organism which feels pain and pleasure, needs and wants, fulfill-
ment and failure. The inner life does not remain enclosed in the subjectivity of
an organism; it is expressed bodily in actions, speech and gestures, as we have
already argued earlier. Therefore, the inner life can at least to a certain degree
be observed by fellow humans and even by other creatures. The physiological
functions of the body, which can be explained scientifically, and the lived body
as the expression of moods and intentions belong inseparably together. (Jonas
1994, 38) Whitehead argues:
“Our bodies lie beyond our individual existence. And yet they are part of it. […] Thus we
arrive at this definition of our bodies: The human body is that region of the world which
is the primary field of human expression.” (Whitehead 1986, 21f; – also: 115)
180 Regine Kather
Yet, the natural environment of an organism, the great order of nature, cannot be
conceived of as a mere collection of separated entities, which interact accidentally
and mechanically. It is not a Zeugzusammenhang, as Heidegger puts it, which has
only an instrumental value for humans. Like an organism, the ecosphere is an
open system which is constituted by the highly structured interplay of inorganic
substances and an innumerable variety of species. The stability of an ecosystem
depends on the correlation of its needs and life cycles. Every living being depends
on the ecosphere, and the ecosphere itself is constituted by the interaction of its
parts. Every organism is part of a greater system; the population, the ecosystem,
the biosphere, and finally the solar system which is part of our galaxy as a part
of the universe. As open systems, living beings have to make use of their envi-
ronment. In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, they produce
waste-products even without any technical influence and transform the condi-
tions of life irreversibly. In an ongoing process of the separation and integration
of information, matter and energy, the unity of an organism is created together
with the “connexity of the world” (Whitehead 1968, 165), as Whitehead puts it.
Even nature can no longer be interpreted as a mechanism, as a sort of clockwork,
whose structure cannot be changed by actions because it is governed by invariant
laws. The dynamic interaction of all parts changes the ecosphere irreversibly; it
has to be conceived of as an unstable system. The evolution of plants for example
has altered the atmosphere fundamentally, and therefore also the further condi-
tions for the process of evolution. The human species could not set foot on this
planet before a certain amount of oxygen had been produced. On the one hand,
the transformation of the conditions of life enforces a new adaptation of organ-
isms to one another; if they fail, they will die out. On the other hand, the genesis
of new species influences the state of the ecosphere as a whole.
Also, humans can only survive because they are adapted physiologically to the
present composition of the ecosphere. Only by means a high technology can they
survive under extreme conditions on earth, in outer-space, or on the bottom of
the sea. Humans are embedded bodily in nature which they transform steadily by
the very fulfillment of their vital needs. Yet, even these actions are not mere reac-
tions to biological needs and external data, but the expression of cultural values
and aims. They determine how biological needs as hunger, sexuality, and physi-
cal protection are satisfied. Everywhere in the world birth, marriage, and death
are bound to symbolic rites. Humans can decide to concentrate on traditional
methods of agriculture or develop genetically- modified plants and animals. Even
technology cannot adequately be explained by the application of sheer physical
laws; it is, as a means for the fulfillment of human interests, the product of very
specific aims and values.
Humans can be neither regarded as mere biological organism, whose func-

tions can be described biologically, nor characterized as cultural beings which
have a body which is without any meaning for personal identity. Both aspects are
intertwined: As living beings, humans are embedded in nature; it is the necessary
condition for the possibility of biological survival and therefore for the develop-
ment of culture as the symbolic interpretation of nature. Yet already as biological
organism, humans are a part of culture; the aims of culture on their part interfere
with the complex interplay of organisms and transform the biological conditions
of human life. Though the dynamics of nature and of culture differs, they interfere
mutually. None of them can be explained completely independently of the other.
Nature can no longer adequately be conceived of as an object which is completely
separated from the knowing subject. As animal symbolicum, humans participate
in nature, bodily as well as by means of cultural interpretations. Therefore, humans
cannot understand themselves without understanding their relation to nature.
The critique of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind implies the revision of
the relation of nature and culture. Therefore, Whitehead claims explicitly for a
second Copernican turn:
“For Kant, the world emerges from the subject; for the philosophy of organism, the subject
emerges from the world.“ (Whitehead 1978, 88)
III Ethics of Nature

But which implication has the interplay of nature and culture for the problem of
cultural relativism and especially for ethics? Let us once more return to the ob-
servation that all living beings try to avoid pain and death. Endowed with at least
a minimal degree of subjectivity, they are sensitive to their needs and to dangers.
‘To be or not to be’ are no longer equivalent. The struggle for life is by no means
the function of a physiological system steered by causally generated feed-back
loops and external inputs; it is motivated by the vital interests of an organism,
its will to live. Life implies the striving for an aim, for survival and beyond this
for well-being.
“The characteristics of life”, as Whitehead puts it, “are absolute self-enjoyment, creative
activity, aim.” (Whitehead 1934, 61f)
But, as we have argued, organisms are not isolated substances; they depend es-
sentially on the relation to a very specific environment. Its destruction therefore
causes suffering and death.
Especially during the last decades, the hypothesis that nature can be inter-
preted completely in the light of human interests and needs has been proven as
182 Regine Kather
an anachronism. With their intentions, aims, values and technologies, humans

cause far-reaching effects in the global ecosystem which have an uncontrolla-
ble dynamic. The climatic change with its threatening effects is only the most
prominent example. Though it has to be admitted that the climate on earth has
already changed several times without any human influence, we have to take into
consideration that humans are an integral part of the global ecosystem. Therefore,
their lifestyle induces at least to a certain degree the climatic change we are now
confronted with. If post-modern philosophy with its cultural relativism would be
adequate, then the climatic change could disappear from sight by means of a new
interpretation of reality (Grange 1997, 182–187) Yet, the minimum humans need
for biological survival depends only to a minor degree on cultural and personal
habits, but in a great degree on the physiological constitution of Homo sapiens.
Independently of the cultural interpretation, humans will die if they do not get
a certain amount of oxygen, water, food, and shelter. Therefore, the relation of
humans to nature cannot be interpreted as a mere language- game which varies
from one culture to the next. It has an existential dimension for those who want
to live which is completely missed by relativistic interpretations. Also, ethics can
no longer deal only with intersubjective relations, as for example the ethics of
Aristotle and Kant; it has to discuss the meaning of nature, too. Though values
cannot be derived immediately from being, they do not only depend on rational
consensus, cultural tradition, and the balancing of human interests. They have an
ontological foundation in nature which transcends cultural interpretations. Yet,
ethics differs in the scope of application:
1. If humans appreciate only their life and that of the members of their family
and perhaps that of their species, then they must have a vital interest in preserving
the dynamic order of nature. If the will to survive is at least the minimum basis
for values that can be accepted all over the world, then actions and technologies
must not disturb the highly-structured order of the biosphere. (Spaemann 2001,
142) In this respect, the basis of ethics has shifted in a significant way since an-
tiquity. Socrates could argue that it is better to follow an ethical orientation than
to survive. Also Jesus offered his life for salvation. The aim of life was not mere
survival, but the realization of the differentia specifica of those capacities that
humans do not share with animals. Ethical should help to transcend the sphere
of biological needs and vital interests.
Today however not the survival of an individual, but the survival of humanity,
and perhaps that of all living beings, is threatened. Without any doubt, already
ancient cultures have caused an irreparable damage to nature: the clearing of
the Apennines, of the Spanish peninsula, and of Croatia causes even today the
erosion of the soil and the expansion of the desert. (Diamond 2005) But in the
15th century, the scientific, technological, and social progress that Aristotle had
carefully distinguished in his Ethics became intertwined. A process of feed-back
was initiated which since then has led to a constant increase of power. Since the
middle of the 20th century, we can destroy the whole planet in a few seconds.
Even actions, which refer only to daily life as refrigerators and cars, have reached
in spatial respect a global dimension and in temporal respect they may extend
to hundreds of generations. (Kather 2005) The manipulation of the genetic code
will be transmitted to future generations; radioactivity will contaminate soil and
water for thousands of years; and the clearing of the jungle in Brazil will change
the climate worldwide. The temporal and spatial dimension of the impact of hu-
man actions on the ecosphere threatens the conditions for the possibility of ethical
and cultural life worldwide. Therefore today we need, as Jonas argues, a shift in
ethical argumentation: In respect to actions which concern the existence of hu-
manity, survival must be the basic ethical orientation. Only if humans preserve
the dynamic order of the ecosphere, will they then be able to realize also higher
ethical values.
2. Nevertheless, as long as survival is the minimal basis for ethical orientation,
values have a utilitarian character. Neither fellow humans nor nature has an in-
trinsic value. Therefore, survival is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for
higher the qualities of life – concerning the whole span of human capabilities: the
sensual and aesthetic aspects of life, a socially and ethically good life, and even reli-
gious contemplation. (Maslow 1985) Since Kant, the observation that humans can
judge their motives and actions is the basis for the concept of dignity which has
strongly influenced the constitution of many nations worldwide and especially the
declaration of human rights. (Lebech 2009) The capability to judge values freely is
the basis for self-determination. Therefore, no individual should be used as mere
means; it has an intrinsic value which does not depend on its social functions.
Yet, if we take into consideration the far reaching effects of modern technology,
then it is no longer sufficient to reflect on the motives of a decision and on their
instantaneous effects on contemporaries. Ethics, as Jonas argues, has explicitly to
take into consideration the horizon of time; it has also to deal with future effects.
Modern ethics bridges the gulf between a Kantian type of ethics which deals with
motives and the utilitarian type which deals with consequences. Humans have the
duty to preserve nature for future generations, because they also should be able to
realize human dignity and to determine their own way of life. (Jonas 19823, 36f)
Nevertheless, the structural asymmetry between past and future facts and po-
tentiality would be missed, if only those effects would be taken into consideration,
which can be foreseen from the present point of view. It is impossible to know
future events exactly; only tendencies can be pre-estimated. In complex systems
184 Regine Kather
such as the ecosphere, events are not induced by a strictly linear succession of
cause and effect, but by the supposition of several events. Their effects can add up
and become much stronger, and they may even cause completely new, formerly
unknown effects; or the superposition of different events may decrease the impact
of a singular, very strong event. Although the dynamic of complex systems can
be simulated by means of computers, already a minimal change in one singular
component leads to a completely different scenario. In all far reaching decisions,
humans should be as careful as a good mountaineer who plans an expedition. He
will focus on all risks that can be foreseen and prepares to overcome them. Only
then will he be able to deal with those events which he could not foresee, and he
will recognize when he must break off the expedition to save his life.
Yet, another aspect of time has to be taken into account. It deals with the differ-
ence between a concept of time based on measurement which is fundamental for
modern society, for economic strategies and political decisions, and the cyclical
structure of biological processes. The permanent exchange of information, goods,
and even persons depends on a unified scale of time. Time is a mere parameter,
an external measure which is completely separated from its content. Therefore,
time appears to be homogenous, linear, and without any meaning. It seems as if
everything could be done at every moment and in every place.
In contrast to the daily concept of time, the processes of an organism are deter-
mined by cycles which run through qualitatively different phases. After a certain
span of time, they return into nearly the same state. Nevertheless, the interval be-
tween the beginning and the end of a cycle can vary to a certain degree. (Kümmerer
1995) By this slight modification, an organism can adapt to new situations in the
environment and to great physical efforts. Though the velocity of a cycle can vary,
the succession of phases cannot be exchanged or even turned around. In the same
quantity of time, qualitatively different aspects of the cycle are run through. It is
impossible to do everything at every moment. Not an open, linear succession of
relatively independent events, but a closed, circular dynamic is constitutive for the
preservation and long-lasting regeneration of organisms and ecosystems. Beyond
this, different rhythms are organized in complex hierarchies. They extend from the
solitary cell to living beings, from them to ecosystems, and finally to the ecosphere.
Every organism is part of an ecosystem whose stability also depends on the correla-
tion of the life-cycles of a multitude of living beings and even inorganic processes.
Also the human body is a complex system in which a multitude of different rhythms
is correlated – proceeding from molecular processes to the functioning of organs,
and finally to the whole body. Though many of these rhythms are inborn, they are
coordinated by rhythmical processes in nature, especially by the change of day to
night. If they are uncoupled, then physical and psychic well-being decreases. It is
inevitable that the permanent acceleration of the modern way of life and the com-
paratively slow regeneration of natural resources and their mutual interdependence
conflict with each other. Human actions, which take into consideration only the
quantitative aspect of time, cause a severe disintegration of the different components
of an ecosystem. The capacity to regenerate decreases may finally lead to a complete
breakdown. Cultural goals determine in how far biological rhythms are taken into
account. If humans want to survive, then they have to respect the temporal dynamic
of biological systems, including those of their own body (Aschoff 1989, 134).
If we regard humans as the unity of body and mind, and as part of nature and
culture, then the argument that people first have to take care of their vital needs,
and only then will people gain the freedom to care for ecological problems, is
anthropologically wrong. Already in respect to their biological needs humans
are, as we have seen, part of culture; their goals and values help to choose and to
judge the means used for the satisfaction of vital needs. But today, old traditions
and former experiences are not sufficient for the orientation in a global context.
They must be locally, as well as globally, adapted to the dynamic of the ecosphere.
This insight implies for many cultures a new challenge. But only if the ecosphere
in its complexity and intrinsic dynamic is preserved, can resources regenerate at
least for a very long span of time. Nevertheless, they are finite as everything is in
this world.
3. Yet up to this point, ethics remains utilitarian and anthropocentric. Only if
nonhuman organisms and finally nature as a whole have an intrinsic value, are
humans responsible for the whole range of beings and their interrelations. If we
follow the theory of evolution, then even very tiny organisms are struggling for
life. Value and meaning did not arise in a sudden jump out of blind matter and
mechanically moved bodies. Like self-consciousness, the perception and realiza-
tion of meaning has evolved step by step from much simpler forms of life. If all
living beings are related genetically and by their inner life, by the different forms
of subjectivity, there already non-human beings have a goal they are striving for.
Their life has an internal meaning which is not created by human intentions.
(Jonas 1992, 17). If humans accept their will to live, then they transcend the
narrow frame of their own interests and values. They learn that they are not the
“measure of all things” in the world, but that fellow creatures have a right of their
own. Though the respect for other creatures makes it impossible to do whatever
seems to be technologically possible, it does not reduce, but widen the horizon
of life. Humans discover that they participate at least to a certain degree in the
subjectivity of other creatures, that they have something in common with them.
But in contrast to them, they are endowed with self-consciousness and can reflect
on their actions and judge them ethically. As a unity of body and mind, humans
186 Regine Kather
have to recognize the community with all living beings as well as the differentia
specifica. Therefore, ethics implies duties involving all living beings.
Let us once more take into consideration that an organism cannot be conceived
as an isolated substance which can be preserved independently of its relation to
other organisms. Therefore, the respect for the life of fellow creatures implies the
preservation of their ecosystem. Every ecosystem is constituted by the interplay of
a great variety of organisms. Therefore, every organism has to be respected for its
own sake, due to its dignity, as Jonas and the Swiss constitution put it, and it has
an instrumental value for fellow creatures and the ecosphere. (Jonas 1992, 17)2
The insight that living beings have an aim in life of their own transforms the con-
cept of nature and the relation of humans to nature and their self-understanding
fundamentally. Being endowed with reason, humans are embedded in nature as a
meaningful process. They are not, as Pascal, Heidegger and Sartre have supposed,
thrown into a completely strange and senseless world moved by mechanical forces.
To conceive of an organism as essentially related to other organisms and its
environment leads to a further conclusion: It is one-sided to conceive of life as a
permanent fight ‘with claws red from blood’. Cooperation is far more important
than competition, an insight which modern ecology approves. Whitehead argues:
„Those organisms are successful which modify their environments so as to assist each
other.“ (Whitehead 1985, 256)
Under these premises, the amelioration of the conditions of life cannot be based
on the extinction of fellow creatures; it must take into account their survival and
well-being. The multitude and variety of species is the basis for the abundance
of life. The interdependence of every organism within the network of life bans
a strictly hierarchical evaluation of living beings: Though humans have, at least
on this planet, the highest form of consciousness, they depend in every moment
of their life on the restless and highly organized activity of a variety of tiny and
completely unimpressive organisms. It is again Whithead who stresses this idea:
„We find ourselves in a buzzing world amid a democracy of fellow creatures.” (Whitehead
1978, 50)
Under these premises ethics embraces the intrinsic value of the fellow creatures
and their interrelations in the ecosphere. The whole range of being has a func-
tional and an intrinsic value. (Henning 2005)
2 In the meantime, the Swiss constitution has integrated the concept of ‚dignity of creature’.
Cf. Balzer – Rippe – Schaber (19992). − Baranzke (2002).
From the concept of being that the empirical sciences have developed, no ought
must be derived as we know it. But the concept of being changes fundamentally, if
it implies at least a minor degree of subjectivity. Being now implies meaning which
is independent of human consent. (Jonas 1987, 46f) Nevertheless, the question how
human actions can respond to the inherent value of fellow creatures has to be dis-
cussed anew in every context. The idea of the dignity of creatures gives, as the idea of
human dignity, a fundamental ethical orientation, but it does not prescribe concrete
actions. Within this ethical framework every culture can develop its own strategies.
Obviously, the rediscovery of the dynamics of nature during the last century
has far-reaching consequences for the concept of human identity and for ethics.
A relativistic concept of ethics which is based on tradition and rational consent,
has to be overcome, as well as an anthropocentric one which conceives of nature
as a lifeless object for human interests. Nevertheless, ethics is only possible and
at the same time necessary because of a significant asymmetry between humans
and other living beings. Higher animals help newborn members of their own spe-
cies and sometimes even members of other species, humans included. Motivated
by spontaneous empathy, they behave analogously to moral principles. But only
beings endowed with self-consciousness and the concept of time can reflect on
their perceptions, moods, and interests, and correct them consciously. Though
human behavior is to a certain degree determined by biological needs and passed
experiences, it can transcend both by the vision of values which are developed by
symbolic interpretations.
An individual can recognize itself as the same person in different situations
only by means of the synthesis of remembrance and expectation, as Locke has
argued. In an ethical respect, the temporal continuity of the biography and be-
yond this of the memory of culture is the basis for one of the most fundamental
humanitarian values: responsibility. Though sharing vital interests with all other
living beings, humans are responsible for their intentions and actions which in-
fluence the basis of their own life and that of future generations, the life of fellow
creatures and the dynamics of nature as a whole. Humans have to live as the unity
of body and mind, as persons who are embedded at the same time in nature and
in culture. (Kather 2006) As members of the human species and embedded in
nature, humans share universal ethical interests; yet, they have to realize them on
the background of varying cultural traditions.
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Marija Bogdanović
Times of Hope and Risk:

Market Based Genetics
Introduction
The most compelling scientific debates in the medical and social sciences during
the last forty years were on the subject of bioethics. The explanation for this phe-
nomenon should be evident in the discoveries made in science and technology that
almost seem like science-fiction; from which many ethical dilemmas were born
dealing with human life and the environment. The global consequences of these
discoveries have presented humankind and the environment with momentous
challenges. Along with the positive effects of these discoveries, opportunities to
manipulate and modify the nature of human life and the environment are huge.
The possibilities simultaneously instigate curiosity and fear, of which the latter of
the two largely stems from advancements in genetic engineering that are becom-
ing hot topics not only in scientific circles, but also in mainstream media. Still,
contributions to medicine have been of great importance, making it possible to
cure diseases and save lives through the application of antibiotics, immunizations,
treating diabetes, catheters, open heart surgery, dialysis, organ donation, in-vitro
fertilization, earlier detection of a heavy distortion of the embryo (Down syn-
drome), etc. Favorable outcomes in medical treatments, prolonging and enabling
a higher quality of life for patients, are invaluable.
Bioethics as a science seeks general moral principles that can be derived through
documented research, which would protect individuals from manipulation and
experimentation. During the first phase of its development, in the sixties and early
seventies, bioethics was already facing issues in the protection of individuals from
manipulation (particularly mentally and physically handicapped individuals, chil-
dren, prisoners, etc.). The concept of informed consent during medical treatment
and experiments (especially in genetic engineering) was created and already in the
next developmental phase; from the middle 1970s, definitions were being sought
for the concepts of life and death. Questions such as: „What is the appropriate use
of a respiratory apparatus as an aid to recovery?“; „What can be done with patients
in a comatose/vegetative state? Can one be kept on life support regardless of his or
her quality of life?“; „Who decides when a situation is ultimately hopeless?“, and
questions related to ownership, organ transplants, genetic material, etc. Scientists,
192 Marija Bogdanović
however, will remain divided on the subject. While some point to positive results
in the advancements and applications in medicine, others call out harsh criticism
for the possible consequences of genetic engineering on human life. A call for
perpetual caution must remain when considering the imminent dangers to hu-
manity, since at this present time the multi-functionality of genes, complexity of
genetic relationships, side effects and external factors on genetic change are still
unknown. Under these conditions, it is unethical to experiment on people when
such a risk for tragic outcomes is present.
The case of Jesse Gelsinger is often brought up when discussing these questions.
Seventeen-year-old Gelsinger was being treated at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1999 for a hereditary liver disease “where the liver fails to properly cleanse the
blood of ammonia, a chemical produced in normal metabolism, resulting in toxic
levels of ammonia” (Pence 1990). Four days into gene therapy treatment, Jesse
Gelsinger died. In addition to the issues mentioned thus far, the high price of
medical treatment is often inaccessible to those who need it the most. Benjamin
J. Krohmal and Ezekiel J. Emanuel question the justness of healthcare systems
in developed countries. The healthcare debate continues to be represented by a
variety of opinions: from those that suggest a form of public healthcare is the only
just and financially viable option, to egalitarians who insist that treatments should
not be on the market unless they are available to all types of people, and finally
others whom advocate a hierarchical system in which select medical procedures
would be available for purchase. Still, both systems of healthcare – private or
public – would not be rid of discrimination in the system, “because both allow
some patients to pay more for faster, better, or more options in their health treat-
ment“ (Krohmal / Ezekiel 2007). Add to this that the pharmaceutical industry is
frequently lead by primarily commercial interests, and although some medica-
tions/vaccines can prevent the manifestation of certain illnesses and improve life
quality with treatment, they are often accompanied by numerous and serious side
effects which can have drastic repercussions.
During the period mentioned above, bioethics developed in several directions.
Theoretically and methodologically, it matured with the opening of research facili-
ties, the publication of new magazines, and the founding of professional societies.
All of this together completed the process of institutionalizing bioethics and its
acceptance as a legitimate, academic, scientific and professional field of research.
The Creation of Bioethics: Benefits and Risks

Bioethics, as a concept, first appeared in the early 1970s in the quest for answers
to questions on environmental sustainability and in response to achievements
Times of Hope and Risk: Market Based Genetics 193
in the life sciences that pointed to the possibility of biologically manipulating

human beings. Van R. Potter was the first to use the term bioethics (1970). The
following year, “Bioethics: Bridge to the Future” was published, in which Potter
defines bioethics as a “science of survival… built on the science of biology and
enlarged beyond the traditional boundaries to include the most essential elements
of the social sciences, and humanities, with emphasis on philosophy in the strict
sense, meaning ‘love of wisdom“ (Potter 1971). According to him, bioethics is a
multi-disciplinary science which forms a bridge between the natural and social
sciences. His second book, dedicated to A. Leopold1, refers to Leopold’s essay
The Land Ethic (1949) which “laid the framework for an ecological and popula-
tion oriented bioethics of survival” (Potter 1988). C.H. Waddigton2, who was an
influence for Potter’s theories, believed the highest ethical criteria is the “greater
good” or “biological wisdom”. “I insist” Potter states, “that survival is an even more
basic supra-ethical criterion” (See Potter 1988). While he embraces Waddington’s
idea of “biological wisdom” as a form of knowledge that is “the knowledge for
the social good”, Potter would go further and state “that the search for wisdom
should be organized and promoted in terms of the survival of the human species”
(Potter 1988). In later works, Potter discusses the idea of “global survival”, entreat-
ing humankind to look at environmental conservation as the greatest priority for
human survival. His background in the natural sciences, anthropology and sociol-
ogy shaped the model of survival that he espouses; which is based on examining
levels of development and life conditions in existing communities. Potter differ-
entiates several attitudes and social types of survival: “mere survival,“ “miserable
survival,“ “idealistic survival,“ “irresponsible survival,“ and “acceptable survival“.
“Acceptable survival”, according to Potter, is the most grounded, while “mere“ and
“miserable“ are insufficient and “irresponsible” (typical of modern culture) could
not last long (Potter/Potter 1995).3
1 A. Leopold doesn’t use the term “land” in the sense of ground or territory, rather “land”
includes “plants, water and animals”. In essence, “land” includes the whole biosphere.
2 C. H. Waddington, professor, was an animal geneticist and an expert in embryology,
genetics and evolution (1946). Further, Margaret Mead and Theodosius Dobzhansky
gave him the idea for the structure of bioethics.
3 ‘Mere’ survival involves shelter, food and reproductive capability. In essence, this would
be hunter-gatherer types of communities that can subsist for thousands of years. Potter
brings up examples from anthropology; “Miserable“ survival is present in communities
that have been ravaged by war, hunger and chronic disease brought on by parasites.
As an example, he cites AIDS, which is globally creating conditions of “mere” sur-
vival; “Idealistic“ survival consists of conscientiously striving for and attaining health
In 1969, the Hasting Center was opened in Carrison, New York to research
fundamental issues on health, biotechnology and the environment (an independ-
ent, non-profit research center) and launched a magazine two years later (Potter /
Potter 1995). Around the same time, Georgetown University began using the term
“bioethics” at it’s newly opened Center for Bioethics, part of the medical depart-
ment. Leroy Walters, the Director, defined it: “bioethics is the branch of applied
ethics which studies practices and developments in the biomedical fields” (Beau-
champ/Walters 1978). Faced with serious issues and ethical dilemmas pervading
medical practice, Walters and his colleague, Tom L. Beauchamp4, compiled 87
essays into a volume called “Contemporary Issues in Bioethics”. In the Introduction,
they elaborate their opinion on the role of bioethics in medicine, emphasizing it’s
multi-disciplinary character: “Recent developments in the biomedical fields have
led to a considerable moral perplexity about the rights and duties of patients,
health professionals, research subjects, and researchers. Since about 1970, mem-
bers of numerous academic disciplines, including biology, medicine, philosophy,
religious studies, and law have become involved in the complex ethical issues
raised by this development” (Beauchamp / Walters 1978).
The parallel development of bioethics in medicine and in ecology ensured
that environmental concerns, public health and especially healthy living, which
both branches of science value, would remain priorities. Medical, as opposed
to biological, bioethics is said to have “short-term” effects; but advancements in
medicine and technology have enabled a higher quality of life. In this way, tradi-
tional medical ethics, which upholds the values of individual rights, privacy and
confidentiality, succeeds to simultaneously impact both public health and those
global issues about social justice. In a world where international travel is becom-
ing more commonplace, causing the conditions for the rapid spread of disease
to increase, a global public health system in which problems can be solved via
and excludes everything present in the former type, which beckons us to strive for
“acceptable” survival as a goal to achieve before “idealistic” survival is possible: global
survival could be reached or maintained on the terms of “acceptable” survival. Finally,
“irresponsible“ survival is characterized by modern culture – and involves exhausting
natural resources, destroying the biosphere; where a select few live in abundance and
waste, while millions live beneath the poverty line. This type is not sustainable long-
term, and because of that, it is unacceptable.
4 T. L. Beauchamp is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and a researcher
at the Kennedy Institute (1971). Together with T. Childress, a professor at the Uni-
versity of Virginia, he published the Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Oxford University
Press, New York, 1979.
international cooperation is crucial. The ecological bioethical approach is, on

the other hand, longer-term and does all it “must do to preserve the ecosystem
in a form that is compatible with the continued existence of the human species”
(Potter 1988). Still, Potter maintains that specializing in only one field of bioeth-
ics could potentially be counterproductive “to the goal of acceptable survival
on a global scale.” Both branches of bioethics, he argues, need “to be harmo-
nized and unified to the consensual point of view that may well be termed global
bioethics” (Potter 1988) In this vision, bioethics is only truly a complete science
when it is not only uniform and comprehensive in its approach, but also global
in its reach. Therefore, Potter’s approach to global bioethics is multi-disciplinary
and encompasses knowledge from the biological, medical, economic, legal, reli-
gious, sociological and anthropological sciences, and it takes cultural factors into
account in biomedical practice, while weighing social consequences.
The evolution of this new science internationally resulted in the creation of
master’s studies programs worldwide and the continued education of young adults
in the field, both in and outside the medical profession. One program is the Mas-
ter in Bioethics at Radboad University Nijmegen in Holland, started in 2006; or
The International Intensive Course in Bioethics, organized for the past thirteen
years at the University of Udine (Facolta Di Medicina E Chirurgia). (In 2009
the thirteenth summer course theme was Humanizing Tomorrow’s Biomedicine
and was attended by forty medical students). Professor Bogdan Đuričić, Dean of
the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, also recognized the importance
of research in this field and began a project titled “Building of Bioethics Master
Program in Serbia” around which two conferences were organized with interna-
tional partners: Contemporary Concepts and Issues in Bioethics, in 2−3.12.2008,
and 29.09.2009. Interest in this field of research has risen over the last ten years
in this area of the world.5
Ethical Approaches & Problems in Everyday Medical Practice

Taking heed of Potter’s opinion that ethics is successfully applied only when it is
“global ethics”, I will limit myself to addressing a few relevant questions in this
5 Various authors (Vučković, et al. (ed.) 2002; Dulić D. / Romčević B. (ed.) 2002; Dulić
D. 2007; Turza K. 2007; “Službeni glasnik” published in the Serbian language a seven-
volume edition of books on the various ethical topics and authors, one of which is
Gregory E. Pens’s Classic Cases in Medical Ethics, the second one is: Joseph R. des Jardin
Environmental Ethics. Moreover, in 2008, the Bioethical Society of Serbia was founded
in Belgrade.
next section that are widely dealt with in clinical practice. I will also address
current issues that are quickly becoming “hot” topics due to recent discoveries
in molecular biology and medical technology, and the social consequences that
their implementation has generated.
Posing ethical questions in medicine is not a new practice only recently arisen
with the emergence of genetics and new options for treating heavy illness. One
can look as far back as the Hippocratic Oath (around the 4th century BCE), which
set a foundation for modern medical ethics and is still part of medical students’
graduation ceremonies to this day. A contemporary version of the oath (adopted
in Geneva in 1946) dictates that physicians are to consecrate their lives to the ser-
vice of humanity; that the health of their patients will be their first consideration
regardless of religion, nationality, race, politics or social standing; that they will
retain all confidentiality with patients and honor the noble traditions of the medi-
cal profession, etc. However, subjects that were once fundamentally addressed in
the oath, like abortion and euthanasia, are now the subject of constant scientific
debate. Questions such as: When does life begin? Is it acceptable to end human
life and under what circumstances? Is euthanasia justifiable in cases of terminal
illness or great pain when desired by the patient or in cases of long-term comatose
patients, decided by those closest to the patient? S. Joseph Tham, L.C cautions that
new technologies can lead to the dehumanization of medicine as well as many
legal and social effects. Changes in modern medicine are visible, e.g., attitudes to-
ward pregnancy and birth. Who should decide the fate of a seriously handicapped
baby? Medical professionals, parents, or a board? And, what about cases of serious
kidney failure when dialysis is absolutely necessary, or with transplant candidates.
What are the criteria for accepting patients for treatment, and issues surround-
ing donors, e.g., donor’s being “brain dead”, etc.? All of these questions point to
the conclusion that “traditional rules in medicine are no longer enough to solve
present ethical issues” (Tham, 79–81). The sensitive nature of these issues is not
only medical in origin, but also in the many strikingly different value systems, as
well as the difficulties hospitals have in locating scarce means for treating patients
with such and similar problems.
Rapid advancements in biotechnology continue and their application in clinical
medicine makes it necessary to constantly reassess ethical standards. Problems in
clinical practice and research cannot be solved with a simple standard procedure.
Not only do individual cases have their own complexities, but also patients bring
their own set of broader social issues to the table that must be addressed (religion,
legal issues, values, etc.). However, some sort of professional moral guidelines
or rules would benefit the medical profession and protect individual rights. To
mention a few issues: voluntary uncompensated participation in research under
informed consent on the procedures and accompanying risks; in other words, how
to provide participants with protection from physical and psychological harm;
how to protect the privacy of participants (confidentiality) and often anonymity
are required to meet research standards. The National Commission for the Protec-
tion of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research formed a com-
mittee that came up with a report over a few years, which later gained legal status
at the Belmont Conference Center (Smithsonian Institute). In the review, known
as the Belmont Report (1979), a system of ethical principles is proposed based
on: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. The Belmont Report is
considered the first principle-based method or a method based on ‘principlism’.6
Practical application of this method was considered realistic in “that principlism
can be derived from, is consistent with, or at the very least is not in conflict with
the multitude of ethical, theological, and social approaches toward moral deci-
sion making“ (Bulger 2008). This system of principles is considered acceptable
by many since its core values succeed, to a degree, to address most types of cases.
Principle-based methods are viewed as comprehensive and the principle focuses
on intersubjective agreements, and that is why it works so effectively in interdis-
ciplinary pluralistic environments; and though this type of approach does not
address all types of moral dilemmas and conflicting beliefs, the universal values
it espouses could still help to bring about a decision. This method is criticized
by some as being “too abstract, and ’top down’; it was insufficiently attentive to
particulars, relationships, storytelling, and process” (Arras 2007).
James F. Childress, who analyzes various approaches, many of which are
subjected to similar criticism, suggests that not one method should be called a
“principle-based method”, because methods not only contain principles for ethical
decision-making, but also a set of rules and steps. The steps, however, with this
method, were derived from moral principles that were addressed in actual histori-
cal cases. On the other hand, the alternative – a case-based method – can also
be criticized for not being comprehensive if it does not take into account general
moral principles within the decision-making process. Childress warns, though,
6 http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/principlism, 1. “The Belmont Report’s cause of origin can

be traced back to December 9, 1946 when the American Military Tribunal started
criminal proceedings against 23 German physicians and administrators for war crimes
against humanity. During the trials, the Nuremberg Code was drafted for the estab-
lishment of standards for judging the individuals who conducted biomedical experi-
ments on concentration camp prisoners. The Nuremberg Code in its final form was
established in 1948 and was the first international document that advocated voluntary
informed consent for participants of research on human subjects.”
that some principles can be in direct conflict with others. To give an example: a
patient experiencing severe blood loss faced with imminent death without a blood
transfusion might refuse it on religious grounds. In this situation, the principles
of “do no harm“ and “patient autonomy” are in conflict. In those kinds of situa-
tions, Childress suggests applying Henry Richardson’s problem-solving method,
which is formulated on three practices that address the relationship between cases
and principles: 1. interpretation – applying principles and rules by deduction; 2.
balancing – intuitively measuring factors in a given situation and 3. specification –
“which proceeds by qualitatively tailoring our norms to cases” (Childress 2007).
Childress explains, “Specifying principles is a way to try to reduce or eliminate the
conflict; balancing principles is an effort to resolve the conflict through determin-
ing which principle outweighs the other in the circumstances” (Childress 2007).
According to J.D. Arras (2007), many theorists were in agreement with the initial
critiques of a principle-based method, which led to widespread acceptance of the
reflective equilibrium (RE) approach, a different principle-based method. Arras
believes that “all our methodological differences would henceforth merely be mat-
ters of emphasis“. The RE approach is flexible and does not privilege any particular
belief or value system, including special cases and moral principles and theories.
With RE, “maximum coherence” or the “strongest support” can be ethically and
practically achieved. Since it operates as a sort of umbrella approach, other meth-
ods can find their place within it. Still, discourse on methodology continues to
intensify. The term competent moral judgment (which assumes that involved
parties will be intelligent, reasonable, well informed, possess empathy, imagina-
tion and put aside prejudices) has been incorporated into reflective equilibrium.
This addition to the approach led to the creation of wide reflective equilibrium –
WRE, which “expanded its inventory of moral considerations and matching prin-
ciples” and was “embraced as the official methodology of principlism” (Arras
2007). An integral part of this approach is that “justification is a matter of mutual
support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent
whole (Arras 2007)“. Still, WRE has been criticized for its complexity and some
consider it unattainably idealistic. S Holm (2007) discusses a similar approach
when deliberative democracy is applied in decision making. At the end of Arras’
critique, he concludes: „No method is a guarantee of truth, or even intersub-
jective agreement, but careful attention to the various approaches can improve
practical reasoning and facilitate our quest for moral justification” (Arras 2007).
Furthermore, “Anyone who has seriously studied the methodological reflections
of principlists, casuists, feminists, narrativists…realizes that each of these separate
approaches to thinking about morality points us in helpful directions“ (Arras
2007). In a similar way, Childress concludes his opinion on methods in bioethics
by stating that all methods have flaws, but that each one is useful in some way.
Many of them have overlapping principles and make up for imperfections present
in others. Childress believes it would be overly ambitious to expect a consensus
regarding the “best possible method”. Instead, it is more useful to take advantage
of strengths in each of them and, in that way, overcome shortcomings in other
methods (Childress 2007).
In a sphere of life fraught with complexities, ethical questions should be
approached from an array of perspectives – interdisciplinary – and problems
should be assessed by utilizing a rich fund of information. In an interdisciplinary
approach, medical professionals would point to difficulties and risks in treatment
options; lawyers would point to legal aspects; while sociologists and anthropolo-
gists would stress the need for respecting cultural values and point to possible
social repercussions if procedures were used on people. R.C. Fox, an advocate of
an inter-disciplinary approach, believes that the current ethos in bioethics mostly
developed in Western society, especially in the United States. She states that “From
the outset, the conceptual framework of bioethics has accorded paramount status
to the value-complex of individualism, underscoring the principles of individual
rights, autonomy, self-determination, and their legal expression in the jurispru-
dential notion of privacy” (Fox 1990). However, numerous examples in clinical
practice have proven that in medical ethics, one must contend with diverse cultures
and value systems in which a broad, multidisciplinary approach is best. Differ-
ences do exist in moral codes of cultures, just as there is more than one viable
“rationally defensible moral code”. Research on the topic of morals in health and
sickness in non-Western (archaic, undeveloped) societies and cultures has shown
that values were derived from practical life situations and communal experience;
and that social knowledge of society, morality and medical practice are all intrin-
sically related to cultural identity (Marshall 1992). Complexities in the concepts
of cultural and ethical relativism slow down the interdisciplinary approach when
resolving fragile ethical issues in medical practice, because ethicists still tend to
view the individual as the primary measuring unit, while anthropologists look at
situations in a broader context wherein an individual is merely part of a greater
cultural-historical framework.
Applying contextual ethics in medicine makes it possible to place moral dilem-
mas within situational contexts as influenced by cultural, social and historical
biographies of the person or case in question. This explains why the practice of
negotiation has become so popular in medical practice. It’s not only interdiscipli-
nary, but also simultaneously emphasizes employing the advice of medical pro-
fessionals and involving the patient, his or her family and respecting values. The
reality of the difficulty in attaining agreement between patients and professionals
during the process of ethical decision-making is evident in the following examples.

These examples are taken from clinical practice and were used in workshops at the
Udine Summer School (August 2009), which was mentioned earlier in this text.
Case 1: Eluana Englaro, the comatose woman at the center of a euthanasia
debate that divided Italy and sparked a constitutional crisis, died on Feb. 2009 at
age of 38, four days after doctors began to remove her life support.
She had been in a vegetative state for 17 years after a car accident. Ms. Englaro’s
father had been fighting for a decade for a dignified end to his daughter’s life in
accordance with what he and her friends have testified were her own wishes. At
this request, doctors at a clinic in Udine stopped feeding her. The news of Ms.
Englaro’s death came as the Upper House of Parliament began debating emer-
gency legislation which would have ordered medical staff to restore all nutrients.
Question: Can the suspension of artificial feeding, in individuals unable to care for them-
selves, be considered ethically acceptable?
Before discussion Total After discussion*

yes no undecided yes no undecided
51,3% 21,6% 27% 100% 49% 24% 27%
19 8 10 37 18 9 10
* Students voted twice: first, immediately after the case was presented; and then again, after being
divided into two groups in which the case was discussed and then voted upon a second time. Forty
students participated in the summer program; three were not present that day.
The results in this example show that only half of voters initially agreed. After
discussing the issue and exchanging opinions, there was not a great difference in
votes. This begs the question of what medical principles guided voters in this case.
Was it a combination of applying a principle-based method and/or a case-based
method or the Hippocratic Oath, etc.? It seems that the oath might have provided
moral input with voters, especially if one considers students’ familiarity with it;
but it also seems likely that voters were influenced by personal opinions on what
it means to be humane.
Case 2: The March 20, 2006 issue of TIME International reported the story of
Natallie Evans, the British woman who froze six embryos created with her fiancé
in 2001, after she was diagnosed with cancer. After the couple broke up, he legally
blocked her from using the embryos, saying he didn’t want the burdens of father-
hood. The European court of Human Rights Strasbourg sided with the fiancé,
upholding a British law that says that either party can revoke consent before the
embryos are transferred to the woman’s womb.
The court’s judgment leaves intact a hodgepodge of conflicting laws across

Europe because there is no Europe-wide consensus on this topic.
Question: Does a woman, as proprietor of the ovary, own the embryo?
Before discussion Total After discussion

2,5% 60% 37,5% 100% 5% 80% 15%
1 24 15 40 2 32 6
This is a delicate case; especially considering the lack of legal regulation for the
issue. However, it is apparent from poll results that discussing the issue after the first
round of voting did have an impact on voters, as a change is visible in the results
after the second round.
Case 3: Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) previously called
testicular feminization is an X linked condition with an incidence of approxi-
mately 1: 20.000 live births. An affected woman has a 46XY karyotype that leads
to normal differentiation of testes in uterus, but a defect in the gene coding for
the androgen receptor results in complete insensitivity to circulating androgens,
resulting in phenotypic female development. Psychosexual orientation is in every
respect female. There is, however, no uterus and only a partially formed vagina
and pubic and axillary hair is scant or absent.
Question: Should the physician respect the parent’s request not to disclose a diagnosis of
Androgen Insensitivity syndrome to their adolescent daughter?

yes no undecided Yes no undecided
27,5% 60% 12,5% 100% 27,5% 60% 12,5%
11 24 5 40 11 24 5
With this case, poll results remained consistent throughout both rounds of voting.
One important question for this issue is who the decision maker should be with
this type of case? Currently, there is no legal age in place that addresses when a
patient, especially an adolescent, can make a decision for himself or herself. One
should consider here that, sooner or later, the patient would have heard about
her operation, whether through hearsay, in the media or another source. Which
choice is the better of the two? In this case, evidently, the right to “informed
consent” of the parents was ultimately what was respected.
Case 4: On May 28, 2008, ABC News in the USA reported the case of Alberto
Reyes-Camarena, 47, who has been on the State of Oregon’s death row since 1996,
when he was convicted of repeatedly stabbing 32- and 18-year-old sisters he met
in a farm-labor camp. The older woman survived 17 stab wounds to testify against
him. Every year, as Reyes-Camarena appeals his conviction, Oregon (which is
struggling through budget cuts and having a tough time providing a basic edu-
cation for its children and health care for the poorer citizens) pays a reported
$121.000 US dollars a year to keep Reyes-Camarena on dialysis. Last April, his
prison doctor determined he was a good candidate for a kidney transplant. With
the state funding his medical care, Reyes-Camarena could be placed on a trans-
plant waiting list ahead of others who may not be as sick as Rayes-Camarena and
have not committed any crimes.
Question: Should this prisoner receive a kidney donation?

35% 42,5% 22,5% 100% 47,5% 37,5% 15%
14 17 9 40 19 15 6
With this case, there appears to have been a shift in voter opinion after group
discussion. The “do no harm” principle seems to have influenced voters, which
would be consistent with what is taught in medical school about being humane
in the profession, but is not necessarily in harmony with some of the other meth-
ods discussed. This case exemplifies how it is not surprising that, in the search
for ethical practice, many professionals become advocates of using a case-based,
contextual method.
These four examples display the delicate nature of the ethical dimension in de-
cision making in medical practice, when laws do not explicitly regulate situations
and where social norms and moral principles are not straightforward, which, it is
understood, would depend on cultural values in any given country. The Linares
case (Chicago 1989 – a sixth month old boy experienced respiratory shock and a
heart attack after accidentally swallowing a balloon at a birthday) – is often brought
up in texts on the subject. He was kept on life support even though chances of
his recovery were non-existent or slim and even if recovery was possible, Linares
would be left with severe brain damage. After waiting for nine hopeless months,
his father forcefully took him off of the machines and held him in his arms, waiting
for his final breath and pointing a gun at any medical staff in the room that might
try and stop him. The Grand Jury found Linares’ father “not guilty” on the charge
of murder, and he came out with a sentence for probation for unlawful use of a
weapon (Pence 1990). “The Linares case calls attention to the contradiction be-
tween biomedical technology and its power to prolong life on one hand, and values
and individual emotional response on the other”, writes P. Marshall and continues
“medical morality cannot be separated from other beliefs regarding when and
how technology should be used in the name of social well-being” (Marshall 1992).
With so many unforeseeable and difficult situations in medical practice, it
would be impossible to try and incorporate them all into a uniform ethical le-
gal system. This quandary has provided impetus for various attempts to expand
and put into detail problem-solving approaches that aspire to be comprehensive
and to lighten the pressure in situations which clinicians and patients could find
themselves in.
Biomedical Engineering: Contemporary Challenges in Science

Rapid advancements in molecular biology and technology persist while ethical
questions continue to be raised, both stretching the human imagination and evok-
ing alarm. One of the greatest scientific discoveries in the past century was James
D. Watson’s and Francis M.C. Crick’s description of the fundamental structure of a
DNA molecule in 1953. The description included their finding that genetic mate-
rial replicates from one cell to another, and then, from generation to generation.
Investigating the human genome as the primary carrier of hereditary characteristics
became a meaningful issue for scientists and the general public (it’s estimated that
almost 15 million Americans are affected by mild or advanced genetic disorders).
In 1990, the US government, with the Department of Energy and National Institute
of Health, issued The Human Genome Project. With help from large financial con-
tributions, technological advancements and the participation of England, France,
Germany, Japan and other countries, the project was successfully completed in ten
years, instead of the planned fifteen (it began in 1993 and was completed in 2003).
Using a sample size of twenty to twenty-five thousand human genes (figures vary
by source), the project was designed to: locate and determine specific genes respon-
sible for various genetic disorders and/or illnesses; determine the sequence of the
3 billion DNA sub-units that repeat millions and billions of times throughout the
human genome and are the basis of biological racial differences; form a database
and perfect steps of analysis. Some authors have called this project “the book of life.”
With such extensive goals, great difficulties are to be expected in clinically applying
findings from the project, with potential institutional changes in healthcare and
receiving public acceptance, despite numerous potential unknown consequences
for humankind.
Research on non-human genomes was also conducted in order to examine

results that could be relevant for human genome research and aid in developing
new technologies.
Concurrently, part of the project was devoted to determining possible legal and
social implications and solutions: ethical, legal and social issues – ELSI (Human
Genome). In 1999, several acts were passed on issues such as maintaining com-
plete privacy of genetic information and forbidding discrimination on a genetic
basis. Breakthroughs in modern medicine have made it possible for a stronger
focus to be put on preventative medicine, in addition to constant research in mo-
lecular biology and new technological developments. It is estimated that around
10,000 types of illness have been identified by their genetic background. Research
in the field of genetic engineering has also impacted medicine by making the
following things possible: 1. precision in medical diagnosis 2. earlier detection
of genetic predisposition 3. the emergence of new, powerful medications and 4.
genetic therapy and medication systems. In other words, genetic research made
diagnosis faster and more precise, which facilitates an earlier detection and more
efficient treatment of disease. Immunotherapy presents a realistic preventative
option for serious health problems; it is now easier to determine external factors
that trigger infection, replace defective genes through genetic therapy, etc.
In order to understand the following section, it is important to keep in mind
that hereditary characteristics are passed down by DNA molecules that are present
in all living cells. The DNA molecule itself carries the genes with the hereditary
characteristics and provides the information needed to create proteins in organ-
isms. Proteins, among other things, determine what an organism will look like,
how its body regulates the metabolism, fights infection, etc. Technological ad-
vancements in molecular biology have put a spotlight on “genetic engineering”
and brought attention to the fact that “inheritable characteristics are passed from
one generation to the next through DNA, a molecule that is present in all of our
cells” (Massey). However, the public demand for regulating this field is growing,
and some have gone as far as to demand that it be forbidden.7 Rachel Massey states
that genetic engineering is used liberally and frequently with plants, animals and
bacteria, but with very little understanding of the possible consequences, and
7 http//www.gov/sci/techresources/Humann-genome/medicine/gentherapy.shtml, 1 In
Lieu of the HGP, the Microbial System Program (MGP) was started in 1994 to establish
bacterial genes that are useful for health, medical recovery and the environment. Soon
after, the Genomic System Program (GSP) was established to work with information
gained from the HGP for further understanding dynamics of living organisms.
almost no safety. Massey systematizes human genetic engineering into three dif-
ferent types: 1. cloning 2. manipulating somatic cells and 3. manipulating gamete
cells or “germline” cell therapy (modifying genetic material of ovary or sperm cells
or zygotes in early phases of development) – germline engineering.
Cloning is a procedure which takes the DNA of one cell and uses it to create a
new one. The first successful cloning of a mammal was in 1997, after 277 previous
attempts. Scientists at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh were able
to extract DNA from a sheep that had been dead for six years and successfully
cloned a new sheep - Dolly. Dolly was euthanized in 2003 because of lung cancer
and arthritis, but by then she had already given birth to six lambs. The Roslin In-
stitute issued a statement saying that Dolly’s death was not a result of side effects
from cloning; it was most likely a result of her being kept inside enclosed spaces
for the larger part of her life, for security reasons. Though human cloning has
not yet been attempted, many serious discussions have taken place on the ethical
and political nature of the idea, in which the majority opinion seems to be that
it should not be allowed.
Manipulating somatic cells is based on “the idea to ‘correct’ the genetic com-
ponent of the disease instead of, or in addition to, treating the disease with drugs”
according to Massey. The procedure takes non-sex somatic cells and uses them to
alter disease-provoking genetic material, without passing on the DNA to future
generations. The purpose of this procedure is to improve or alleviate medical
circumstances for patients and, because of its milder nature, many medical cent-
ers already employ the procedure under the label “gene therapy” and from an
ethical standpoint, it is viewed as socially acceptable. As an example, researchers
are searching for a way to transpose a gene into the blood cells of patients suf-
fering from hemophilia or in cells of patients with a weakened immune system.
Unfortunately, despite hundreds of attempts at this procedure, most of the results
have so far been far from satisfactory.
Massey’s third and final type of genetic manipulation is germline engineering –
a procedure that alters genetic material of ovary and sperm (reproductive) cells
or zygotes. This procedure permanently modifies the DNA carrier gene. In other
words, the process has a hereditary effect. In designing future generations, this
procedure could, in theory, reconstruct the human race, says Richard Hayes, a
staunch opponent of germline engineering. It would lead to irrevocable changes
in human nature as it is known and in the structure of society. This new ideol-
ogy and its supporters – among whom are well-known scientists, technologists,
media and political elites – bases its support on the cultural values of material-
ism, autonomy of science and technology as separate from social control, and on
market-based demands. Advocates for germline engineering see future society
as one “in which the health, appearance, personality, cognitive ability, sensory
capacity and life span of our children all become artifacts of genetic manipula-
tion.” (Hayes 2000). R. Hayes brings up a text by Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at
Princeton University, as fundamentally representative of this view. Silver suggests
that the price of technological procedures will greatly limit their use and result in
the forming of two separate social classes– the GenRich and the Naturals. In such
an imagined society, Silver estimates that around ten percent of the population in
the United States could sufficiently represent the “GenRich” class and would prob-
ably control the economy, media, entertainment and technology industries and
academic sphere; while people that belong to the “Naturals” class would be com-
monly associated with blue collar work and other poorly paid service industries.
These two classes appear so radically disparate that they “will become entirely
separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest
in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee”.8 Many support-
ers of “germline” engineering such as Lee Silver, James Watson, John Campbell
(a biotechnologist) and others argue that in a society that esteems individual
choice, happiness and freedom above all else, it would be difficult to produce a
legitimate argument for restricting reproductive genetics. “I will argue” continues
Silver, “that the use of reprogenetic technologies is inevitable… whether we like
it or not, the global market place will reign supreme” (Silver). Watson thinks
similarly; namely, if knowledge exists to implement genes that could improve hu-
man beings, why not utilize it? “Evolution can be just damn cruel”, writes Watson
(2000), “and to say that we’ve got a perfect genome and there’s some sanctity to it?
I’d just like to know where that idea comes from. It’s utter silliness”.
To summarize, proponents of genetic engineering can be divided into those
that support somatic cell manipulation for the medical advancement of treating
serious illnesses and those that, in reference to germline engineering, view the
global market as the ultimate tool in deciding ethical questions for the future
two-class society; as there will always be individuals who have the desire and
power to afford “smarter, thinner and more beautiful children, to provide their
offspring with a lifelong advantage.” Some technological optimists are fascinated
by the idea of germline engineering”, writes R. Massey, “as a way to ‘take evolu-
tion into our own hands’ by redesigning the genetic information in our children’s
cells” (Massey 2). To support this view, the possibility of ridding the human body
of harmful DNA which causes hereditary illness is commonly brought up as an
8 R. Hayes has in mind Lee Silver’s book: Remaking Eden: How Cloning and Beyond Will
Change the Human Family, Avon Books, New York, 1997.
argument, though one could counter that with the argument that the same DNA
can be avoided through sperm and ovary selection, depending on which parent is
the genetic carrier. This issue is frequently mentioned in media, in stories like the
one of a healthy baby being born to parents who selected the embryo and fertilized
in-vitro, knowing that because of the father’s genetic background, the child had
a high chance of inheriting genes that cause muscular dystrophy. From a couple’s
fertilized embryos, the couple chose one that did not carry that particular gene
and, by doing so, the doctors did not have to use the procedure of exchanging
one gene for another disease-free one (as was the case with Jesse Gelsinger) and
could avoid the associated risks. Instead, the doctors merely had to choose and
insert a fertilized embryo that did not contain the damaged gen.
Germline engineering does not alleviate illness in biological parents; rather, it
creates conditions for the biological modification and designing of future genera-
tions over time and, in that way, changes the social structure. Germline engineer-
ing presents a chance to completely redesign human biology. Present arguments
and justifications for it seem to point to a future dominated with a scientific
worldview (Wexler 1990) and posseses an even greater and lasting threat than
the eugenics movement did at the beginning of the 20th century.9
9 The idea of “improving” the human race grew into the eugenics movement sometime
between 1905 and 1935. It was based on popular and pseudoscientific notions of an-
cestry before genetics as a science had surfaced. Nancy Wexler writes “Although many
people identify modern eugenics with Nazi Germany, it was actually in the United
States, with its heterogeneous population, that eugenics was most widely championed.”
(697). Many important social figures in American society approved of “eugenic mar-
riages” and “sterilizing unwanteds” (people from certain ethnic backgrounds). There
was an attempt to form a clean “American” race, as well to control the demographic
growth of certain ethnic groups. Under the backing of the law, sterilization was imple-
mented at great lengths, including on people considered “retarted”, “weak-minded” or
“criminally insane” and even on people from families living on welfare. The prominent
New York urologist William Robinson writes: “It is the acme stupidity to talk in such
cases of individual liberty, of the rights of the individual. Such individuals have no
rights. They have no right in the first instance to be born, but having been born they
have no right to propagate their kind.” (698). Up until 1941, around 36,000 people
were sterilized. According to Wexler, from 1935–1976 sterilization was also legal in
Sweden with similar parameters (around 60,000 people met with this ill fate), and of
course the most infamous crimes committed against humanity took place as a result of
a similar mindset (around 225,000 people were killed in Nazi Germany, which shared
a eugenics framework). See, Pens E. Gregory 395–404.
At that time, the idea of the “enhancement” of the human race through the
creation of a “superior race” was founded on popular pseudoscientific notions of
shaping the future with brute power and without individual choice or consent.
Presently, it seems that, on the basis of our new scientific knowledge about ge-
netics, the widespread use of germline engineering could result in the creation
of a small elite social class, of which the privilege to join would only belong to
those able to afford “therapeutic interventions” that would ensure superior social
standing for one’s children. Allowing the market to be involved in the process of
modifying the human species to create a new type of human is a glaring blow
to the course of evolutionary development; not only for diversity issues, but also
for the human ability as well. Francis Fukuyama’s response to this predicament
is a question: “What will happen to political rights once we are able to, in effect,
breed some people with saddles on their backs, and others with boots and spurs?”
(Fukuyama 1992). And it appears that it would precisely be the immense evolu-
tionary development of humans that contains in itself the potential to allow genetic
manipulation to halt the natural pathway of development in some distant, but
not too distant, future. “Mankind’s constant efforts at cultural self-modification”,
writes Fukuyama (1992), “are what lead to human history and to the progressive
growth in the complexity and sophistication of human institutions over time”. Are
opponents of scientific and technological development conservative if they only
support the medical development that improves the life conditions for all living
species and maintains the integrity of biological diversity in the environment?
Literature on the subject points to the fact that genetic engineering is still in its
early, more experimental phase and most attempts at applying it have failed. How-
ever, there have been momentous shifts in the possible treatment options because
of the available genetic methods, though a case of extreme application of germline
engineering has yet to occur (Gene Therapy). Still, this raises a few important
ethical questions: “Is somatic genetic therapy (which is done in the adult cells of
persons known to have the disease) more or less ethical than germline gene therapy
(which is done in the egg and sperm cells and prevents the trait from being passed
on to future generations)? In cases of somatic gene therapy, the procedure may
have to be repeated in future generations. Preliminary attempts at gene therapy
are exorbitantly expensive. Who will have access to these therapies? Who can pay
for their use?” (Gene Therapy). These questions hold an ethical gravity that is hard
to ignore when one considers that allowing germline therapy to be on the market
could result in the forming of a new, minute elite class of people disconnected
from normal emotional and relational connections with a “traditional” biological
class, according to proponents of this idea. Furthermore, in contemporary socie-
ties in more developed parts of the world, allowing the market to create further
insurmountable differences and injustices among groups of people is difficult to

defend from an ethical standpoint with a single conclusive argument. Even so-
matic gene therapy, if its safety and success could be guaranteed, would depend
on the financial abilities of individuals, not unlike the current existing threshold
of affordability in healthcare for serious medical procedures. It is helpful to recall
Potter’s definition of bioethics at this time as being only right when globally avail-
able, and when fundamentally trying to maintain diversity in the human race.
Historically speaking, human genetic manipulation had its beginnings in the
early 1980s (earlier attempts were limited to plant and animal species), during
which the majority opinion was an opposition to the idea. However, the National
Institute of Health in the United States gave permission in 1985 for the genetic
manipulation of somatic cells, excluding germline engineering. This managed to
encourage researchers enough to seek other options. Once research was officially
permitted, curiosity in the science community peaked and made it practically im-
possible for research in the field to cease. Enthusiasm for technology in the 1990s,
coupled with lobbying by powerful institutes without government regulation, cre-
ated a social climate that was ripe for gaining public acceptance on the issues of
genetic engineering and scientific research. The UCLA clinic garnered attention
with its inter-disciplinarily program that encompassed medicine, technology and
society (MTS) and by stating that aging is a disease which could be treatable
with genetic engineering. In Maryland, The Human Diversity Institute organized
a seminar at the Hudson Institute on human genetic modification. The lack of
strict laws to regulate genetic engineering left doors wide open for commercial
development. Hayes (2000) brings up the example of the Geron Corporation in
Menlo Park, California, which “holds patents on applicable human embryo ma-
nipulation and cloning techniques”. How extreme attempts at genetic manipulation
have become is visible in the case “that [it had] created a viable human/bovine
embryo by implanting the nucleus of a human cell into the egg of a cow” (Hayes
2000). Hayes’ (2000) comments on this case by highlighting the fact that no laws
existed in the first place that prevents crossing human genes with non-human
genes and then inserting such a fetus into a human uterus to test its success with
pregnancy. He writes: If such a pregnancy could be successful, then “the baby
would contain a small but significant proportion of cow genes”. Hayes questions
the lack of organized effort in stopping research and the use of procedures that are
slowly gaining a more commercial character. His view is that laws and regulations
could not keep up with the pace of rapid development in medical technology and
the consequences of their use could not be anticipated in time. At the same time,
the scope of possibilities surfacing in human engineering and research go far
beyond the professional expertise of scientists in the field and current knowledge
in mainstream culture. On the other hand, well informed social circles (prominent
researchers and financiers, both governmental and private) have been supporting
advancements in science and technology for years, asserting a belief in its power
‘to prevent certain tragic consequences of ancestry’. Social conscience on the issue
was not quite awakened until cases began appearing in the media that displayed the
potential for negative social change – changes that would threaten the diversity in
the human species, human nature and could create even further social inequalities.
As reactions became more vocal over time, numerous institutes were formed
with the intent to control and restrict genetic engineering. Germany and France
banned germline engineering and cloning; and at this time, the European Council
is attempting to implement the law in all of its member states, as is Canada. The
United Nations, UNESCO, and seven industrial countries are requesting a global
ban on human cloning. The United Kingdom provides an example of where this
type of law was implemented. The Human Fertilization and Embryology Author-
ity (HFEA) was created and is the only approval authority that can provide a
license for research or commercial firms that work in germline engineering. In
noting the course research has been taking, Hayes has advocated banning ger-
mline engineering and cloning on a global, political and institutional level for
all procedures that could, in some way, attempt to predetermine the biological
characteristics of future generations, such as cloning. Francis Fukuyama, who
also analyzes the social and political impacts genetic engineering has generated,
raises a question on how human rights will change if issues in genetic engineer-
ing like ‘designer babies’, prolonging life, use of new drugs, and so forth, continue
to develop without political control. He and others believe that developing and
applying biological research should continue when the goal is to improve hu-
man living conditions, but only with regulation and supervision to prevent the
inappropriate use of procedures. He reminds us that not only is a longer life span
possible because of medical treatments, but that aging can supposedly be stopped
with genetic engineering. However, having to choose between quality or longevity
of life could result in dramatic social consequences and bring about an imbal-
ance in generations, in a society that is already plagued by declining birth rates
in developed areas in the world.
Alongside the prolonging life debate, Fukuyama writes: “If only some of the
promises of technology for gerontology pan out, it could well be the case that half
of the population of developed countries will be retirement age or older by this
time” (Fukuyama 1992). It raises questions on issues like quality of life and public
health. To give an example: At the end of the last century in Japan, the ratio of
employed people to retirees was four to one. In the following two decades, that
ratio is expected to dwindle to two working adults for every retired person. In the
event of a longer life span being possible, people would desire a high quality of life;
but it is difficult to imagine how one would care for several family generations at
the same time, considering that there would be a whole new set of generational
family problems. Not only would demographic structures of populations change
in various aspects, but with an even larger aging population, various diseases
common in the elderly such as dementia, memory loss, immobility and similar
would be on the rise. Although modern medicine has made great strides in rais-
ing the quality of health, healthcare and longevity of life, it has not managed to
eradicate many of the problems and health difficulties associated with old age.
Of course, this statement applies most in developed countries. Populations in
many underdeveloped countries still have to contend with high mortality rates,
an earlier average middle age and difficult life circumstances.
Despite advances in medicine, imbalances continue not only in age population
structures, but in gender inequality. In China, the one-child policy and abortions
of female fetuses in order to wait for a male child has resulted in only one hun-
dred female children to every one hundred and seventeen male children born; in
Korea, the number is one hundred to one hundred and twenty-two, and there is
speculation that the numbers are even worse in India. Social scientists are predict-
ing that one quarter of Chinese men won’t be able to find a female life partner
by the second half of the century. All of these factors contribute to the continual
alteration of the natural structure of society.
To conclude, Fukuyama (1992) makes the assertion that “we do not today
have the ability to modify human nature in any significant way”. If Fukuyama
proves to be right, then he maintains that the direction biotechnology will take
in the future will be more focused on gaining knowledge on issues like genetic
causal chains, neuropharmacology and prolonging life. Further research in these
fields would bring up new questions about human equality and justice, morality,
identity, methods of social behavioral control (in addition to current ones like
use of prozac, ritalin and other drug control), and changes in social structures, as
well as hierarchical and political systems. Interest in these issues and the looming
social ramifications are undeniable when one keeps in mind “that human nature is
fundamental to our notions of justice, morality and the good life, and all of these
will undergo change if this technology becomes widespread” (Fukuyama 1992).
Society is faced with serious questions how to support the advancement of
science and technology without endangering the human race and its conditions
for existence, and whether is the market that can ultimately decide on matters of
health, life and death. Or, are we faced with the end of ‘natural evolution’?
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Karen Gloy
Universität of Luzern
Post-Humanistic Thinking and

Its Ethical Evaluation
I The Two Revolutions: Gene Manipulation and Technology

In his science fiction novel, Schismatrix, the U.S. writer and futurist Bruce Ster-
ling describes the future of our solar system. On earth, mankind as we know it
continues to live unmodified and is considered to be a natural preserve by the
artificially-advanced human species. On other planets, two different, compet-
ing trans- or post-human groups are living. One of these has achieved its trans-
humanity by gene modification, the so-called “Shapers,” the other group by the
use of technology, the so-called “Mechanists”. Sterling makes reference to the two
procedures dominant today, which have caused a radical change in our worldview
and anthropology in the last decades and which continue to be in the process of
generating basic changes in the existence of human beings and their way of life:
Gene manipulation, on the one hand, and computer and robot technology as
well as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence research and artificial emotional-
ity research on the other hand. While the first at least still operates with living
reproducible material, the second is even more radical insofar as it attempts to
substitute natural materials, processes and conditions with artificial ones.
It is only natural that such revolutions in the thinking, acting and life projection
of human beings have provoked support and criticism not only on the theoreti-
cal level, but also on the ethical one. But first, let’s turn to the facts and indeed to
those of gene manipulation.
In the mid-forties of the last century, Oswald Avery, the U.S. chemist, dis-
covered the chemical substance which is the carrier of genetic make-up: DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid). Since this molecule is responsible for the development
of proteins, for instructions for growth and division of cells and information for
differentiation and specialization, it is also called “the molecule of life.”1 Since
its discovery, this molecule has been the focus of research. The first-time analysis
of one part of this molecule that carries the genetic code with its genetic makeup
and information was successfully accomplished in 1961 by Marshall Nierenberg
1 James 1985, 1.
216 Karen Gloy
and Heinrich Matthai of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. This triggered
the further decryption of the entire genetic code of the human being.
While this research was still within the framework of analytical clarification,
in 1969, Stewart Linn and Werner Arber made a discovery in Basel which would
become the basis for the synthetic construction and reconstruction of DNA: the
discovery of restriction enzymes by means of which DNA can be “cut” and “glued
together” again.
Janet Mertz and Ron Davis tested these enzymes for the first time in 1972 at
Stanford University by combining two DNA fragments generated by the Escheri-
chia coli enzyme (E. coli) in a different sequence and creating the first recom-
binant DNA.2 Thus, the way was opened for the combination of various DNA
fragments, be it for a completely new combination or for a transplantation of
individual isolated gene sequences into others. In addition, new fields of medi-
cine were opened up: Gene therapy, eugenics, etc., since in this way it is basically
possible to separate defective genes responsible for hereditary diseases from the
genome. This method can also be used for breeding purposes and for increases
in performance.
The research results were soon used in the world of plants and animals for the
combination of desired qualities. Thus, it was possible to create a hybrid from
potato and tomato which was called “topato” or “pomato.” Currently, work is
underway to create a plant that grows tobacco leaves below the ground and a
carrot above the ground.3
In the world of animals, a spectacular breeding of a chimera between sheep
and goat was successful in 1984 at the University of California, called the “geep”
or “shoat,” by mixing the embryonic stem cells of both animals. Currently, experi-
ments are especially made with trans-genetic animals into which parts of foreign
genomes have been inserted that transfer the qualities and capacities of the other
animal as well. The super-cow whose milk production was increased by injection
of hormones or the sheep that produces valuable substances for the human body
in its milk are well known.
Gene manipulation is not limited to plants and animals, but extends also to hu-
mans. Even when human gene technology development is only at the beginning,
the results are so striking and the progress of this branch of science is so rapid
that gene technical interventions on human beings are to be expected to a great
extent, be it for purposes of genetic therapy, optimization of performance or, what
2 Ibid. 54
3 Ibid. 140; Klingmüller 1976, 244
Post-Humanistic Thinking and Its Ethical Evaluation 217
lies in an even more distant future, the generation of post-human creatures. Cur-
rently, however, science journalists and reporters, who are hungry for sensation,
and citizens, who are worried, as well as theological moralists, are more excited
or disturbed than can be scientifically justified. This is not completely unjustified
for it can be shown by the speech of John Scott Haldane, at the memorable Ciba
Symposium in London of 1962, that scientists speculate on a man produced by
gene technology who is optimally adapted to space travel with gripper arms and
a monkey-like tail and reduced pelvis, since a large pelvis hinders space travel.
“The most obvious abnormalities in extra-terrestrial environments are differences in
gravitation, temperature, air pressure, air composition, and radiation (including high
speed material particles). Clearly, a gibbon is better preadapted than a man for life in a
low gravitational field, such as that of a space ship, an asteroid, or perhaps even the moon.
A platyrhine with a prehensile tail is even more so. Gene grafting may make it possible
to incorporate such features into human reputations. Human legs and much of the pelvis
are not wanted. Men who had lost their legs by accident or mutation would be specially
qualified as astronauts. If a drug is discovered with an action like that of thalidomide, but
on the leg rudiments only, not the arms, it may be useful to prepare the crew of the first
spaceship to the Alpha Centauri system, thus reducing not only their weight, but their
food and oxygen requirements. A regressive mutation to the condition of our ancestors in
the mid-Pliocene, with prehensile feet, no appreciable heels, and an ape-like pelvis, would
be still better. There is no immediate prospect of men encountering high gravitational
fields, as they will when they reach the solid or liquid surface of Jupiter. Presumably,
they should be short legged or quadrupedal. I would back an achondroplasic against a
normal man on Jupiter.”4
The new quality of this gene technical revolution does not lie so much in the
quantity but rather in the quality of the changes, their depth and scope, which
concern not only the individuals but also the species and, indeed, not only in this
generation, but also in all the following ones due to the heritability of the genes
and which are therefore irreversible.5
Even more drastic and radical are those technical and technological interventions
into the human that have the tendency to replace the natural reproducible substance
entirely with an artificial substance and thus to imitate nature in its small and big
aspects. With regard to this kind of intervention, various phases in relation to the
goal and its realization must be distinguished. The Polish futurologist Stanislaw Lem
has distinguished the following levels in his futuristic book, Summa Technologiae6:
4 Burdon 1963, 337–361, esp. 354

5 See. Gloy 203 et seq.
6 Lem 1964.
218 Karen Gloy
On the first level, the so-called “preservation engineering”7: the aim consists in
the preservation of the average health of man as well as in the prevention, elimi-
nation of disease and replacement of failing functions and defective organs by
technical replacements, such as artificial hearts, kidneys, etc., which are inserted
into the human body through transplantation. A precondition for this reparative
medicine is the acceptance of the natural construction plan of man, such that the
basic principles of the body structure, the organs and their functions, the con-
struction material composed of proteins, including the aging process and death,
remain out of reach.8
Concerning the discussion regarding the difference between a man-machine
complex and man-machine hybrid, this level falls under the category of man-
machine hybrid. Here, man is not only surrounded by machines such as cars,
houses, dishwashers, washing machines, glasses, etc., in order to create a union
of body and machine, but preservation and increase of performance of the body
are achieved through a “technology that goes under the skin”, i.e., implantation
of the technological product into the human creature, such as heart pacemakers,
artificial limbs, and cochlea or retina implants in the ear and the eye.
On the second level, the “genetic engineering”9: interventions into the evolu-
tion of man are made by replacing the evolutionary process with target-oriented
directing. The highest aim of the automatic biological evolution is the optimiza-
tion of capacities, the avoidance of disease, immunity, increase in brain perfor-
mance, etc., in short, perfection. The long-term plan for decades and centuries is
to create the “next model of Homo sapiens”10, not by a leap but through gradual
changes.11
This would be, according to the understanding of post-humanism or also ac-
cording to the definition of trans-humanism by Max More, a post- or trans-human
condition, whereby these concepts are not clearly kept apart in the mostly non-
philosophical discussion. Both point to a new evolutionary product, to a creature
that follows upon the contemporary species ‘man.’
With the third level, the entire reconstruction of man finally commences: not
only by improving or repairing individual parameters, but also by changing the
entire construction plan of man. Instead of the relatively modest biological life
7 See, Lem 579.

8 Ibid. 502, 579 et seq.
9 Ibid. 586.
10 See Lem, 503.
11 Ibid. 502 et seq. 586 et seq.
span, quasi-immortality is produced. This could be achieved by gradually substi-

tuting individual body parts and organs by more efficient prostheses and devices,
so that the result is a combination of natural organs and technical devices. Also,
the removal of organs which are not well-suited for adaptation to the cosmos as
an “ecological niche” is thinkable, e.g., the removal of the digestive system along
with the jaw, the jaw muscles, the teeth, a replacement by osmotic pumps which -
depending on need - feed or discharge nutrients, activating substances, drugs,
and hormones. Scientists have discussed this program under the name cyborg
(cybernetic organization).12 And finally, one could imagine that this biochemical
revolution continues through the construction of completely different aggregate
phases and forms of the organization of life, e.g., crystalline or gaseous instead
of colloid. While nature is able to realize only some of the possible homeostasis,
man due to his superiority over nature could construct all of them.13
Lem also contemplates a fourth level, the so-called “cosmogonic engineering”14
or “pantocreatic engineering”15, which deals with the creation of new worlds,
although only secular, non-transcendent worlds. These engineering constructs are
made within nature by using natural materials such as space and time, atoms, open
or closed systems, etc., but they distance themselves from nature as it exists today.
Even though this book belongs to science fiction literature and draws a vision
of Homo sapiens the realization of which is only expected in the next decades or
centuries, one cannot deny the fact that our age has already made great advances
on this path. Since the new sciences, techniques and technologies make possible
an incredible plenitude of power for humankind and provide it with a godlike po-
sition by advancing it to an alter deus, it was unavoidable that a debate about ethics
was triggered as presently conducted with unforeseen acrimony and bitterness.
II The Substantialistic Point of View

The discussion about gene manipulation, computer and nanotechnology, as well as
artificial intelligence research and their consequences, splits the participants in the
discussion into two groups: the proponents and the opponents. The proponents,
fascinated by the possibilities that open up, believing in progress, optimistic and
entirely caught by the immanent necessities of these sciences and practices, affirm
and support this field of research, while their opponents, worried and anxious
12 Ibid. 583 et seq.

13 Ibid. 533.
14 Ibid. 481.
15 Ibid. 481.
220 Karen Gloy
regarding the unforeseeable and uncontrollable consequences along with the radi-
cal changes in thinking and acting, as well as the loss of order, criticize and try to
impede these branches of science. Between the two extremes are the representa-
tives of a moderate attitude who propose a balanced policy based on individual
cases. The two extreme positions, which shall interest us here solely, express two
opposing propensities of man: preservation and innovation. Accordingly, the
opponents can be classified as conservatives and the proponents as modernists.
Kurt Bayertz has characterized the two diametrically opposed positions with
concepts like “substantialism” and “subjectivism.”16 For him, a substantialistic at-
titude is one that proceeds from the given order, from the status quo. For man as
part of this order, it is essential to respect and protect the given order, including
the given boundaries. Substantialists speak of the intrinsic value of nature and
the dignity of man. The veneration of life requires the integrity and sanctity of the
natural order.17 Opposed to this position is the subjectivist position which is based
on the specific character of man, his freedom, autonomy and self-determination,
which - since the Enlightenment – has played such an important role in modern
philosophical, ethical and political discourse. Not only has this subjectivist posi-
tion pushed the door wide open for the self-determination of man, but also for
the determination and exploitation of non-human nature.
Since practical philosophy – as opposed to theoretical philosophy – is not only
a description and analysis, but also claims to confer an obligation, it requires
generally binding, objective criteria for securing its claim to validity. For an objec-
tive justification of ethics, there are three candidates: the divine order from the
theological point of view as manifest in the creation, the given ontological order
from the metaphysical point of view, and the natural order from the naturalist
point of view. Content, scope and boundaries are fixed in all three cases. They are
considered as sacred and untouchable. To listen to God’s message, to preserve the
creation, to protect any goods entrusted, to act carefully toward nature, to respect
the boundaries given, to practice an “ethics of asceticism,” i.e., of sacrifice and self-
limitation18 - these are demands that can be derived from divine, metaphysical
or natural law. What are these demands saying with regard to gene manipulation
and the other technologies?
The Christian view of the world and nature, which is appealed to with refer-
ence to God and the divine order, understands nature as God’s creation and man
16 Bayertz, 1987, 120 et seq, 205 et seq.

17 See Schweitzer 1966, 5. ed. 1988, 111; Altner 1985, 107–120, esp. 113; Altner 1988, esp.
97–116; Jones, 1989, 29; Gründel 1984, 219–242; Gründel 1985, 24–46, esp. 30.
18 Reiter 198–204.
as a part therein. However, such man has a special role, constituting the crown
of creation within the hierarchy. The rest of nature is subjected to man, given to
him to shape, exploit and use. What does that mean in concreto when the divine
order shall be preserved in the status quo? Does the status quo exclude change
or does it imply change and evolution? The radical position of Christian moral
theologians goes in the first direction. In this, a conservative element can be found.
The Christian religion, like most other religions, has a tendency to preserve the
existing conditions and to consider any innovation as suspect, since it is linked to
change, upheaval and disorganization. If one thinks this position to its end, there
not only gene technical interventions which are perceived as artificial should be
excluded, but also the natural methods for domestication and breeding of ani-
mals or the cultivation of plants and indeed any kind of technical intervention
including culture, since culture uses technical means and technology is in itself
an instrument of culture.
If — as in the case of representatives of moderate positions — evolution is
thought to be included in the status quo, gene technical interventions in nature
are not a priori rejected, but instead they are tolerated or required. Thus, the
protestant Jürgen Hübner19 rejects the thesis of inadmissible interventions into
nature based on the argument that man with his technical capabilities is himself
part of nature and thus a co-creative force of evolution.
Also, the other reference point of this concept concerning man as the crown
of creation proves to be ambivalent. This results from the question of what is the
meaning and purpose of man as the crown of creation. Do predominantly exter-
nal, material goods or the bodily welfare, health, force, strength, beauty, long life
or the psychological well-being of the soul belong to the meaning and purpose
of human life? What about suffering, illness, melancholy, death, i.e., what about
the dark side of life?
Most religions demand the acceptance of suffering and evil in the world, the
acceptance of imperfection which is supposed to be a motive for man to strive to
perfect himself, in particular to search for the salvation of his soul. Suffering is
said to be a basic experience that is to be accepted. To eliminate it would contra-
dict Christian ethics and would be equivalent to a transgression of boundaries,
as well as hubris, for cripples and deformed humans also have the same right to
life as do those who are physically and psychologically ill. Christian ethics offers
the virtues of pity, compassion, charity, etc., for the mitigation of suffering. Even
19 Hübner 87–103, esp. 96 et seq.

222 Karen Gloy
when, nowadays, medical care and therapy for the preservation and regeneration
of health is part of the fixed canon of duties of Christian ethics, this was not always
the case, which is shown by a historical review. And even nowadays, some sects
vehemently reject surgical and medical interventions. The prolongation of life
through modern medical apparatuses is also frequently refused with the reference
to the will of God, according to which human life is supposed to have a natural
end. If the preservation and regeneration of health are morally justified, then why
shouldn’t gene technological interventions for therapeutic or eugenic purposes
also be justified? Or the total immunization of man against contagious diseases or
his perfecting toward immortality? Are these religious substantialists worried of
the slippery slope argument that one might lose the entire hand by giving the little
finger or - differently said – are they worried that these demands could become
self-propelling and could get out of control?
If one abstracts from religious motives in the search for moral justification, only
metaphysical motives are left which are based on the ontological order. In order
to be able to speak about an ontological order, a teleologization and moralization
of being, an identification of ontological order and the order of values, which nor-
mally are not identical, is required. What justifies the ranking of one ontological
order above another one if not a genuine value order of being? Hans Jonas in his
book The Principle of Responsibility has tried to justify such a distinction.
Also in this case, difficulties are unavoidable. The orientation of an ethics on
the basis of a total, comprehensive teleology of nature collapses due to its self-
contradiction. Such an ethics would concede to each and every being – be it
organic or inorganic – a purpose, a telos in itself. Each being would be auto telic
in relation to any other being und thus would have its own value and its own
dignity. The distribution of values equally to all beings prepares the way for the
sanctification of nature in its entirety. The respect for the divinity of all beings, the
acknowledgment of their rights and their dignity and the esteem of their integrity
lead, if it is generalized, to an existential implosion. For man feeds off animals
and plants and limits the living space of other creatures; animals live and feed off
other animals and plants. Plants extract their nourishment from the elements of
the earth and the air. Earth, water, air and fire – understood as the biosphere – are
assimilators and transform foreign elements into conforming elements, and even
inorganic materials require their space by keeping others from intrusion. No two
bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. Each being is thus auto telic
in relation to any other being.
Especially in relation to man, the dilemma arises whether man is forced to
put nature above the ego or the ego above nature. Either we arrange our actions
in a conflict where we have to decide whether we respect the divinity of nature

and consider it as an absolute boundary on our actions not to be transgressed, or
we follow the urge of self-preservation and the preservation of our species in the
fight for survival. In the first case, we not only do spare other human beings, but
also vermin and disease-causing bacteria and do not undertake anything against
destructive natural forces and destroy thus ourselves; in the second case, we reject
the divinity of nature and all other beings, and combat that which is injurious to
us and promote that which is necessary to our own life.
The third instance of justification of a substantialistic ethics is nature itself and
its order as it can be found in the segmentation and classification of the natural
beings and their boundaries. This specification must serve as the justification for a
natural law. “Whatever is natural is also right” is the principle of naturalistic ethics.
However, as ambivalent as Christian ethics proved to be, the naturalistic one also
proves to be ambivalent. The evocation of nature as given, in order to prohibit
gene technical intervention, neglects that nature already produces deviations and
abnormalities, and indeed in an entirely natural manner, e.g., heterogeneous crea-
tures, identical twins, Siamese twins, etc., and that nature itself generates chimeras
such as mules and thus works in a way that transgresses boundaries and eliminates
classifications. Nature is not static but evolutionary. Nature in the present repre-
sents only a phase and a transitional stage of a progressive evolutionary process.
It has been calculated that more than 99% of all animal and plant species
that ever existed on earth have become extinct. Think of the dinosaurs and the
giant ferns and giant horsetails. Responsible for this mass extinction are not the
interventions of man, rather nature itself through climate change, the repeated
appearance of ice ages, volcanic eruptions, floods and other natural catastrophes.
Ecological systems are relatively unstable and can resist environmental influences
only to a limited degree. Since they always restitute themselves or constitute them-
selves anew after such impacts, this points to a dynamic and fluid equilibrium, not
to a constant equilibrium. The thesis of a stable ecological system is a romantic
assumption, which Kurt Bayertz calls a “global idyll”.
The naturalistic position suffers basically from a so-called “naturalistic fallacy,”
which means that the deduction of “ought” from “is” is unjustified. If such a con-
clusion should legitimate absoluteness, then it must presuppose a being in itself.
What this conclusion believes to be justifying under evocation of the natural order
is already an interpretation of man which is being extrapolated. If one says this or
that is the nature of man, then we talk about historically, culturally, ethnologically
or otherwise conditioned views; in any case, about subjective views, which are
hypostasized to be objective essential characteristics.
224 Karen Gloy
III The Liberal Subjectivist Point of View

The free subjectivist point of view, the counter-position to the bound substan-
tialistic point of view, defines itself as progressive and is based on the freedom,
autonomy and self-determination of man. Man here enjoys a godlike position,
since for the first time in history he is able to intervene in the evolutionary process,
to direct and manipulate it. Although man was already able earlier to intervene
through breeding and cultivation, his possibilities have been extended immensely
by gene technical interventions and artificial replacement, since now he is able
to produce - godlike – creations of his fantasy and his will. Himself a result of
evolution, he imitates the evolutionary process in regard to his conspecifics and
the non-human nature and executes in an artificial way what nature realizes in a
natural fashion, only in substantially shorter periods of time. This, however, does
not release him from responsibility.
In this situation, one can find the realization of the existentialist concept of
thrownness and self-projection, as represented by Heidegger and Sartre. Thrown
into being by birth, tradition, education, language, culture, religion, etc., man
projects himself permanently by projecting meanings of life and concepts of in-
terpretation, which include success and failure. With this, the question arises,
which concept of genetic structure of the nature of man should man project,
which goal should he strive for, on which criterion should he base his selection?
There are two possibilities of determination of purpose and goal: a material and
a purely formal one.
An ethics which argues on the basis of material purposes is utilitarianism,
which understands itself as a cost-benefit calculation. In the vulgar utilitarian un-
derstanding, external trappings of happiness such as material wealth, avoidance of
poverty and misery, sufficient nourishment, comfortable living, protection against
disasters, health and old age provision and the like, as well as physical health, fit-
ness, strength, long life and eternal youth, are goods to be striven for. In regard
to intangible goods, intelligence, quick apprehension, good memory, mental flex-
ibility, capacity to adapt and communicate and the like are named. Who would not
desire the capabilities of a high-performance athlete or the intelligence quotient of
a Nobel Prize winner and to bestow them onto his descendants if the possibility
of gene technology existed?
The problem of material goals and purposes is, however, that various individu-
als and societies have different ideals. They also change rapidly, as our fast-paced
era with ever-changing fashions shows.
In view of the variability of material goals, it seems worth looking at the second
possibility of interpretation, the formal one. Here the goal is open and can change;
it can have a certain direction, but can also remain without direction. The process
of gene technical intervention is thought of as infinite: If one goal is reached, then
the possibility arises for a second, third and fourth goal, etc., so that a sequence
of goals and goal realizations results. The process is without a definite goal, just
like natural mutation and evolution which also are not steering directly toward
a goal, but are trial and error than rather planned. Man with his capabilities, his
science and technology, himself a product of evolution, consciously imitates this
natural process.
An ethics, which would most take account of this fact, would be a discourse
ethics in the sense of Jürgen Habermas. Here, the members of a community, who
are supposed to be ideal discussion partners in an ideal communication situation,
i.e., in a free discourse situation, and who are characterized by the same conditions
such as education, the same capacity to articulate themselves, the same freedom,
etc., determine the goals by consensus. Habermas is of the opinion that moral
purposes including conflict resolutions cannot be found, as Kant believed, by one
transcendental subject, but only collectively by communicating and consenting
individuals.
However, Habermas’ requirement that the consensus must be absolutely uni-
versal in order to establish objective truth or binding norms is to be rejected.
Because, realistically, one can never proceed from the assumption of a general
consensus, especially not in cases of conflict as they arise in connection with
gene technological goals. Rather, convinced dissidents in this or that direction
will always exist. A universal consensus remains at most a prescription in the dis-
course, an ideal goal. The target can only be to establish the most comprehensible
consensus; this is already much in view of the historical experience of domination,
hegemony, repression and force.
If one reflects on the meaning and purpose of ethics, then they do not exist
in a vacuum but have a society-constituting function. They determine the nor-
mative communalities of a society in order to enable a society to preserve itself
and survive; and to interact more easily, in order to increase the good and to
decrease the bad. “Morality is created for human beings, not the human beings
for morality,” is a pointed expression by William K. Frankena.20 If the obligatory
character required for such a morality can no longer be gained through recourse
to an objective order, a divine, ontological or natural one, according to the sub-
stantialistic view, then the only way to justify such morality is through a recourse
to reason, the rationality of human beings and their capacity to form a consensus
20 Frankena 1972 64.

226 Karen Gloy
according to the subjectivist view. Such an always-relative ethics is – paraphrasing

Jean-François Lyotard - like an island in the sea of dissent.
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Spektrum der Wiss, Heidelberg.
Evangelos D. Protopapadakis
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Earth as a Life-raft and Ethics as

the Raft’s Axe1
A common metaphor on our planet portrays it as a rescue boat for life that travels in
an endless see of cosmic darkness. If this metaphor is to be considered a precise one,
this would mean that the earth is the only chance for life to survive the journey –
at least as far as animal life is concerned. Apart from this, however, the metaphor
implies that our planet is also very fragile, and that its carrying capacity is limited.
Now, imagine that this boat is invulnerable to external threats; imagine, also, that
it is self-sufficient and self-regulated. It is only a tiny fraction of its numerous
passengers that has the power to put in danger the boat’s safety: they can do this
either by multiplying uncontrollably and thus adding excessive weight to the boat,
or by undertaking certain actions that could completely destroy the boat, and this
despite the palpable fact that the boat’s failure will unavoidably lead all passengers
to their doom, the saboteurs included. What should be done with such a bunch
of foolish saboteurs, then? Why shouldn’t they just be forced out into the sea?
Well, here comes an impossible inconvenience: the only ones who are entitled to
judge this – and the only ones who can execute the sentence – are these very same
saboteurs. The metaphor now seems trickier, and tricky metaphors usually are an
ideal starting point for moral debates. In what follows I will provide an outline of
this raft-in-danger debate. In particular I will discuss the unexpected view that the
species Homo sapiens, the saboteurs of the metaphor, ought to either decide against
their own interests, or even against their very existence. I will suggest that this view
rests on the fundamental moral principles that [a] the well-being of the whole is
morally superior to that of the part, and that [b] only life on earth in general is
of absolute moral value, therefore it should be secured by any means and at any
cost, even if this would call for the annihilation of the species Homo sapiens. I will
try to prove my view that neither can be considered a morally justified principle,
hence both could be accepted only as metaphysical hypotheses. Then I will criti-
cally examine Linkola’s view that humans are indeed a threat to the very existence
1 This essay incorporates material from a paper of mine previously published as: Evan-
gelos D. Protopapadakis, “Environmental Ethics and Linkola’s Ecofascism: An Ethics
beyond Humanism”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China 9.4 (2014): 586–601.
228 Evangelos D. Protopapadakis
of the ecosphere, as well as his claim that our species ought to either drastically
diminish in numbers, or, even better, totally disappear from the face of the planet.
I will argue that Linkola’s analysis is either undocumented or based on irrelevant
evidence, therefore it is misleading. I will conclude with my view that Linkola’s
outlook is no less alien to morality that any other version of ethical holism.
1. A prelude
Environmental ethics came into the foreground during the last half of the twen-
tieth century. Only a few years ago Little Boy had nearly vaporized the entire city
of Hiroshima and most of its population leaving behind – apart from grief – an
enormous environmental disaster that was going to last for decades; at the same
time the extensive use of pesticides and other chemicals in the fields was threaten-
ing to make all future Springs silent (Carson 2002); agent orange hadn’t won the
war for the US, but still kept killing thousands of innocent people in Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia long after the end of the war; at the time many claimed that
the human population has been increasing beyond any control, and that the so-
called population bomb was about to explode (Ehrlich 1968). The major traditions
in ethics had obviously failed: if they were not the source of the environmental
disaster, they were at least obviously unable to prevent it. This failure was probably
the reason why Richard Routley claimed in 1973 that there was a need for a new,
an environmental ethics (Routley 1973, 205), whose task would be no other than
to establish moral imperatives and duties towards the planet and force mankind
to commit to the preservation and the flourishing of the natural world.
To this purpose philosophers engaged themselves in reexamining the moral sta-
tus attributed to nature by the major moral traditions. The for centuries dominant
view that nature may have only instrumental value was severely questioned and re-
jected as responsible for the environmental degradation, together with its offspring,
anthropocentricism. The fact that humans were considered to be the only bearers
of absolute or intrinsic value apparently left the rest of the creation with only instru-
mental one; this view, however, seemed outwardly arbitrary. In Peter Singer’s words:
“Contemporary philosophers […] freely invoke the dignity of mankind without needing
to justify the idea at all. Why should we not attribute ‘intrinsic dignity’ or ‘intrinsic worth’
to ourselves? Fellow-humans are unlikely to reject the accolades we so generously bestow
on them, and those to whom we deny the honor are unable to object” (Singer 2012, 173).
Maybe, then, it is not man, but the ecosphere that should come into focus: the
whole of the planet could be a proper locus of absolute moral value, and this ir-
respective of whether the ecosphere is useful to humans or not (Elliot 1997, 68). A
forest, for example, has its own moral value just because it is the forest it is, and not
Earth as a Life-raft and Ethics as the Raft’s Axe 229
due to the fact that it supplies humans with timber, fresh air, fruits and the such; its
moral value is only due to the fact that it exists as a part of the whole (Katz 1997,
99). A forest that has never been used as a source of timber is not less of a forest.
Nature has no entelecheia; natural entities are intrinsically functionless (Bren-
nan 1984; Katz 1993, 224), they have no final purpose; they are not intended to
serve humans. Nature’s moral value is independent from its usefulness to humans
(Routley 1973, 207ff); this value would remain the same even if the human race
vanished from the face of the earth, since the moral value of all natural beings and
entities is owed only to the fact that they participate to the whole of the ecosphere.
If this is so, however, species and individuals may be attributed only relative moral
value, and this as far as they participate to the whole (Protopapadakis 2006, 47).
2. The backbone

What is the connection of all these to ethical holism? The fundamental principle
of ecocentrism described above, namely that the ecosphere is the only locus of ab-
solute or intrinsic moral value, implies that all species, the Homo sapiens included,
can be attributed only relative moral value, a kind that is totally dependent on the
fact that the species is a part of the whole, as well as on the way the species affects
the whole (Callicott 1989, 15–38). This shifts the focus from the wellbeing and
the interests of the individual to the wellbeing and the interests of the ecosphere
(Leopold 1968, 224–225). Under the lenses of ecocentrism the best interests of
the whole seem to be morally superior – or, prior – to the best interests of any
single species. This, however, might also mean that if any species is harmful to
the ecosphere or dangerous for its existence, it is morally justifiable to use any
means available and/or necessary to reestablish a proper, viable equilibrium – and,
guess what, the only species that persistently acts in such a way as to jeopardize
the stability and viability of the ecosphere is the species Homo sapiens. Therefore,
the argument could go as follows:
A. Only the ecosphere is of absolute moral value, and its parts may only have
relative value, one that is only due to the fact that they participate to the whole,
and one they maintain for as long as they promote the wellbeing of the whole
or, at least, they do not endanger or harm it.
B. If any part of the whole endangers or harms the whole, it ought to be neutral-
ized by any means necessary.
C. The species Homo sapiens endangers or harms the whole.
D. Therefore, the species Homo sapiens ought to be neutralized by any means
necessary.
The first premise is the main pillar of ecocentrism; the second follows directly
from the first. As for the third one, there seem to be some good reasons to accept
it as true. Among others [a] humans seem to be propagating beyond any control,
and this has become a major threat for the natural equilibrium, [b] mankind
throughout its history has proven extremely efficient in spoiling the beauty, com-
promising the integrity and destroying the purity of nature, and [c] our species
comes hand in hand with technology, progress and urbanization, which, however,
are source-demanding and a constant threat to the environment. Anyone who
accepts the premises of this argument as true, and since the argument is formally
valid, is morally bound to the conclusion, and this irrespective of the fact that this
anyone can only be a member of the species Homo sapiens.
An outlook quite analogous to ecocentrism is biocentrism, according to which
either inherent value (Derr & McNamara 2003, 21) or the status of the moral
object should be extended from humans to all living beings in nature (Yu & Lei
2009, 235). The view, in particular, that humans are the exclusive bearers of inher-
ent value and that, therefore, they are somehow superior to other living beings in
a moral sense, to biocentrism strikes as totally unjustifiable (Taylor 1986, 100).
Taylor maintains that all living organisms are biologically goal-directed teleological
centers of life with a good of their own:
“We grasp the particularity of the organism as a teleological center of life, striving to
preserve itself and to realize its own good in its own unique way […] in the sense that
each is a unified system of goal-oriented activities directed toward their preservation and
well-being” (Taylor 1981, 210).
The fact that certain capacities – such as consciousness – seem to be unique in

humans provides no justification for considering ourselves morally superior to
other living organisms, since, after all, “various nonhuman species have capaci-
ties that humans lack. There is the speed of a cheetah, the vision of an eagle, the
agility of a monkey. Why should not these be taken as signs of their superiority
over humans?” (Taylor 1981, 211). The biocentric outlook demands that those
who accept it should also adopt “the doctrine of species impartiality. One who
accepts that doctrine regards all living things as possessing inherent worth – the
same inherent worth, since no one species has been shown to be either ‘higher’
or ‘lower’ than any other” (Taylor 1981, 217).
Taylor’s claim that all living things possess the same inherent worth just because
they are living things, seems to bestow moral superiority only on the property of life
itself. From the assumption that if a thing is living it is inherently worthy, it may fol-
low that if a thing is not a living one it is not inherently worthy. What makes, then,
a thing inherently worthy seems to be the property of life. If this is so, life per se is
the ultimate source of moral value and at the same time – as well as because of this –
the only possible absolute moral value. If this – not so unexpected – step is taken,
then the argument I previously outlined could be restated as follows:
A1. Only life on earth as such is of absolute moral value; therefore all living things
may have relative value, one that is only due to the fact that they are living
things, and one they maintain for as long as they do not endanger the exist-
ence of life on earth.
B . If any living thing endangers the existence of life on earth, it ought to be
1
neutralized by any means necessary.

C1. The species Homo sapiens endangers the existence of life on earth.
D1. Therefore, the species Homo sapiens ought to be neutralized by any means
necessary.
This short discussion on biocentrism and ecocentrism is not intended to imply
that those who abide by the principles of both outlooks necessarily follow the
above arguments to reach the conclusion that the species Homo sapiens ought to
be neutralized. To this some further steps would be necessary, steps that one may
or may not take; as a matter of fact, most do not. I only claim that both outlooks
can provide the springboard for ethical holism in the field of environmental eth-
ics. As for the sui generis Finnish thinker Kaarlo Pentti Linkola, it seems that they
actually did.
3. The ethical holism of Kaarlo Pentti Linkola

Linkola combines in an idiosyncratic manner the fundamental principles of both
ecocentrism and biocentrism in order to articulate a holistic ethical outlook that
rests on two pillars: [a] life per se in any form is of absolute moral value, therefore
the preservation of life on earth should be accepted as the supreme moral impera-
tive for moral agents and [b] the best interests and the wellbeing of the ecosphere
as a whole are morally superior to the ones of individuals or species. In his view,
the ultimate purpose of ethics is – or, should be – the preservation of life on earth
until a distant future (Linkola 2009, 19); that is, not the preservation of the life
of the species Homo sapiens or of any other species in particular, but of life in
general. He claims that the major traditions in ethics as well as the moral norms
and values that humans for centuries have been accepting under the influence of
these traditions have been tested and proven incompatible with the purpose of
establishing a proper equilibrium that would guarantee the preservation of life
on earth and the wellbeing of the ecosphere; therefore traditional moral theories
should be altogether rejected. After all, it is utterly nonsensical for a society not
to question moral norms that obviously are intended to cause its doom (Linkola
2009, 138). The view that foremost seems to be in need of thorough reexamination
and revision is the one that assumes the alleged moral supremacy of the species
Homo sapiens. To Linkola this view is undocumented and arbitrary, since our spe-
cies is just one more among millions of species that inhabit the planet. Humans are
neither the owners nor the stewards of the earth; to assume otherwise would be
contrary to reason and completely outrageous (Linkola 2009, 61). Linkola’s views
resulted in the articulation of a holistic moral theory that regards the disruption
of technological progress and growth, the drastic reduction of human population,
and the rejection of democracy as a moral imperative for humans.
a. Technology, progress and prosperity
“The most central and irrational faith among people”, claims Linkola, “is the faith in
technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material
prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness – even though all the proofs in history have
shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity
doesn’t bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when
they choke in their gas masks” (penttilinkola.com 2006).
But which progress are we talking about? Most of us humans, according to

Linkola, have to work more than our forefathers did, occupying ourselves with
trivial and senseless duties, such as plugging and unplugging jacks, keeping in-
come and expense accounts, or trying to convince a complete stranger to buy a
brand new washing machine. If we had the chance to choose, we would prefer to
do something totally different to what we have invested a major part of our life
in, something with inherent value. Do all these indicate some kind of progress?
Technology and industrialization are not only useless, but also detrimental to
our species, since they make humans perceive things in a rather distorted way.
For example, the most common argument in favor of technology is that it has
already vastly improved the quality of life for the majority of the human popula-
tion, and that it seems capable of improving it even more in the future. According
to Linkola, however, this is not the case; on the contrary, he believes, technology
is the main cause why human beings have lost any meaning or purpose in their
lives. If it weren’t for the countless misfortunes, calamities and hardships it had
to face and managed to overcome throughout all its existence, in Linkola’s view
our species would be lacking even the few good qualities it now has. It is only
due to hardships that the species Homo sapiens has developed its best features.
Due to technology, however, today humans need not care for hardships: when it
rains they can stay dry; it is highly unlikely they will starve to death; predators
can not harm them, since humans have become the dominant predators on the
planet. Still, in Linkola’s view, there is nothing wrong in hunger, in freezing, in
uncertainty, in the possibility of unexpected death. On the contrary, the fact that
humans have more or less managed to escape all these has become a major cause
for the sense of homelessness, for confusion and despair. The extremely high rates
of suicide in developed countries bear good witness for this.
In my view Linkola’s arguments, regardless of whether one accepts them as
sound or not, fail to establish Linkola’s claim that technology should be altogether
rejected as detrimental for our species as well as for the environment. I believe that
a reason for this failure might lay in the fact that Linkola seems to be discussing
technology in a rather oversimplified manner, focusing almost exclusively on the
advanced technological achievements of the few last centuries. But this is obviously
an idiosyncratic as well as an incomplete way of understanding technology, since it
disregards everything that has been done before the second industrial revolution.
Technology, however, begins with the conversion of natural resources into tools
(Bain 1937, 860), and this is not something that concerns only the species Homo
sapiens; apart from humans other animals (Sagan and Druyan 391, 1993) – and
not only primates – also have the ability to make use of basic technology. The term
technology may stand for every means an animal uses instead of her limbs – the
primitive wooden spear and rocks to make a fire no less than the thermal core
of a high-end nuclear plant. Linkola himself takes pride in being an apt fisher-
man, and I guess that he prefers the fishing rod to his bare hands in fishing. Even
if he doesn’t make it clear, it seems that Linkola’s arrows are aimed at advanced
technology only. But where exactly is the line that separates basic from advanced
technology to be drawn? Linkola’s aphorism seems to imply that what makes the
fishing rod different to the nuclear plant is the fact that the plant has the potential
to massively destroy life on earth, while the rod doesn’t. But this again doesn’t make
advanced technology per se necessarily destructive to the ecosphere: electronic
correspondence is much friendlier towards the environment than traditional one,
since neither paper nor any means of transportation are required. Nuclear power,
on the other hand, is far cleaner for the environment than the steam, and in the
near future it is expected to become quite as safe, especially in the case nuclear
fusion replaces nuclear fission, a development that is supposed to solve the issues
related with the production and disposal of nuclear waste. Moreover, even if we
accepts the view that the environmental destruction is mostly due to technological
progress, this does not necessarily entail that technology should be either aban-
doned or rejected; it might also involve doing everything necessary to render it
harmless. Technology may all the same be environmental-friendly, as the use of
solar panels, of the wind, or of tides and ebb-tides as energy sources indicates.
Concerning Linkola’s claim that technological progress is the main reason why
we humans have lost any purpose in life and its true meaning, I remain uncon-
vinced not only for the very fact, but also for the explanation that Linkola pro-
vides: I seriously doubt in the first place that there is any single purpose or a true
meaning in life to be lost; but even if there are, I couldn’t tell whether my fellow
humans have lost them indeed or not; and finally, even if I were willing to accept
that they have, I couldn’t be sure that this should be blamed on technology only or
primarily, if at all. Since I do not feel either qualified or entitled to discuss in depth
psychological issues such as the above, I do not intend to say much more; I shall
only notice that back in the 16th century William Shakespeare in his magnificent
Sonnet 66 seems to be sharing the same deeply felt agony concerning the loss of
the so-called true meaning in life, a feeling so strong that even made him cry for
“restful death”; his desperation, however, had nothing to do with technology:
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. (Shakespeare 2004, 137)
b. Overpopulation
Technology and progress are not the only targets for Linkola to aim his arrows.
To him overpopulation is equally disastrous to the ecosphere. All species, he ex-
plains, are naturally endowed with self-regulating systems of reproduction, so as
to avoid excessive increase in numbers, due to which not only the existence of the
very species would be in danger, but also local and global equilibria: each time a
maximum population quota is reached, some safety valve gets triggered and the
ideal quota is being finally restored; famine and disease are the most common as
well as efficient safety valves for this. Humans, however, have managed to over-
ride all natural safety valves; this has allowed our species to reproduce beyond
any control and has resulted in making it a terrible burden for the ecosphere. The
situation is so urgent, according to Linkola, that no means that hold the promise
to bring about the drastic reduction of human population should be rejected,

even if these would involve war, genocide and disease. Linkola only wishes these
calamities and others as such will be targeted in such a way, as to bring about the
most destructive effects possible for the species Homo sapiens! Such a wish might
strike as outrageous to some, but it is only expected from a thinker who holds that
the existence of individuals is of no value at all when compared to the survival of
the species, and that the existence any particular species, in turn, is of no value
when compared to the survival of life on earth. Since only the members of our
species can intellectually grasp this, it is a moral duty for us humans to force our
numbers under a certain quota:
“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and only one
lifeboat, with room for only ten people, has been launched? When the lifeboat is full,
those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love
and respect life, will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides
of the boat.” (Linkola 2000, 447)
War, disease and genocide may be extremely serviceable to this purpose in exactly
the same way as the raft’s axe can be:
“Who misses all those who died in the Second World War? Who misses the twenty million
executed by Stalin? Who misses Hitler’s six million Jews? Israel creaks with overcrowded-
ness; in Asia Minor, overpopulation creates struggles for mere square meters of dirt. The
cities throughout the world were rebuilt and filled to the brim with people long ago, their
churches and monuments restored so that acid rain would have something to eat through.
Who misses the unused procreation potential of those killed in the Second World War?
Is the world lacking another hundred million people at the moment? Is there a shortage
of books, songs, movies, porcelain dogs, vases? Are one billion embodiments of motherly
love and one billion sweet silver-haired grandmothers not enough?” (Linkola 2000, 447).
Malthus would probably have been proud to have written these words.
To Linkola war, far from being a disaster, is actually a blessing to the ecosphere –
if only it were a bit more effective:
“It would spark hope only if the nature of wars would morph so that deductions of persons
would noticeably target the actual breeding potential: young females as well as children,
of which a half are girls. If this doesn’t happen, waging war is mostly waste of time or
even harmful” (Linkola 2009, 173).
Since our species in Linkola’s view is only a malignant tumor for the ecosphere
(Veith and Olasky 1994, 74), “if there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice
myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die” (Milbank 1994,
A4). Sadly for Linkola there is no such button yet, so he has to settle for certain
substitutes – or, better, for some soothing memories:
“We even have to be able to re-evaluate the fascism and confess the service that that phi-
losophy made thirty years ago when it freed the earth from the weight of tens of millions
of over-nourished Europeans, six million of them by ideally painless means, without any
damage to the environment” (Linkola 1979).
Allow me to maintain some skeptical doubts concerning the services fascism

paid to philosophy, as well as concerning these “ideally painless means” due to
which the earth was relieved from six million Europeans – who, by the way,
show far from over-nourished in numerous shocking pictures… I will also remain
unconvinced that wars and genocides are a blessing to the ecosphere even the
way Linkola sees it – actually such events are usually followed by a tremendous
increase in birth rates. I will even pass Linkola’s admittedly admirable readiness
to sacrifice himself in order to secure the ecosphere; instead I will focus on his
claim that the earth is overpopulated by our species. This view, exactly as all
similar ones that have been supported in the past, to me seem entirely arbitrary:
overpopulation is for sure a term almost impossible to define, as Paul Ehrlich –
among others – would reluctantly admit now. In the late 70s Ehrlich claimed
that the human population had increased so much, as to have become a major
threat for the ecosphere; according to him this threat resembled a bomb ready
to explode – this was his famous population bomb argument (Ehrlich 1968, 3ff).
At his time the human population was no more than three and a half million
individuals. Today it counts well above six and a half million; still Ehrlich’s bomb
has not yet exploded. It is certain that our planet is not vast, and that the natural
resources are not limitless. It is also certain that there is a maximum quota for
human population. What is uncertain is that – at least for the time being – one
may know which exactly the upper limit for human population is.
In addition to these, there is strong scientific evidence that overpopulation is
neither the only nor the main cause for the ongoing environmental degradation. It
seems that, instead, most of the times the main causes for this are certain policies:
soil erosion and the desertification of the land is often due to inappropriate land
use and farming techniques, over-farming and over-grazing, as it is with the Sahel
zone; the melting of the ice in the poles should mostly be blamed on the industrial
activity of certain countries that remain reluctant to adopt the necessary measures
to reduce the greenhouse effect. The rapid and extremely dangerous deforestation
of the Amazon is not due to overpopulation, but to the constantly increasing need
for wood in the developed countries whose population, nevertheless, instead of
growing, either remains steady or declines.
c. Democracy
Linkola’s most hated enemy seems to be democracy and this with a good reason:
to him democracy is on the one hand responsible for facilitating progress and
overpopulation to produce their negative effects for the ecosphere, and on the
other it is by its nature unable to bring about the necessary changes in this situa-
tion. Olli Tammilehto summarizes Linkola’s views: [1] The survival of mankind
is seriously being threatened. [2] This is primarily due to the pollution of the en-
vironment, the destruction of ecosystems and the acceleration of these processes.
[3] The uncontrollable growth of human population and technological progress
are the main causes for the devastation of nature. [4] Apart from any natural
conditions, population growth and technological progress are being determined
by man’s biological characters. [5] The extinction of man is an extremely bad
thing. A bad thing is by definition something that anybody should try to avoid.
But why humans seem not to be trying to prevent their own extinction? Linkola
believes that man’s psychological structure is such that most people repress these
facts (the premises no. 1 and 2), and that without any doubt irrational faith is a
key part of man’s biological characters – and a solid part of man’s mechanism of
self-destruction: humans either do not realize the fact that the population growth
and technological progress threatens their own existence or, even if they do, they
do nothing to change the situation. But still there is hope: there are a few persons, a
number of clear-sighted individuals who happen to lack this irrational faith – they
are some kind of mutations, freaks of nature, the random product of biological
process. These mutants surprisingly are not bound by the same biological laws
that average humans are being determined by. [6] In the item (4) “man” equals
“normal man,” the majority of humans. Next to these there are a small number
of “visionary mutants,” who are aware of the actual situation and are ready to
undertake certain actions to change it. [7] Any minority may have the power to
change things only if it is fully supported by the majority of people. [8] A minor-
ity of such visionary mutants could never gain full support by the majority of
people; therefore, its only chance is through a coup d’état. [9] Then, the power of
the state could be used in such a way as to neutralize any threat for the existence
of mankind. [10] In the case a coup d’état would seem a reprehensible means to
some, Linkola claims that man’s duty is to strive for the prevention of extremely
bad things, even if this would mean resorting to ethically reprehensible conduct
(Tammilehto 1985, 8ff). Linkola supports his view with the following claims:
a. Projects such as depopulation and the disruption of progress couldn’t ever
be included in the agenda of any politician; but even if they were, it is highly
unlikely that people would vote for such an agenda. Unpopular purposes
cannot be sought nor achieved in a democratic state.
“If the voice of the people is being hearkened to, there is no hope. Democracy is the
religion of death. Only in an austere, aware and responsible government there is some
spark of hope: Democracy is the most miserable of all known societal systems, the heavy
building block of doom. Therein the unmanageable freedom of production and consump-
tion and the passions of the people is not only allowed, but also elevated as the highest
of values. The most incomparably grave environmental disasters prevail in democracies.
Any kind of dictatorship is always superior to democracy, leading to utter destruction
more tardily, because there the individual is always chained, one way or other. When
individual freedom reigns, human is both the killer and the victim” (Linkola 2009, 174).
b. If these are true, democracy is a flawed form of government intended only
for the fools:
“Democracy and public right to vote guarantee that no others than sycophants of the
people can rise to the government – of a people who never clamour for anything else
than bread and circuses, regardless of the costs and consequences. Even the only pos-
sibility comparable to a lottery jackpot, that some intelligent exception would rise to the
positions of power, is lost with democracy” (Linkola 2009, 159–160)
c. Democracy calls for personal decision making, and individual will is rarely
compatible with the best interests of the whole (Linkola 2009, 204–205). Re-
spective procreation, for example, all democratic governments leave it up to
their citizens to acquire as many offspring as they wish. In Linkola’s view,
however, such a crucial issue should be determined only by central authority in
such a way as to force human population below the limit of ten percent of the
current (Linkola 2009, 139). This would undoubtedly mean that procreation
should be banned for many – and strictly regulated for everybody, something
that people would never accept. Only a global totalitarian government consist-
ing of a few “mutant visionaries” could enforce such a regulation (Linkola 2009,
205). Such mutants, of course, will never come to power through democratic
elections. Hence, a coup d’état is the only chance for this.
In my opinion Linkola’s hostility towards democracy is equally arbitrary as are
his views on progress and overpopulation I previously discussed. Non-demo-
cratic governments seem to have been equally – or more – responsible for the
degradation of the natural environment. Totalitarian regimes are by definition
accountable to nobody, and usually tend to care more for growth disregarding
what this would mean to the environment. On the contrary, in democratic states
public opinion is usually much more aware and sensitive towards the environ-
ment, and surely it can force the government to abandon certain projects that are
dangerous for the environment. Contrary to what Linkola believes, democracy

allows minorities enough power to change anything; the situation doesn’t neces-
sarily call for a green coup.
In addition to these, Linkola’s imperative that “man’s duty is to strive for the
prevention of extremely bad things, even if this would mean resorting to ethically
reprehensible conduct,” sounds somewhat controversial; to me it is a typical case
of the contradictio in terminis fallacy. Any reprehensible conduct can either be
imposed onto somebody, or it can be in accordance with the free will of a moral
agent. In the case it is imposed, however, it makes no sense to consider it either
reprehensible or praiseworthy, since the moral agent had no alternative; such a
conduct is simply unsuitable for moral evaluation. Linkola surprisingly claims,
however, that the “ethically reprehensible conduct” he suggests is at the same time
the only way out, which clearly means that for any reasonable individual there is
no alternative. But since this conduct is – according to Linkola – still reprehen-
sible, it cannot be the only way out; and if again it is indeed the only way out, it
cannot be ethically reprehensible. Either way, Linkola’s moral imperative doesn’t
seem to be a neither a typical nor a sound one.
4. A Postlude
So far I have tried to provide an outline of Linkola’s moral theory and discuss his
major views. I argued that the main principles on which his theory rests, as well
as his key arguments are neither sound nor convincing. At this point allow me to
add some further thoughts on ethical holism in general, and on Linkola’s version
in particular. Even though I do not consider myself – and the species I belong
to – the center of the universe, and although I believe that the ecosphere would
be just fine even if the species Homo sapiens became totally extinct, I still find it
impossible to discuss ethics from a point of view other than the one my nature
allows me to have; I cannot think like a lion nor like a mountain. I agree, humans
are nothing but a tiny cluster of the entire creation; this cluster, however, is the
only one that has developed ethics, and this ethics is the only one I know and I
can discuss. This means that any ethics that gives moral priority to naturalistic
or metaphysical entities and leaves humans entirely out of its focus to me doesn’t
look like an ethics at all. You may call me narrow minded, if you like; you may
also blame me for missing the whole picture, whichever it might be; you may
also believe that I have failed to escape the grasp of anthropocentrism, and you
will probably be right about it. I know that anthropocentrism is responsible for
many practices that are morally reprehensible, especially towards animals. I also
know that it is biased, partial and superficial. If, however, ethics is the conquest
not of the ideally best, but of the less bad, any anthropocentric outlook is always
the safest we can have.
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University of Erfurt
Trans-human-ism: Technophile Ethos or

Ethics in a Technological Age?
Introduction
Transhumanists often sound like a small faction of technology enthusiasts. They
celebrate the means of manipulating and altering the human body, be it drugs,
prosthetics, genetic engineering or whatever else is on the market (or rather: is not
on the market but available otherwise). They often advertise the hedonistic and
competitive advantages of the respective technologies and mostly do not consider
their use of any distinctively moral value. Insofar one could interpret transhuman-
ism as a Technophile Ethos.1 I call it an ethos after the Greek word „ethos“, custom
or habit, because its scope is a small group of people who think alike.
A few transhumanists discuss the moral impact of biological or psychological
mechanisms in human thought – be it on science, ethics, economy or art. They
make out several limitations of typical human characteristics imposed on the
rationality and the efficiency of this thought, and highlight the real and possible
consequences of these limitations. The moral impact of those grew especially
severe, transhumanists claim, when modern technology acquired the potential
to aggravate the effect of even trivial mistakes. In light of a utilitarian framework
(probably in a deontological framework too) the limitations of human biology
and psychology can therefore be assigned a negative value. Since at the same time
technology enables one to eradicate these limitations, its use for this purpose be-
comes morally recommended.2 In this sense, transhumanism is an ethical theory
for a technological age.
Both aspects of transhumanism tend to be closely interwoven within the writ-
ings of the same author, sometimes even within the same text. We can disentangle
this transhumanist thicket into an ethical theory and a particular ethos. The first
promises major advances for ethics, while the latter is a small faction’s project of
forming a distinct lifestyle. The disentangling will be done by disambiguating the
concept ‘transhumanism’ and its constituents.
1 See More 1990 as an example.

2 This seems to be the core of Bostrom 2002.
244 J. Hendrik Heinrichs
Disentangling ‘Trans’, ‘Human’ and ‘Humanism’

The elements in ‘transhumanism’ are first the prefix ‘trans-’ 1a) either in the mean-
ing of increasing or surpassing or 1b) in the meaning of going beyond or dismiss-
ing something. Second there is either 2a) ‘human’ or 2b) ‘humanism’. Depending
on whether one uses ‘human’ or ‘humanism’ there might be an additional suffix
‘ism’. An ‘ism’ can be a theory based on whatever stands in front of the suffix or
a movement dominated by the same. Ignoring the ‘ism’ for the moment, we get
a two by two matrix:
Human Humanism
Trans (surpassing) 1 3
Trans (dismissing) 2 4
I take the two meanings of ‘trans-’ to be incompatible if used as a prefix to either

‘human’ or ‘humanism’, therefore philosophical positions cannot combine 1 and
2, or 3 and 4. The remaining four transhumanist options combine 1 and 3, 1 and
4, 2 and 3 or 2 and 4. Let us turn to the row and column titles first. These titles,
though apparently innocuous, are in need of some explanation. Afterwards, we
shall proceed to the first four cells, explaining what dismissing or surpassing hu-
mans or humanism might imply. Finally, we continue to the possible combinations
of the four cells, deriving palpable transhumanist positions.
Identifying the Single Threads ‘Trans-’, ‘Human’ and ‘Humanism’

The first column heading is ‘human’. If we take a look at common language, then
this word should not raise too many questions, yet it does. It has been a central
term in philosophy for most of its history and it has carried quite heavy normative
burdens during these times past.
Our first option of specifying what we take the term ‘human’ to mean is tak-
ing it to imply all the properties we find in members of the species Homo sapiens
sapiens. We can dismiss this option immediately, because it would make every
deviation from any statistic mean – be it positive or negative – a part of the con-
cept. While one would not want to exclude any human variation from the exten-
sion of the concept, the intension had better not depend on them all. No term
thus defined would have any explanatory value, because we could not derive any
law-like statements from it.3
3 Cf. Birnbacher 2006.

Trans-human-ism 245
The second option of specifying the term takes recourse to the way we define
all other species terms. This implies understanding ‘human’ as a biological term.
We should then claim that ‘human’ nowadays is a word best defined in biological
theory and better as one not used normatively. Biological taxonomy and theory,
one could claim, state a number of characteristic properties sufficiently defin-
ing a human being. Those are for example being a mammal, having 23 pairs of
chromosomes, etc. Proceeding in this way raises some issues with biological
taxonomy and methodology, but let that rest for the moment. Another reser-
vation is more imminent, namely which biological characteristics to employ?
Which properties or which property cluster defines human beings is not easily
settled. Quite a number of properties have to be irrelevant to the taxonomy,
unless taxonomy looses all theoretical utility. Let us for the moment trust biol-
ogy to be able to do just that. We might still miss some aspects in a biological
analysis of ‘human’.
Some of the characteristic properties of humans are properties best discussed
in psychological terms, although psychological theory is not a part of biological
theory and is probably not easily reduced to it. These properties usually are not
the defining properties of a human being. Something can be a human and lack
all the psychologically defined properties of human beings, but without any of
the biological properties of one, nothing is a human. Still, if some psychological
properties are missing in a member of Homo sapiens sapiens, we consider this as
atypical and in need of explanation.
The third option, drawing the lessons from the first two, will be to pick out
typical human properties. They will neither include all properties of human in-
dividuals, nor will they be constrained to the biological ones alone. This later
constraint has to be dropped, because humans can be and are constantly assigned
properties, which have not yet been and probably will not be defined in biology
or any of its sub-disciplines. Still, their absence requires an explanation. The
bundle of characteristic properties will include biological properties and some
higher order properties like consciousness, self-consciousness, a scheme of life,
reciprocity, etc.
To make things even more muddled, characteristic properties need be neither
universal nor specific. There are human individuals who lack some of those prop-
erties and quite a number of non-human beings share some of them.
Our argument therefore continues with the two column headings called
‘human’, instead of only one. One of these two is a biological definition of man;
the other is a broader concept. The first one draws upon biological taxonomy only,
the second includes characteristic properties discussed in a variety of disciplines.
For convenience, the later can be called an anthropological analysis of the term.
The cells 1 and 2 have to be split into a biological and an anthropological ver-
sion, transforming our two by two into a three by two matrix:
Human Human Humanism

(biological) (anthropological)
Trans (surpassing) 1a 1b 3
Trans (dismissing) 2a 2b 4
The third column heading is humanism. This is not a term of science; it is a term
usually defined in literary studies, history and philosophical ethics. I shall use
‘humanism’ as ethics does and ignore the uses in literary studies or history. The
term ‘humanism’ has been made quite a liberal use of during all its history and
is still being made such use of by several writers and organizations today. The
different humanist societies currently en vogue tend to conflate humanism and
agnosticism, humanism and atheism, humanism and some religion, humanism
and utilitarianism, etc. Humanism most probably is a creation of the 19th century
and has never been one single system of morality, of politics or of science. Rather,
the word ‘humanism’ has always been contested by several (usually philosophical)
positions which themselves were shaken by internal struggles.
All versions of humanism have constructed their own tradition by presenting
ranks of ancestors and heroes. Niethammer – an educationalist in the nineteenth
century and probably the first to use the term4 – does, Burckhardt5, to whom we
owe most of our modern image of Renaissance humanism, does. Hegel follows
the praxis as does Marx; Thomas Hughes, Thomas Arnold, Lord Byron and Percy
Shelley do the same in Britain. The list could go on for quite a while. Their heroes
are quite similar: Some Greek and Roman philosophers, mainly Socrates, Plato,
Cicero, followed by Renaissance writers and artists (Pico, Michelangelo, Raphael,
Bacon, etc.), a pick of philosophers and scientists throughout the Enlightenment
(Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Franklin, Goethe, etc.) a select few from the 19th
century, depending on whether or not you include Anglo-Saxon or continental
histories of humanism (Bentham, Mill, sometimes Nietzsche, and maybe Marx).
By the way: Transhumanism does much the same and with a similar con-
structed lineage: Gilgamesch, Daedalus, Pico, Bacon, Newton, Hobbes, Locke, de
la Mettrie, Kant, Marquis de Condorcet, Franklin, Darwin, Bentham, and Mill are
typical historic reference points of transhumanist writings. Marx, Nietzsche, and
4 Cf. Niethammer 1808.

5 Cf. Burckhardt 1860.
Trans-human-ism 247
Heidegger are usually but not always excluded. Some names get recruited into
the ancestry of transhumanism, which we do not find in the galleries of human-
ists: science fiction writers, so called futurists, and quite a number of modern
scientists.6
For the purpose of clarifying the column heading ‘humanism’ we will have to
make do with the loose and internal struggle-ridden tradition of different human-
isms, which can more or less be characterized as the transhumanist More does
for the purpose of relating transhumanism and humanism: a respect for reason
and science, a commitment to progress, and a valuing of individual human life.7
These characteristic evaluations have resulted in an ideal that is quite charac-
teristic for the humanistic position ever since Niethammer. Humanism is not only
a theory of social states, but also encompasses a theory of individual perfection; it
is a perfectionist ethical theory. The position on human perfection transforms the
aforementioned characteristics: a respect for reason and science, a commitment
to progress, and a valuing of individual human life into a prototypical lifestyle.
This lifestyle varies from position to position, but in most of them one can find
allusions to an ideal already formulated in the Renaissance: the uomo universale.
The ideal of the universal man has to be distinguished from the Renaissance
humanist. Humanism to Renaissance writers is as much an educational as an ethi-
cal ideal. A humanist was a scholar in the studia humanitatis.8 Those studies com-
passed grammar, rhetoric, poetics, history and moral philosophy. These disciplines
heavily leaned on the study and imitation of Greek and Roman classics. Moral
as well as aesthetic progress was expected from the spread of classical literature,
style, and knowledge. Although several Renaissance and some humanist writings
discuss the uomo universale, the universal man, it was first of all the educated
man, especially the humanistic educated man that dominated humanist literature.
The uomo universale surpassed the humanist ideal by being educated not only
in the humanistic studies, but also in the sciences and arts beyond those. Addition-
ally, he (and she) was virtuous, strong, beautiful, witty, a capable fighter, an artist
in song and painting, etc. His (and her) description is quite an impressive reading.
It usually is this character that is identified with the humanist ideal. What is taken
to be the humanist ideal is not a humanist in the focal meaning, that is a scholar of
classical philology, history and moral philosophy, but a well-rounded person who
is knowledgeable in both science and the humanities as well as being proficient
6 Cf. Bostrom 2005.

7 Cf. More 1990.
8 A thorough analysis of the humanist ideal can be found in Kristeller 1975.
in one of the arts and athletics etc. This is the ideal propagated for the man of the
court in Castigliones’ famous book of the courtier9 and has found prominence in
modern humanist theory.
Let it suffice, for the moment, that the perfectionist ideal of humanism entails
moral education and bodily as well as cognitive development. This short sketch
will have to do for our purpose of relating humanism and transhumanism.
The line headings can be discussed in short: ‘Trans’ can in this context either
mean ‘increasing’, ‘surpassing’ like in ‘transcend’ and ‘transfinite’, or it can take
the meaning of going beyond or dismissing something like in ‘transfigure’ or
‘transform’. The first meaning ‘surpassing’ combines a conservative streak with a
progressive main intention. To surpass something requires grasping and master-
ing it before. One cannot stand on the shoulder of giants and shove them away
at the same time. Someone who wants to surpass modern mathematics has to
learn it first, and someone who wants to surpass modern morality will have to
stick to quite a number of its requirements. If ‘trans’ is taken to mean ‘dismiss’ it
does not necessarily require preserving any aspect of whatever is to be dismissed
(for justification’s sake, it might help, but it is not strictly required). This meaning
disbands with conservatism.
Identifying the Weaving Pattern

After having clarified as much as possible the above-mentioned column and line
headings, it becomes possible to trail the strands of Transhumanism. Let us pro-
ceed in numerical order:
1) Surpassing Human Characteristics.

At least the first steps of what transhumanists take to be humanity’s evolutionary
future comprise a way of surpassing human characteristics. When transhumanists
talk about human evolution toward posthuman beings, they usually enumer-
ate different stages of the latter. The process starts with human beings having
enhanced physical and mental abilities, usually afforded by mental techniques,
physical training, diet and minor invasive technologies like drugs. Later stages
result from more drastically invasive technologies, like genetic manipulation,
neuro-prosthetics, and nanoware implants etc. The final stage in most visions is
the uploading of human consciousness and whatever manipulations are possible
thereafter. This last stage seems to dismiss human biological characteristics.
9 Castiglione 2002.
Trans-human-ism 249
Although it is biological limitations that transhumanists want to surpass, what

counts as surpassing cannot be answered by biology. Surpassing is per definition
relative to some goal or function, but biology neither defines the functions human
performances can be measured against, nor does it allow distinguishing between
positive and negative deviation from typical capacities to realize those functions10.
The only exception from this rule lies in the evolutionary functions of survival and
reproduction. From a purely biological point of view, no direction of change is
emphasized for characteristics not related to reproduction or survival. Less intel-
ligence can be better from a biological point of view if it improves the individual’s
probability of reproduction; longer sleep phases might provide a reproductive and
survival bonus and therefore be surpassing typical human biological characteris-
tics. Nevertheless, transhumanism in most cases does not endorse reproduction
and survival as exclusive goals. Rather, it aspires toward functions highlighted in
specific anthropologies or moralities. Surpassing human characteristics therefore
can be defined as surpassing the bio-statistical average in biological means toward
ends defined by anthropology, by a morality or simply by a scheme of life.
Human Human
Trans 1a 1b
(surpassing) Better than nature allows.. ‘Better’ Better than in common
cannot be defined by biology anthropological description. ‘Better’
though and therefore has to be can be defined by anthropology,
delegated to 1b. transforming it into a normative
enterprise.
2) Dismissing Human Characteristics

As said, one option of dismissing some typical human characteristics can be found
in the last stages of the abovementioned development toward posthumanity. Bio-
logical characteristics would be dismissed by uploading or similar relocations of
human consciousness. A number of additional possibilities emerge: Invasive tech-
nologies that change enough of a human individual for him or her to fall outside
10 Typical capacities to realize functions can be analyzed by biostatistics. Health for ex-
ample is defined as the biostatistics’ mean in normal functions. „A normal function
of a part or process within members of the reference class is a statistically typical
contribution by it to their individual survival and reproduction“. Boorse, 1977, 555.
of the property cluster defining the term ‘human’.11 Not all such changes retain
the psychological and cognitive properties typical of human beings. A resulting
posthuman might lack higher intelligence, self-consciousness or other charac-
teristics we readily associate with humans today. In the meaning of ‘dismissing
human characteristics’ transhumanism can – though mostly it doesn’t – include
any type of modification, as long as the typical properties of human beings are
sufficiently changed. The later options of becoming posthuman fall outside most
of the transhumanist literature. Although dismissing biological human charac-
teristics is idealized, the dismissal of certain psychological core characteristics is
typically not perceived as an option.
Human Human
Trans 2a 2b
(dismissing) Different than what nature Different than common
produces. ‘Different’ does not have anthropology describes. A mode of
to be defined outside of biology. antihumanist thinking?
3) Surpassing Humanism

To surpass humanism requires endorsing some version of the humanist tradi-
tion as constructed by the author in question and adding some ingredients that
surpass humanist ideals.
Under this heading, we can subsume recent writings on the role of technology
in surpassing the cognitive limits in ethical thought and risk analysis. The transhu-
manist value of exploring the posthuman realm belongs to this category as well.
Both are primarily utilitarian goals of avoiding damage and exploring new sources
of happiness. They surpass a type of humanism that draws on the tradition rang-
ing from British utilitarianism to the Renaissance ideals of man. The ideals of this
humanist tradition are to be surpassed in three domains: 1) ‘Means of personal
growth’. While common humanism did require becoming more than nature made
you,12 they intended this process to consist of physical and mental training, of edu-
cation and learning. The transhumanist ideal does not settle for those methods,
but draws on the technological means of becoming more than nature made you.
2) ‘Sources of value’. While utilitarian humanism required seeking out happiness
11 The term ‘human’ is here taken to be a property cluster concept. The properties in-
cluded in this cluster originate in diverse disciplines.
12 See for example Kant AA VI 386, or Mill 1984a.
Trans-human-ism 251
and avoiding disutility, they were content with the sources of happiness found
in educated human nature.13 Transhumanism on the other hand aspires toward
sources of value in the ‘posthuman realm’, going beyond the dispositions to value
that a human being possess today. 3) ‘Handling of human shortcomings’. While
humanism, especially its Enlightenment influences, set high ideals of rationality,
autonomy and reflection, it accepted limits in human thought. For example, it
amended act-utilitarianism with rule-utilitarianism’s mitigations because nobody
is able to predict the consequences of his actions precisely enough and quickly
enough. Even the much berated Kant diluted some of his rationalistic ethics with
a list of virtues and rules of thumb. Transhumanism, on the other hand, does not
give in much to such human limitations, but it seeks to enable human beings to
ever-more rational and autonomous thought.
4) Dismissing Humanism

Dismissing humanism has a tradition at least since Althusser.14 It has inspired a
new line of thought called ‘antihumanism’, which covers such prominent thinkers
as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan. Dismissing humanism usually is a reaction to the
term being occupied by aberrant moralities or to the dramatic failure of humans to
be humane. Because of these aberrations and failures, alternative bases for moral
orientation are searched for or constructed. In most cases, a plurality of such
orientations is endorsed as equally acceptable. Antihumanism would primarily
require giving up the tradition of humanism as the source of ideals in morality
and schemes of life. This dismissal would open up a multitude of distinct schemes
of life. Antihumanism alone is only a negative thesis, which — if not amended by
some positive claim — results in suspending any moral or aesthetical judgements;
the sources of the later have to be found somewhere else. Antihumanist thought
usually is not endorsed by transhumanists.
Having in brief stated the four combinations of transhumanist threads, the
results can be highlighted in the three-by-two matrix.
13 Mill 1985, 211.

14 Cf. Althusser 1968.
Human Human Humanism

Trans 1a 1b 3
(surpassing) Better than nature Better than in common Surpassing the ideals of
allows..‘Better’ cannot anthropological 1) physical and mental
be defined by biology stocktaking. ‘Better’ training, 2) the sources
though and therefore can be defined of happiness and 3)
has to be delegated by anthropology, the level of ethical and
to 1b. transforming it into a predictive thought of
normative enterprise. the humanist ideal.
Trans 2a 2b 4
(dismissing) Different than what Different than Antihumanist
nature produces. common anthropology thought; dismissing
‘Different’ does not describes. A mode of humanism and human
have to be defined antihumanist thinking? characteristics as
outside of biology. sources for morality
and for schemes of life.
Suspending judgment
on such sources.
These preliminary results have to be transformed into different versions of tran-

shumanism, because, as such, they only comprise of the different stances tran-
shumanist can take toward biological and anthropological properties and toward
a philosophical position. Only in a combination of those different attitudes will
it be possible to reconstruct the positions endorsed by transhumanist authors.
Sampling the Cloth

The possible combinations of the attitudes reconstructed above are as indicated
above: 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 2 and 3 or 2 and 4, since the a-versions and the b-versions
of 1 and 2 are interdependent, no additional options emerge. Our matrix returns
to its original two by two form:
Surpassing human Dismissing human

characteristics characteristics
Surpassing Humanism In anthropological goals Different than what nature
better than nature allows produces and surpassing the
and surpassing the ideals of ideals of humanism.
humanism.
Dismissing Humanism In anthropological goals Different than what nature
better than nature allows and produces and dismissing
dismissing humanist sources of humanist sources of morality
morality and schemes of life. and schemes of life.
Trans-human-ism 253
Having fanned out the diverse meanings of transhumanism, we can see that the
concept encompasses positions on a scale from a highly demanding ethical theory
to the fashion statements of small factions. The latter do not even have to endorse
similar versions ‘different from nature’. What the table alone does not show is the
relation that is obtained between the attitude toward humanism and the attitude
toward human properties. This relation can vary from a simple, enumerating
‘and’ to a justifying ‘because’. This difference can be shown with the first and the
last cells as examples.
Probably the most demanding position combines the moral position of sur-
passing humanism and the desire to excel in many or all properties a human
being has or can have. In the radical version, these two demands are intimately
linked: because it is morally superior to excel in the means of personal growth, to
discover additional sources of value and to improve upon human shortcomings in
autonomy and rationality, it is also morally superior to modify the properties of
human beings. A slightly less demanding version dispenses with the justification
between these two components and replaces it with a simple ‘and’. According to
this still demanding position, it is morally superior to surpass the ideals of hu-
manism and it is instrumentally good for an individual’s life to enhance her or
his biological properties.
Not necessarily the least demanding, but surely the least constrictive version
combines both the dismissal of humanism and human properties. One can devise
at least one variant of this position, drawing upon some relation of justification
between its constituents. From accepting that the properties of human biology
can be changed according to a scheme of life, one might infer that the ideals often
constructed on the basis of these properties might lose their value as well. More
plausible though seems to be a variant of this type of transhumanism that does
not insist on a justification between the dismissal of biological properties and the
rejection of humanism. Such a position could simply deny the apparent justifica-
tions of bio-conservative insistence on human nature staying unchanged and opt
out from humanism, replacing its ideals with a different set of ideals.
The two other versions of transhumanism can be reconstructed analogously.
One endorses the technological means of improving typical human properties
but dismisses humanism. It can derive its ideals, moral and other, from any other
source. The other endorses humanism but aims at changing typical human prop-
erties. As discussed, the last stage of some posthuman evolution story might have
this structure.
Conclusion
Now what is the point of distinguishing these versions of transhumanism, which
parts of them belong to a technophile ethos, and what can ethics derive from
transhumanism?
First of all, the distinction between technophile ethos and ethical theory can
restore some credit for transhumanism, which it risks in mixing up universal ethical
and life style recommendations. A position that demands to change human biology
is a tall order. Consider a philosopher demanding that you change your way of life,
you take drugs, and you have surgical operations just because he judges you not to
be competent in areas of expertise which he deems important. You would prob-
ably not be amused. So this had better not - and is probably not - what the ethical
transhumanist claims. The goal of transforming human biology for its own sake
can only be one that is freely endorsed by people enthusiastic about technology.
On the other hand, if it would be correct that a people’s ability to judge ethi-
cal and scientific problems is significantly handicapped and if it would further
be true that our shortcomings cause consequences that ethical theory judges to
be catastrophic, then a demand to improve upon our competencies would be
justified. This claim would not merely apply to a select few technology-addicts.
It would affect at least public decision-making, probably most decisions with
consequences beyond an individual’s life. Maybe it would even be advisable for
personal decisions as well. In an all things considered ethical decision, the latter
would probably not be considered a duty but one might judge it to be at least
supererogatory, maybe recommendable from a consequentialist point of view.
Luckily for us, drugs, as well as surgical operations and genetic manipulations,
are not the only options for improving cognitive capacities. As is sometimes dis-
cussed by trans-humanists – but often goes under in the face of the more spec-
tacular technological fantasies, the first steps toward posthumanism and thereby
for improving cognitive capacities are not internal to the human body, but are
external:
1) Mental techniques to improve our effective intelligence, memory capacity, to
train our creativity, motivation and efficiency.
2) Computer aids for thinking and communication (hypermedia, Internet, mo-
bile and wearable computers).
3) Diet and exercise to improve health and slow ageing.15
15 Cf. Sandberg 2000.

Trans-human-ism 255
Should the ethical part of transhumanism prescribe a memo-technique-course,

nootropics and a smart phone for everyone? That would mean trivializing things.
Rather, it should prescribe the conditions and means of informed ethical thought
and thought on a personal scheme of life. This is not a trivial ethical claim at all.
Rather, it is a consequentialist theory, enriching its axiology by a beautiful tran-
scendental argument. According to this argument, the capacities and abilities that
are a condition for realizing moral value are of moral value themselves.
The structure of this position can be reconstructed thus:
Consequentialism: the moral value of an action or state depends on its non-
moral value.
Hedonistic + rationalistic axiology: non-moral value consists in pleasure and
those capacities that enable beings to decide in a way that furthers pleasure.
Aggregation: As far as I can judge from transhumanist writings, they endorse
an egalitarian aggregation function, caring about the value in each human life
rather than for the value of the sum of human lives.
There is a similarity to current approaches in other fields of ethical theory,
like the capability approach in theories of justice. From this transhumanist claim,
one can without many additional premises proceed to theories of justice (the
premise of declining marginal utility advocates sufficient nourishment for the
radically poor rather than a smart phone for the technology-addict), theories of
education (methods of thought instead of rote learning, especially ethics instead
of moral codes16), theories of political participation (people not taken seriously
by a government tend not to indulge in political thought and participation), etc.
The specific transhumanist streak in this theory lies in axiology: It does not
simply endorse any kind of good life. Rather, it requires a life that is not only
pleasurable but morally good too. A person does not merely need the resources
and conditions to reason about and pursue her or his happiness, she or he also
needs the conditions and capacities which enable her or him to reason about
and take decisions that are compatible with the pursuit of happiness for others.
There might be quite a difference between those two lives and there surely is a
difference between the realizations of those axiologies, if we take into account
that this transhumanism is an ethical theory for a technological age. Given the
background of technological threats, the mere pursuit of one’s own happiness
might just not be enough.
16 A similar position on methods and goals in education can be found in Nussbaum 2005.
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Mirjana Pavlović
Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade
The “Literature of Humanity”: The Case of

Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman1
During the cultural renaissance of the May Fourth movement, which set the
direction for the subsequent development of modern Chinese literature,2 the
well-known Chinese writer and critic Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967) launched and
elaborated his idea of “literature of humanity (ren de wenxue).”3 By the literature
of humanity, Zhou Zuoren meant those literary works that affirm a humane way
of living and reject all those things that “hinder the growth of human nature
and destroy the peace and harmony of mankind”. (Denton 1996, 157)4 The au-
thor believed that man, as an evolved animal and thus not different from other
living beings, is endowed with beautiful and good vital faculties. Therefore, all
unnatural customs and institutions, which are contrary to human nature, should
1 The text was written within the research project 178019 of Ministry for Education,
Science and Technological Development of Serbia.
2 The movement is named after student demonstrations that took place in Beijing on May
4, 1919, as a protest against the Chinese government’s acceptance of humiliating Japanese
demands stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles. The periodization of the movement in
a broader sense, as an anti-traditional intellectual and cultural revolution, to a certain
degree is difficult. It may be said that it started in 1915 with the foundation of the journal
Xin qingnian (New Youth) and ended approximately with the May Thirtieth movement
of 1925, which marked the shift of many intellectuals toward Marxism (Denton 1996,
114). An important aspect of the May Fourth Movement is the birth of modern Chinese
literature written in the vernacular language (baihua), as well as the emergence of a whole
set of new literary experiments modeled on Western literature.
3 Zhou Zuoren’s key essays on this subject are: Ren de wenxue, first published in New
Youth, vol. 5, no. 6 (Dec. 1918), translated into English as Humane Literature by E.
Wolff (collected in Denton 1996, 151–161), and Xin wenxue de yaoqiu, first published
in Chenbaofukan (Morning Post - Supplement), Jan. 8, 1920, translated into English
by K. Denton as Requisites for the New Literature (available on the Internet at: www.
mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/yhou.htm). I accepted Denton’s translation of the term “ren de
wenxue” as “literature of humanity” because the English word “humanity” implies
not only the quality of being humane, but also designates humans in general, which
corresponds better, as we will see, to Zhou’s meaning of the term.
4 Wolff ’s translation here is slightly altered in order to suit the structure of my sentence.
258 Mirjana Pavlović
be condemned and amended. The literature advocated by Zhou Zuoren is thus

a humanist one. On the other hand, the origin of his humanism is an individual
who must be completely liberated and self-realized. In this respect, “literature of
humanity” is the literature of the self-aware individual who is able to recognize
his individuality within a larger context—the whole of mankind, and as such
contributes to the improvement of human life in general.
These elements of humanism and individualism in Zhou’s vision of “literature
of humanity” are strikingly demonstrated in Diary of a Madman written in 1918
by his elder brother Lu Xun (1881–1936), the most significant Chinese writer of
the 20th century. As we will see, the story can be read as a strong critique of the
outdated and inhumane traditional values that devour the individual, as well as
a modernist text of the awakened individual.
Diary of a Madman is considered the first modern Chinese short story. With
the exception of the prologue written in classical Chinese (wenyan) by an implied
writer-narrator who, as a voice of reason, introduces the Madman’s story, the
Madman’s incoherent diary entries without dates are all in the vernacular lan-
guage (baihua). The deployment of both classical and colloquial Chinese serves
here to differentiate the conventional set of cultural values from the new ones,
and to make a distinction between traditional and modern consciousness. At the
same time, by using two linguistic systems, as well as by portraying his hero as a
deranged person, Lu Xun creates a distance between the reader and the diary’s
novel and rather dark content, thus achieving Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt.5
What exactly is so “novel,” while disturbing, that summons the readers’ critical
and objective reflections? Diary of a Madman is a story of a man who suddenly
begins to exhibit a persecution complex, and whose illness, in the course of time,
grows into a suspicion that he is surrounded by cannibals. At the climax of his
paranoia, the main character concludes that he also might be a “man-eater,” as he
lives in the four-thousand-year-old tradition of cannibalism.
The central metaphor of cannibalism in this story is usually interpreted as the
author’s iconoclastic attack on the traditional Confucian morality and a call for
5 See more in Wang 1992, 282–285. As rightfully observed by Tang Xiaobing in his
essay Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” and a Chinese Modernism, these distinctions are
further on strengthened by the deployment of the past tense in the prologue and the
present narrative in the diary (Tang 2000, 69). In the essay Lu Xun and Cannibalism,
Yue Gang also offers an interesting interpretation of the juxtaposition of the prologue
and the diary’s entries in the light of Paul de Man’s notion of “irony of irony” (Yue
1999, 84–90).
The “Literature of Humanity” 259
its reevaluation.6 Nonetheless, Diary of a Madman may be read as a philosophi-

cal discussion on human nature in which Lu Xun accentuates the bestial side of
a man. In this article, through an analysis of the symbolism of cannibalism and
animal images, I will try to demonstrate how the criticism of both evolved cultural
and social values, as well as the dark side of humans are interwoven in Lu Xun’s
story, thus creating a rather complex message concerning the future development
of the mankind.
Let us start from the theme of cannibalism, a symbolically rich metaphor!
Overwhelmed by the terrible feeling of being stalked by the people from his sur-
roundings (even by children) who want to eat him, Lu Xun’s Madman tries to
understand the motives lying behind the people’s practice to eat other men. He
reads books on Chinese history, but all he finds in his research are the words—
virtue and morality. As he continues to read, however, the Madman begins to see
another meaning between the lines, and believes the whole book is filled with the
phrase—“eat people.” The juxtaposition of “virtue and morality” with cannibal-
ism represents Lu Xun’s criticism of the oppressive nature of Confucian morality,
since its rigid structure often creates a hypocritical system of values that “eats” a
man’s mind with passive, alienated, selfish and above all obedient and submissive
personalities.
Viewed in this context, the Madman’s peers represent the majority, who are
either still not aware of the destructive side of Confucian doctrines or who are
too passive and scared to oppose it. The Madman, on the other hand, is a repre-
sentative of the minority—those who are enlightened and those who are willing
to act in order to change the stagnant society. Because he belongs to the minority
that rebels against tradition and advocates new ideas, the author of the Diary is
regarded as a deranged person by conventional society. By swapping the roles of
the sane and the insane, Lu Xun offers a new perspective on the Chinese cultural
heritage. As Leo Ou-fan Lee has already noted, this “kind of purposeful reversal of
values” suggests that “what have been viewed in official history as civilized could,
in fact, be barbaric; and what have been disdained or ignored would prove, on
the contrary, to be of more enduring value” (Lee 1987, 54). Such twists of irony in
Diary of a Madman are illustrative of the anti-traditionalism of the May Fourth
thinkers.
6 In A Close Reading of “Diary of a Madman” Wang Furen insightfully scrutinizes the

similarities in the psychology of the Madman and a rebel against the traditional value
system (Wang 1992, 272–282).
Lu Xun, however, is interested not only in exposing the dominant and repres-
sive value system in Chinese society, but also he tries to penetrate deep into the
core of human nature. By using Darwinian “evolutionary” language, he depicts
two parallel realms of living beings—one of humans, and one of animals. Let us
first examine the animal imagery in Diary of a Madman, and then compare it with
the human characters that appear in the story.
Lu Xun refers to different animal species, such as dogs, wolves, chickens, ducks,
fish, lions, rabbits, foxes, hyenas, reptiles, birds and monkeys.7 In this menagerie,
the strong animals devour the weak ones. It has been so since the earliest era of
the evolution of living beings, which is suggested by the image of fish represent-
ing the idea that life originated in the sea8 and continues through the period of
reptiles up to the emergence of birds, monkeys and finally man. Additionally, by
juxtaposing the hyena’s ugly expression in its eyes with the suspicious look of the
dog, Lu Xun suggests that aggressive behavior, deriving from the survival instinct,
is a constant trait permeating the entire animal world; including both wild and
domesticated animals. That notion is underscored by the Madman’s Darwinian
statement that “hyenas are related to wolves, and wolves belong to the canine spe-
cies (Lu Xun 1978, 13).” In effect, this means that aggressiveness is an inherited
mode of behavior which can be more or less inhibited by domestication.
Along with the diversity of the animal realm, Diary of a Madman portrays
ordinary people of both genders in varied ages and professions. These human
characters possess striking resemblances to different animals. The author charac-
terizes his human characters’ similarities with animal traits in several ways. First,
neighbor Zhao, the woman on the street, children, a young man, tenant and the
old doctor He all share the strange identical look in their eyes of Mr. Zhao’s dog.
The expression in their eyes is both frightened and fierce. Second, the people in
the story often have animalistic, especially the wolf ’s, attributes. They are not only
described as people with long, white, glistening teeth and a murderous gleam in
the eyes, but also the association is even more direct when a woman on the street
says to her child:
“I’d like to bite several mouthfuls out of you (Lu Xun 1978, 9).”
7 The animals are presented here in the order of their appearance in the story.
8 The scene in which the Madman describes the eyes of the fish brought to him for lunch
as white and hard, and its mouth opened “just like those people who want to eat human
beings” (Lu Xun 1978, 10), Yue Gang links to Lu Xun’s recollection of a gruesome story
about pickled fish eyes he heard in his childhood. See Yue 1999, 76–77; Lu Xun, On
Photography (1924) in Denton 1996, 196–198.
The wolf-like bloodthirstiness of a man is further alluded to by the name of a Wolf

Cub village where the villagers, i.e., the sons of the wolf,9 beat to death a local
villain and then eat his heart and liver. Third, not unlike the animal realm, in the
world of man the weak are bullied by the strong. Therefore, when locked up in
his study by his family members, the Madman compares himself to cooped-up
chickens and ducks. He alludes to his own helplessness and weakness when he, as
a rare enlightened individual, finds himself confronted with the stronger majority.
Finally, all of the above-mentioned scattered allusions are conclusively merged
in a concise, rather enigmatic line at the end of the diary’s section six. That section
is written after the Madman has realized that he is the “younger brother of an
eater of human flesh (Lu Xun 1978, 12),” and consists of three sentences divided
into two paragraphs which I will cite here in their entirety:
Pitch dark, I don’t know whether it is day or night. The Zhao family dog has started
barking again.
The fierceness of a lion, the timidity of a rabbit, the craftiness of a fox… (Lu Xun 1978, 13)10
Due to the Madman’s terrifying and disturbing realization of the true, cannibalis-
tic nature of his elder brother, his visual faculties are disabled—he is surrounded
by darkness. At the same time, his incapability to distinguish day from night
suggests his mental bewilderment. The barking of the dog serves as a warning to
the author of the diary that he has to be in a state of constant alert. The first two
sentences represent the sensory (both visual andauditory) aspect of his knowl-
edge, while the third one represents its intellectual manifestation. The Madman’s
understanding of the people around him may be summarized in the following
manner: 1. fierce like lions, people are eager to eat somebody else’s flesh; 2. simul-
taneously, they are scared to be discovered, since they fear the consequences; 3. in
order not to be discovered, but still being able to satisfy their appetites, they unite
and use all possible cunning means to achieve their goal. One of the safest tricks
to do so is to force another person to commit suicide. The hideousness of such
9 It is interesting to note here that the image of a wolf reappears in Lu Xun’s novella The
True Story of Ah Q (1922) more directly when right before his public execution Ah
Q associates “fierce yet cowardly” (Lu Xun 1978, 111) eyes of a starving wolf he once
encountered with the look of the watching crowd.
10 In both Yang’s and Lyell’s English translations after the phrase “pitch dark” (Lu Xun 1978,
13), i.e., “pitch black out” (Lu Xun 1990, 35) stands full stop instead of the original’s
comma. Although I use Yang’s translation, I left the comma after the phrase in order to
make clearer my following interpretation of the whole passage, which is based on the
story’s original in Chinese language. Additionally, I used pinyin transliteration of the
family name “Zhao” instead of Yang’s Wade-Giles transliteration as “Chao”.
an act is illustrated very vividly in the next section of the story by the macabre
image of a hyena which eats corpses.
On the topic of human nature, the interweaving of animal and human images
illustrates the idea of man’s animal origin and latent animal instincts. This notion
echoes an aphorism of Confucian thinker Mencius (ca. 372–289 BC):
“Slight is the difference between man and brutes (Mencius, IVb, 19).”
Nonetheless, the ancient philosopher’s and Lu Xun’s views can be compared only
to a certain degree. Mencius did state that to be a human is to strive to restrain the
animal, instinctual side of the man, but he did not determine it as neither good
nor bad per se. He only asserts that these animal elements in a human being, if
not controlled, may lead to evil (Fung 1948, 86). On the other hand, although
Lu Xun uses images of a wolf, hyena and dog as the symbols of aggressive and
violent behavior, it seems that he believed that men are even more fierce than
most of the animals, as they eat their own species. In Diary of a Madman, this is
underlined by the descriptions of the actual cases of man’s cannibalism both in
ancient and in Lu Xun’s own time, as well as by the Madman’s statement that those
who eat humans are probably much more ashamed than those who do not, than
the reptiles who are ashamed before monkeys. In this respect, Lu Xun sounds
more like Xunzi (312–230 BC), another Confucian philosopher who holds that
man is naturally inclined toward selfishness and greediness, and that all people
are innately bad whereas “any good in humans is acquired by conscious exertions
(Xunzi, 23, 1a).” Although it is obvious that aggressive behavior may have been an
unavoidable aspect of human life in primitive conditions, it is highly intolerable
in advanced societies. In fact, since men are bound to live in some sort of social
organization, they are in need of cooperation and mutual support. Therefore, in
order to regulate and harmonize conduct within society, they consciously invented
rules of behavior and morality which help inhibit primal instincts, resulting in
the fact that, to borrow the Madman’s words, some of them stopped eating other
people (Lu Xun 1978, 15).
Lu Xun utilizes Mencian language on another level when describing those who
eat flesh but suffer guilt. The ancient philosopher asserted that man, whose nature
is originally good, differed from animals because they possessed four beginnings
(si duan), such as the feeling of commiseration (ceyin zhi xin), the feeling of shame
and dislike (xiu e zhi xin), the feeling of deference and compliance (ci rang zhi
xin), and the feeling of right and wrong (shi fei zhi xin). These sprouts are inher-
ent in man’s nature and, when cultivated, result in the virtues of humanity (ren),
righteousness (yi), propriety (li) and wisdom (zhi), respectively (Mencius, IIa, 6).
As we can see, the feeling of shame represents the man’s predisposition to develop
into a person who acts in a morally right way. Thus, when the Madman says
that those who eat men feel ashamed before those who do not eat them, Lu Xun
suggests that the man-eaters innately possess the ability to distinguish right and
wrong. If they nurture this ability, they would eventually be capable to “unlearn
the unnatural bad habit of eating people (Pusey 1998, 92).”
Although there are people who restrain their aggressiveness only because they
fear the consequences proscribed by the law (i.e, the rules of good morality for bad
and violent behavior), there are people who have, by their own free will, decided
to be good, who have genuinely tried to be good and as a result evolved into “real
men”. It is in these enlightened individuals, who are capable of good and who are
not afraid to look deep into their souls that Lu Xun’s hope lies.
In terms of the author’s criticism of traditional Chinese values and beliefs, the
“real men” should be able to redefine the old moral ideals and thereby contribute
to the awakening of common people. Lu Xun suggests that the reevaluation of the
old morality should begin from filial piety (xiao) — the very “root of all virtues,
and from which all teaching grows (Xiao jing, I, 3).” As the virtue designating
the love and respect that a child should show to his father and mother, xiao is
considered a necessary condition for ren — love or humanity (Analects, I, 2). This
idea implies a notion that a person who loves and respects one’s parents can be
expected to love and respect other people, as well as behave correctly in society.
In the Analects, although xiao assumes the sense of a moral duty to serve one’s
parents by obeying them, Confucius does not think that this kind of obedience
should be unquestionable and unconditional. The parents should be obeyed if the
action involved is right, and they should not be obeyed if it is not right. In other
words, to obey does not mean to act contrary to reason.11 Xiao, in fact, requires a
strong personality in the process of self-improvement and self-cultivation capable
of maintaining self-respect and dignity through relations with others. Neverthe-
less, since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.), xiao as seen by Confucius has
been distorted, taking on a rather rigid, or even extreme form. Consequently,
there are traditional stories in China such as the one of Guo Ju, who during the
big famine killed his son in order to feed his mother. Another story exists of a
boy, who in winter weather goes to the frozen river to fish for the parents who are
fond of fresh fish. Such extreme understandings of the notion of filial piety were
severely criticized by the May Fourth Movement’s thinkers, including Lu Xun.12
11 See especially Analects, II, 5; IV, 18.

12 Both tales are taken from the Twenty four Filial Exemplars, compiled by Guo Jujing
during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). In fact, editions of “biographies of the filial sons”
were compiled time and time again already since the Later Han dynasty (25–220).
Lu Xun’s Madman refers to and ponders over an atrocious incident recorded in

Commentaryof Zuo (Zuo zhuan)13, where the inhabitants of the besieged capital
of Song decide not to humiliate themselves by surrendering to the enemy and, in
order to survive, exchange their own children and eat them (Lu Xun 1978, 12). The
paradox of justifying such an act, in which a parent, contrary to his or her natural
instincts to protect his or her own child, sacrifices it in the name of a higher cause,
is strengthened by the Madman’s reflections of his own mother. His mother did
not contradict her elder son when, on one occasion, he was teaching his younger
brother, the Madman, that to be a “good son” meant to cut off a peace of one’s flesh
and boil it for parents to eat if they were ill (Lu Xun 1978, 18). Nor did the mother,
although devastated by the death of her young daughter, say anything outright
to the elder son who probably should have been blamed for his sister’s death. In
the Madman’s eyes, the only possible explanation of his mother’s silence is her
belief that whatever her elder son did must be a proper thing to do. It might be
argued that in this case we also witness the mother’s powerlessness to rebel against
another Confucian moral imperative imposed exclusively on women—san cong,
or the three obediences,14 which obliges her to succumb to the will of her son.
Nevertheless, the motives behind the mother’s behavior, whether derived from her
own outdated convictions followed through to an absurd extreme or from fear, her
failure to act serves as a trigger for the Madman to recover from his “illness.” “I
can’t bear to think of it”, he says after the gruesome revelation (Lu Xun 1978: 18).
The Madman is actually incapable of dealing neither with his mother’s behavior,
which is contradictory to her maternal instincts, nor with her lack of strength to
act—as she should be the first person to protect him.
At this juncture, we face the following question: Is the Madman a “real man?”
The ending of Lu Xun’s story is, in fact, rather pessimistic considering the fact
that the author of the diary is “cured” of his madness and now awaits an official
For excellent studies of xiao in the English language see: Chan, A. K. L./Tan, S. (eds.)
(2004): Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History. Routledge Curzon, London.
13 Commentary of Zuo is the earliest Chinese work of narrative history dating from the
third century BC It covers the period from 722 to 468 BC and represents one of the
most important sources for understanding the history during the Spring and Autumn
period.
14 The three obediences meant that before marriage, the woman was to obey her father;
after marriage, the woman was to obey her husband; and lastly, after the death of her
husband, the woman was to obey her son.
appointment. Although he understood the true character of humans, as well as

the inhumane nature of the old morality, he does not possess enough strength to
bear the burden of the difficult task of an educator. Therefore, the Madman is not
a “real man;” rather, he is a prophet who announces his arrival. In this respect,
Lu Xun’s hero is often compared with Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Both characters, as
isolated and marginalized individuals in their societies, propagate a sort of utopia
by calling for the “overman”, that is “real man”.15 Yet, it seems that Lu Xun is more
optimistic than the German philosopher, as Nietzsche’s “overman” is a goal which
humanity is yet to achieve. The Madman, as Leo Ou-fan Lee notes, “believes that
human beings here and now can become ‘real man’ through evolution by virtue
of their acquiring the power to think and to be good” (Lee 1987, 56; emphasis by
the author of the text).
The final entry in the Diary features an enigmatic and ambiguous line: “Save the
children…”(Lu Xun 1978, 18). This desperate plea of the Madman certainly serves
both as a warning to his contemporaries and as an announcement of a brighter
future. The children must be taught not to become man-eaters so that they can
surpass past generations and create a better society. Yet, viewed in the context of
the Madman’s “recovery”, by which everything that has been stated in the diary
is brought into question, Lu Xun shows pessimism even in regard to the validity
of the meaning of the last sentence.
It is obvious that while writing this grotesque allegory, Lu Xun vacillated be-
tween optimistic and pessimistic views on both human nature and the develop-
ment of human society. On one side, he believed in the ability of human beings for
individual and, consequently, overall social change. On the other side, he was fully
aware of the fact that the path of man’s self-improvement is paved with thorns. Man
can be changed only through educational and cultural progress, but the process
of self-cultivation requires man to reevaluate and then redefine moral and ethical
norms, which determine his relations to other people. Although Lu Xun’s primary
concern was Chinese tradition and national character, Diary of a Madman’s sig-
nificance transcends borders and carries a universal and undying message. As an
example of the “literature of humanity”, it is not only a story about man, but also
for man.
15 For the comparison of Lu Xun’s and Nietzsche’s thought, see: Cheung, Ch. (2001): Lu
Xun – the Chinese “Gentle” Nietzsche. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt.
Glossary:
baihua 白话
ceyin zhi xin 恻隐之心
ci rang zhi xin 辞让之心
Classic of Filial Piety, The 孝经
four beginnings 四端
Guo Ju 郭巨
Han dynasty 汉朝
He 何
li 礼
Literature of humanity 人的文学
Lu Xun 鲁迅
May Fourth Movement 五四运动
May Thirtieth Movement 五卅运动
Mencius 孟子
Morning Post– Supplement 晨报副刊
New Youth 新青年
On Photography 论照相之类
pinyin 拼音
real men 真的人
ren 仁
Requisites for the New Literature 新文学的要求
san cong 三从
shi fei zhi xin 是非之心
Spring and Autumn period 春秋
Analects 论语
The True Story of Ah Q 阿Q正传
Twenty-four -Filial Exemplars 二十四孝
wenyan 文言
Xiao jing 孝经
xiao 孝
xiu e zhi xin 羞恶之心
Xunzi 荀子
yi 义
Yuan dynasty 元朝
Zhao 赵
zhi 智
Zhou Zuoren 周作人
Zuo zhuan 左传
References:
Analects 论语 (1989): In: Baihua si shu 白话四书 (The Four Books in Vernacular
Language), trans. by Yang Bojun 杨伯峻. Yuelu shushe 岳麓书社, Changsha
长沙.
Denton, K. A. (ed.) (1996): Modern Chinese Literary Thought – Writings on
Literature 1893–1945. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Fung, Y. (1948): A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. Macmillan, New York.
Lau, D. C. (2000): Theories of Human Nature in Mencius and Xunzi. In: Kline,
T.C. and
Lee, L. O. (1987): Voices from the Iron House – A Study of Lu Xun. Indiana Uni-
versity Press, Bloomington.
Lu Xun (1978): Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, trans. by H. Yang and G. Yang. For-
eign Languages Press, Peking. [Also available at Internet site: www.ibiblio.org/
eldritch/hsun/hsun.htm]
Lu Xun (1990): Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, trans. by W. A. Lyell. Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.
Mencius (2003): trans. by D. C. Lau. Chinese University Press, Hong Kong.
Pusey, J. R. (1998): Lu Xun and Evolution. SUNY Press, Albany.
Tang, X. (2000): Chinese Modern – The Heroic and the Quotidian. Duke Uni-
versity Press, Durham.
Wang, D. 王得后 (1996): Lu Xun xinjie 鲁迅心解 (An Insight Into Lu Xun).
Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe 浙江文艺出版社.
Wang, F. 王富仁 (1992): “Kuangren riji” xidu “狂人日记”细读(A Close Reading
of Diary of a Madman). In: Lu Xun yanjiu niankan 1991–92 鲁迅研究年刊 (Lu
Xun Studies Annual), Zhongguo heping chubanshe 中国和平出版社, 265–285.
Xiao jing 孝经 (The Classic of Filial Piety). Available at Internet site: www.guoxue.
com/jinbu/13jing/xiaojing/xiaojing001.htm.
Xunzi/ Knoblock J. (1994): Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete
Works. StanfordUniversityPres, California.
Yue, G. (1999): The Mouth That Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of
Eating in Modern China. Duke University Press, Durham.
Zhou Zuoren: Requisites for the New Literature, trans. by K. Denton. Available
on the Internet at: www.mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/yhou.htm.
Biljana Dojčinović
Modernist Narrative Techniques and

Challenges of Humanity: John Updike in
European Perspective1
John Updike once said that he considered himself an English writer manqué
and confessed that he had not read Hawthorne before the age of 30.2 For a writer
who, whenever writing a book of his own, had another book in mind, the issue of
influences, if not intertextuality, is of the outmost importance. It is essential for a
better understanding of not only the content of his works, but also the narrative
techniques he used. The Serbian translator of many novels by Updike, the late
Aleksandar Petrović, described Updike’s way of writing as that of an illegitimate
child of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.3 This situated Updike as a successor of
modernists, and the range of his writing methods clearly confirms his awareness
of both modernist as well as postmodernist strategies. The term ‘illegitimate child’
was meant, most probably, to point to the playfulness and freedom in Updike’s
artistic treatment of everyday life, which was also the topic of both his ‘parents’.
Rather than naming him a disciple of Woolf and Joyce, his Serbian translator
designated him as their child of love, thus emphasising the emotional relationship
and the lived experience, not a learned emulation.
The influence of James Joyce on Updike had been a long time ago recognised
in the early stories “You’ll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You” and “Wife
Wooing”. The first one is comparable to Joyce’s “Arabia” in many aspects, as a
story of a boy going to the bazaar, that is, carnival, and reaching there an unex-
pected epiphanic experience, actually disappointment, about his own place in the
world. The second story dwells on an intertextual play with the musical chapter
1 The text was written within the research project 178029 of Ministry for Education,
Science and Technological Development of Serbia.
2 “I have almost always begun a book with another book in mind. The Poorhouse Fair –
inspired by Henry Green’s Concluding. The first ‘Rabbit’ book, Rabbit, Run, by a novel
from Joyce Cary. “For the Centaur, I had Ulysses in my head at all times. And Pinget
gave me the courage to write Witches of Eastwick.“ (Salgas 1994, 179).
3 Petrović, Aleksandar, blurb on the jacket of the Serbian translation of The Witches of
Eastwick.
270 Biljana Dojčinović
“Sirens” of Ulysses. Another major example of intertextuality with Joyce’s work is

The Centaur, Updike’s autobiographical novel about three days which a son and
father spend together in the city, away from their home on a farm. The motif of
a son-father quest as well as transposition of characters in the mythical matrix
leave no doubt about the early Updike’s interest in modernist hallmarks4. With
Virginia Woolf, Updike shared playful yet elegant sentences, and the interest in
the lives of ordinary people. As we will see, there are also other major similarities
between the work of Woolf and Updike.
Like both of these authors, Updike used the transparent mind techniques,
as Doritt Cohn named various ways of presenting the inner lives of characters,
and has made his own contribution. Updike perfected modernist strategies in
representing the state of his characters’ mind in the moments of tension, crisis,
masterfully depicting enormous excitements. Already in The Centaur, Updike’s
interest in the heightened excitement and critical states of mind was obvious: in
the hallucinatory scene in the classroom, at the beginning of the novel, the ele-
ments of reality are transfigured into a nightmarish row of events comparable to
the ”Nighttown” chapter of Ulysses. Such intensive scenes of minds in critical mo-
ments also appear in Rabbit, Run, The Coup and The Witches of Eastwick. All these
border states of mind are doubly charged in Updike’s prose. First, they represented
his deviation from the relatively ‘normal’ context he had devoted his writings to –
middle class, marriage, divorce – a perfect WASP scenery of the second half of
the 20th century in the USA. As a swerve, these scenes both highlight as well as
subvert his image of a writer devoted to the depiction of normality and norma-
tivity. Another important aspect is that in some of his works Updike combined a
typically American genre of romance with modernist techniques, rewriting both
the American as well as the European tradition, and this is the meeting point of
Hawthorne and modernist writers of the mid-19th century and the beginning of
the 20th century, as well as of America and Europe.
However, in order to understand Updike’s modernist contribution, especially
in view of these psychologically-tense enterprises, we should pay attention to the
possible influence of another European writer, although of a German, not of an
English, cultural heritage. It is Rainer Maria Rilke, whose novel The Notebooks of
Malte Laurids Brigge, begun in 1904 and published in 1910, represented the first
fully modernist novel: subjective, autobiographical, fragmentary, almost plotless.
The importance of Rilke’s novel has been too often limited by the label of «an
expressionist» work, while it really employs all the decisive traits of modernist
4 See Meletinski 1980.

Modernist Narrative Techniques and Challenges of Humanity 271
anti-narration. The link of this novel with Updike’s fiction lies in at least two im-
portant elements. The first one is the search for some deeper inner sense which is
in the Notebooks described as a sudden revelation of God’s existence. The second
link is about the very narrative techniques employed by both Rilke and Updike. In
both cases, the focus will be on intertextual relations, not on a documentary proof
that Updike has read Rilke, or explicitly pointing to the Notebooks as his source.5
In a telling scene from Rilke’s novel, Malte Laurids Brigge, the hero, encounters
at the end of winter a strange man. Actually, he had noticed that man some time
before, and now his hat catches Malte’s attention:
“I had stopped and all the while I was watching everything almost simultaneously,
I sensed that he was wearing a different hat and a necktie that doubtless was kept for
Sundays; it had a diagonal pattern of yellow and violet checks, and as for the hat, it was a
cheap new straw hat with a green band. The colors, of course, are of no account and it’s
small-minded of me to have remembered them. I just want to say that on him they were
like the softest down on a bird’s front. He himself got no pleasure from the colors, and
whoever among all the people there (I looked around me) could have thought that this
finery was for their sake?”6 (Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge)
Malte makes an effort to see many things at the same time – “I was watching
everything almost simultaneously”, while the thoughts which are not articulated
remain at the level of sense impression – “I sensed that …” The most important
moment goes almost unnoticed, as he himself is trying to lessen the meaning of
colors “it’s small-minded of me to have remembered them.” He even empathises
with man’s feeling about colors, but then, the rhetorical question he poses about
the beauty present in colors is the moment when the message becomes clear. Malte
realises the deeper meaning of the scene, the message which was conveyed to him
by the means of a slight distortion from the usual appearance of the man. It is the
message of all the messages, as it speaks of God’s existence:
“My God, I thought impetuously, so you exist, then. There are proofs of your existence. I
have forgotten them all and have never even wanted them, for what a dreadful obligation
would lie in your own certainty. And yet that’s what’s being indicated to me now. This is
what you relish, what you take pleasure in. That we learn to endure everything and not to
judge. What are the difficult things? What are the gracious things? Only you know that.”
(Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge)
5 There is, for instance, an explicit reference to Rilke in the story “The Bulgarian Poetess”.
See, Updike 1991, 221.
6 Italics mine.
This sense of a closeness to the supreme being is not characteristic of modernist

writers - there may be a longing for it in a waste land of modern times, or an effort
to replace it with aestheticism which comprises the highest ethical demands. Or,
there may be moments of being, epiphanies and remembrances of things past, but
there is no coming close to the feeling of anything that is beyond the mundane
and explicitly naming it as God. Rilke’s novel thus makes all this permeating Up-
dike’s search a legal, or should we say – legitimate – element of his modernism.
In Updike’s story “Pigeon Feathers” the main character, David Kern, discovers
God through his marvelous work – the beauty of the feathers of the birds he
had just shot. The similarity of the scene from Rilke’s novel is striking – it lies in
the details described and the whole atmosphere of the divinity of creation dis-
covered in something quite of this world, in the moment when death, guilt and
duty intertwine. In Rilke’s novel, the colors are the message, but these colors are
of a special kind – they remind Malte of the “softest down on a bird’s front”. In
Updike’s story, it is the down itself and its beauty that gives David Kern the sense
of a reassurance in God and by God:
“He had never seen a bird this close before. … He lost himself in the geometrical tides as
the feathers now broadened and stiffened to make an edge for flight, now softened and
constricted to cup warmth around the mute flesh. And across the surface of the infinitely
adjusted yet somehow effortless mechanics of the feathers played idle designs of color, no
two alike, designs executed, it seemed, in a controlled rapture, with a joy that hung level
in the air above and behind him. …. As he fitted the last two, still pliant, on the top, and
stood up, crusty coverings were lifted from him, and with a feminine, slipping sensation
along his nerves that seemed to give the air hands, he was robed in this certainty: that
the God who had lavished such craft upon these worthless birds would not destroy His
whole Creation by refusing to let David live forever.” (Updike 2003, 32–3)
The reassurance in both cases comes from the recognition of beauty. However, the
moment of serenity in the Notebooks was actually a juxtaposition to the frequent
highly excited state of mind of the character. The quoted passage begins with the
excitement in which character wants to see “everything simultaneously”, but fo-
cuses on the hat and the tie. This aspect of the narrative technique in Rilke’s novel
is of the outmost importance for Updike’s way of describing critical moments for
his heroes. Andreas Huyssen notes that in this novel by Rilke there are scenes in
which the young character sees the people around himself in fragments, which
suggests strong excitement:
“Malte does not see holistically. Rather he perceives fragments, and this bodily frag-
mentation causes his anxieties… these are not primarily anxieties of loss in the sense of
a Freudian account of castration anxiety; they are rather anxieties of excess, of flowing
over, of unstable bodily boundaries.” (Huyssen 1995, 109)
The childhood trauma and the shocking experience of metropolis meet in this
“modernist narrative with its tortured subjectivity” (Huyssen 1995, 123) repre-
sented in a fragmentary, non-holistic vision. Young Malte sees fragments of other
people’s bodies, as well as fragments of his own memories, the home, at the first
place. Nothing is whole, and being detailed and torn, it produces additional anxi-
ety, deepens the sense of alienation from others, which is primarily self-alienation:
“There’s still time for me to write all that down and talk about it. But there will come a
time when my hand will be far from me and when I then tell it to write, it will write words
that are not mine.” (Rilke, The Notebooks…)
Fragmentary vision is also the basis of Updike’s technique for representing a crisis
in his characters’ minds. When excited, the characters tend to see parts, not to
comprehend the wholeness of a person or situation. In narration, this is a kind
of synecdoche turn, in which a part stands for the whole. We can see it clearly in
the early story, published in 1960, “You’ll Never Know My Dear…” on several oc-
casions, when Ben notices a tattooed arm instead of the whole man by the wheel:
“The thick tattooed arm below the rolled-up shirt-sleeve carefully sweeps their
nickel from a long board divided and numbered as if for hopscotch.” (Updike
2003, 4).
The actions of the arm suggest the position of the man, the actual movement
in the scene, as well as Ben’s concentration on details, the inability to comprehend
the whole:
“When the tattooed arm – a blue fish, an anchor, the queer word PEACE – comes to
sweep in his nickels…” (Updike 2003, 5)
In Ben’s case, it is possible to argue that fragmentary vision is a product of the

fact that he is a child, unable to see the whole picture of grown men. However,
we see this method employed as late as in the story “The Accelerating Expansion
of the Universe” (published in 2004), where the close encounter is thematised by
the character’s longing for human contact:
“In the midst of his plunge he saw, inches from his eyes, the porous new-shaven cheek of
a dark-haired young man; the man was grimacing with some terrible effort, with some
ordeal that he, too, was undergoing.” (Updike 2009, 140)
The character in this story, written almost half a century after the previous one,
is an adult person who had experienced in his life almost complete, yet silent
alienation. The encounter with the foreign man, who was actually a robber, gave
him back the lost sense of tactile experience, of human interaction. That it turns
out to be a contact that is false in the emotional sense, actually, an act of violence,
is a part of Updike’s irony. The intensity of feeling, however, is depicted through
the concentration on the physical details of the robber, his freshly shaven cheek
and the grimace which is at the moment unvoiced.
These two examples also point out how long this method of fragmentation
stretches within Updike’s writing – for half a century. Together with a number of
other techniques, it is the basis of Updike’s representation of the urgent states of
mind. Other methods include the combination of transparent minds techniques7
and ‘camera’ for representing inner and outer perspectives (subjective and ‘objec-
tive’ world), as well as shifts between third person and first person narration. After
presenting dramatic moments from subjective perspective(s), Updike would often
employ the method Franz Stanzel named ‘brief reports’. For instance, in Rabbit,
Run (1960) the chapter after scenes of abandoned Janice struggling with her own
pain, Nelson and the baby, which end in tragedy, begins with Eccles’ telephone
report to his wife: “Janice Angstrom has accidentally drowned her baby.” (Updike
1982, 241).
This method is more obvious in The Centaur (1963), where, after the hallucina-
tory scene in the classroom, we read the report by the school principal in which
the whole previous scene is retold from an “objective”, “realistic” perspective.
In this way, Updike ensured the understanding of the reader herself/himself.
This is the need Henry James pointed to clearly when he said, in the preface to
The Ambassadors, that Maria Gostrey was the friend of Lambert Strether, but,
more than that, the friend of a reader – who otherwise might have felt lost in the
subjective perspective of the hero.
Another one of Updike’s predecessors in the sense of combining perspec-
tives was Faulkner, who gave himself the hard task to transcribe unarticulated
consciousness, the one of an idiot. In The Sound and the Fury (1929), Faulkner
was actually combining a number of subjective perspectives, including his own
editorial commentaries. On the other hand, he was also Updike’s predecessor in
combining American topics with modernist techniques, as well as, according
to Samuel Chase Coale, being one of those writers writing in the Hawthorne’s
shadow that is, continuing the tradition of Hawthornian romance.
Although Hawthorne may not have had an early impact on Updike’s work,
it was nevertheless strong. The influence of the great master of romance can be
found, in addition to the Scarlet Letter trilogy, in novels such as Couples and The
7 Doritt Cohn describes three basic methods in presenting the inner life of fictional
characters: psycho–narration, a retelling of the feelings of a character, direct (quoted)
inner monologue and narrated monologue, which is actually an indirect speech. There
is also a subspecies of direct inner monologue named autonomous monologue, whose
best representative is the chapter “Penelope” from Ulyssis.
Witches of Eastwick. This makes the issue of an European and American impact
on Updike intriguing, especially in view of statements like this one:
»I love Melville and like James, but I tend to learn more from Europeans because I think
they have strengths that reach back past Puritanism, that don’t equate truth with intui-
tion« (Samuels 1994, 32).
According to Hawthorne, romance happens in an isolated place where the im-

aginary and real may meet. These secluded places range from communities in
Blithedale and the ship in Moby Dick, all the way to the fictional county of Yokna-
patawpha, New England in Updike’s works, Couples and The Witches of Eastwick.
One of the definitions of romance, by Richard Chase, points to the absence of
psychological depth in the characters in this genre.
“The novel renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Character is more im-
portant than action and plot, and probably the tragic or comic actions of the narrative
will have the primary purpose of enhancing our knowledge and feeling for an important
character, a group of characters, or a way of life.” (Chase 1957, 12)
The Witches of Eastwick (1984) plays, therefore, a very risky parodic game with
these generic traits. Situated in New England, the Hawthornian territory, in an
isolated little town, it does fullfil the basic precondition of a romance. However,
when it comes to the Manichean struggle between good and evil, the parody
strikes by the impossibility to make a stable difference between them. It moves
us away from any kind of allegory, so often connected to romance. On the second
level, the parody disrupts the very heart of romance, the secluded place, which is
in this case – home. The tools of the disruption are the emotions, the psychologi-
cal depth which seemingly does not belong to the genre of romance. The Witches
of Eastwick represents a combination of Hawthornian romance and modernist
techniques, and it is best seen in the scene of Clyde’s murder of Felicia and his
subsequent suicide. That scene is, as pointed out earlier, the peak of Updike’s
special interest in emotional affects.
When Felicia, fanatical in her idea of being a proper citizen, starts one of her
tirades, her drunk husband Clyde is thinking “Language, (…) perhaps is the curse,
that took us out of Eden.” (Updike 1984, 146).
During Felicia’s verbal performance, Clyde loses the sense of time. The focus
of his perception becomes narrow, aimed at vicious details:
“In its chemical indignation her face had gone white as a skull; her eyes burned like the tiny
flames of votive candles deep in the waxy pockets they have hollowed. Her hair seemed
to be standing up in a ragged, skimpy halo. Most horribly, things kept coming out of her
mouth – parrot feathers, dead wasps, bits of eggshell all mixed in an unstoppable thin gruel
she kept wiping from her chin in a rhythmic gesture like cocking a gun.” (Updike 1984, 148)
Emotions are depicted as if they were hallucinations, objects, and chemical reac-
tions. The magic and art represent in this romance ways of making everything
possible; words are not only words, “they make things happen!” (Updike 1984,
160) as one of the witches says – in this scene words become the very things. That
is, metaphors are taken literally, and this is a deadly shift. Felicia herself becomes
a ‘chemical reaction’. “The chemical and mechanical action that had replaced
her soul surged on; in her trance of indignation she had ceased to see and hear.”
(Updike 1984, 148). Rhetoric of the scene connects evil and chemistry, in the spirit
of the male character Darryl Van Horne. Seen from Clyde’s perspective, this con-
nection is only suggested. It is clear, however, that the evil thing is human, “a heart
of darkness” of the gothic scene which happens in a suburban marriage:
“Her voice was growing louder, fed inexhaustibly from within. His drink was in his left
hand; he lifted the poker in his right and slashed it down across her head, just to inter-
rupt the flow of energy for a moment, to plug the hole through which too much was
pouring. … He had plugged this hole in cosmic peace forever.”(Updike 1984, 148–9).
The murder of Felicia is presented as a self-defense from an entropy of the words

materialised. The voice of the narrator and the perspective of the character are
merged in a narrated monologue. This method gives us the feeling of control over
the emotional intensity, because it is mediated by the narrator. James called the
first person “a romantic privilege” as well as “the darkest abyss of romance” which
loosens narration in the long run8. Here, in this short and intensive run, there
must not be any risk of looseness, and the first person narration would have taken
us too close to the murderer. Another modernist twist in this romance-like-novel
is that the narrator, although not a person, is a figure which plays the role of a
witness. Like a ‘third person’ Janice senses in the famous baby drowning scene,
or like the famous question “Who is the third who walks always beside you?”
from the Waste Land9, it adds to the feeling of the uncanny. Eventually, the third,
mysterious, uncanny person is us.
In two basic moments of the scene Clyde focuses on Felicia’s mouth, which he
sees as a cosmic hole. It is, just like words as objects, also a ‘realised metaphor’. It
8 “The romantic privilege of the “first person” - the darkest abyss of romance this, invet-
erately, when enjoyed on the grand scale - variety, and many other queer matters as
well, might have been smuggled in by a back door. Suffice it, to be brief, that the first
person, in the long piece, is a form foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never
much my affair, had never been so little so as on this particular occasion.” Henry James,
Preface to The Ambassadors.
9 T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1321/1321-h/1321-h.htm
July 11, 2013.
clearly shows that the character’s state of mind is out of control – a detail is en-
larged and covers everything else. In the whole scene, the focus is shifting from
mouth to skull and then to eyes, finally coming back to the source of irritation –
the cosmic hole, ‘forever plugged’. The scene is narrated as a recording of facts, or
as a description of mechanical movements aimed at objects, not as a human clash:
“[…]he lifted the poker in his right and slashed it down across her head, just to interrupt
the flow of energy for a moment, to plug the hole through which too much was pouring.
The bone of her skull gave off a surprising high-pitched noise, as if two blocks of wood
had been playfully knocked together.”10 (Updike 1984, 148–9)
After Felicia is dead, the narration turns to Clyde who is now “a dead man walk-
ing”. David Lodge writes, in The Modes of Modern Writing, the topic of a man
sentenced to death is a particular obsession of the modern imagination. Clyde
has “the sensation of there being several of him…” (Updike 1984, 154). Actually,
in the suicide planned, he is both the victim and the executor, the one who has to
find the safest way of dying. So fear and lucid thinking are merged. In his narrated
monologue, there is a brief breakthrough to the first person:
“Lord give me strength.” (Updike 1984, 154).
Then the voice of the narrator takes over in a narrated monologue and psycho
narration, leading us almost to the vision of an afterlife:
“The last thing he would see, he estimated, would be the front doorway and the leaded
fanlight of stained glass […] Everything was touched with transparency; […] it came to
Clyde Gabriel, rapturously, that there was nothing to fear […] of course there would be an
afterlife of infinite opportunities […] A lifelong fog was lifting […]” (Updike 1984, 155–6).
The description of the very act of suicide is done from the third person narrator
whose voice is cold and distanced.11 In his last moment, Clyde has a number of
10 The scene of murder is partially comparable to the scene of the king being beheaded in
The Coup. Especially the lines: “he hit her head with the poker again and again, pursu-
ing it in its slow fall to the floor, until the sound the blows made was more liquid than
that of wood knocking wood.” (Updike 1984, 149), to the lines in The Coup:
“…I saw that the moment I wanted with all my being behind me was still a fraction of
a second ahead. The divine breath grunted into my chest and the scimitar descended.
Though the blade struck through to the wood, the noise was clumsier, more multiple,
than I expected.” (Updike 1992, 86).
11 “The aluminium ladder shivered slightly, like a highstrung youthful steed, as he trusted
his weight to it. One step, two, then the third. The rope nested dryly around his neck;
the ladder trembled as he reached up and behind to slip the kontthighter, snug against
what seemed the correct spot. Now the ladder was swinging vilently from side to side;
strong sensations recorded by the narrator, and this focus shift is marked by the
sound of the ladder falling, as well as by an unexpected feeling:
“Clyde heard the clatter and thump. What he had not expected was the burning, as
though a hot rasp were being pulled up through his esophagus, and the wry the angles
of wood and carpet and wallpaper whirled, whirled so widely it seemed for a second
he had sprouted eyes in the back of his head. Then a redness in his overstuffed skull
was followed by blackness, giving way, with the change of a single letter, to blankness.”
(Updike 1984, 156)
The suicide passage has been rightfully praised,12 as it is especially challenging for
description. It comprises an intention born, accepted and realised, and this inten-
tion is ambivalent by its very nature. At the end, the moment of death is described
from the perspective of Clyde, who is both executor and the victim, by the voice
of a narrator so cool that he can have even a meta discourse on the description of
the passage – the blackness with a change of one letter.
Nowhere else has the synecdoche vision technique by Updike to deal with such
an ambivalence as in this scene. Technically, for the writer so much in love with
observing and describing details, such as Updike, this was like a natural extension
of ‘writing in detail’. It may also have been the love for this technique that brought
him to deal with such unpleasant scenes. Whatever the case, the difference to
detailed description is that, in excitement, there is no elegant sliding from one or
a number of small parts to the larger picture. Rather, a detail stands for the whole
and the mind of the observer is focused on it. A larger picture would give a more
objective view, and in the excited states of mind there is no objectivity. The mind
narrows while the detail grows to become eventually a cosmic hole.
If we compare this scene to the suicide scene of Septimus Warren Smith in
Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway, then we can see that she depicted her character’s mind in
the moment of making and taking the final decision as tense and focused also on
the ‘safest escape’13, but it was only through Clarissa, who later in the book reruns
the agitated blood of its jockey was flailing it toward the hurdle, where it lifted, as he
had foreseen, at the most delicate urging, and fell away.” (Updike 1984, 156).
12 “…flawless, detailed, unflinching and horribly pessimistic.” (Raine 1984).
13 “Holmes was coming upstairs. Holmes would burst open the door. Holmes would say
“In a funk, eh?” Holmes would get him. But no; not Holmes; not Bradshaw. …. The
gas fire? But it was too late now. Holmes was coming. Razors he might have got, but
Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them. There remained only the
window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome,
and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out.
I…. He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun hot. Only human beings — what
the moment, that we are given the supposed details of the very moment of his
death, and a very similar one to the moment of death of Clyde Gabriel.
“He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blun-
dering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain,
and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it.” (Woolf 1996, 202)
Thus, Updike’s main intervention in the genre of romance was in his applying
the modernist techniques. Couples, another romance, according to Coale, never
reaches the deep darkness of Witches. In both novels, marriage is vivisected; but
in the latter one, the story of a suburban marriage becomes gothically dreadful.
Also, both novels have game-masters with indicative names – Freddy Thorne and
Darryl Van Horne, which may playfully bring us to Thorn – (T)horn – ho(rn)-
thorn–that sounds so close to Hawthorne, the real master of (narrative) plot-
ting. He hovers above both novels as they are a retelling of the old Manichean
ambivalence.
Romance and modernism, modernism and realism, psychological reason and
the outer world, subjective and objective, as well as realism and modernism, would
be the issues that are joined in The Witches of Eastwick, as well as in many other
Updike novels. Does that remind us of Updike only? Although Updike put Henry
James together with Melville among the American, not English, authors, James
himself made no difference between these categories of “writing in English”14. In
discussing the issues of romance, let us remember that James had realised, while
writing the Preface to The American, that his novel actually was an arch-romance.
He made the difference between real and romantic, as the things one can or can-
not know. As for inner causes, realism and modernism, James has been one of the
hallmarks of American realism, and simultaneously, a predecessor of modernism.
He has also been frequently designated as one of the early modernists.15 Janet
Holmgren McKay points out that the traits of realism are “consciousness without
the obvious intervention of a narrative voice” (Holmgren McKay 1982, 19) and the
“loss of authority (that) […] reveals itself in a mingling of voices – the narrators
did THEY want? Coming down the staircase opposite an old man stopped and stared
at him. Holmes was at the door. “I’ll give it you!” he cried, and flung himself vigor-
ously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer’s area railings. “The coward!” cried Dr. Holmes,
bursting the door open. Rezia ran to the window, she saw; she understood.” (Woolf
1996, 164)
14 James, “The Art of Fiction”. http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html
July 11, 2013
15 See Ruland, Bradburry1992, 217: the four novels from Henry James’ ‘major’ phase are
named ‘founding novels of Modernism’.
and the characters’ – and ultimately a representation of multiple perspectives”as

“a key to exposition and characterization” (Holmgren McKay 1982, 191). In the
aspect of relation to the readers then, there is no difference between a realist and
a modernist. Virginia Woolf believed that:
“The writer must get into touch with his reader by putting before him something which
he recognises, which therefore stimulates his imagination, and makes him willing to co-
operate in the far more difficult business of intimacy”. (Woolf 2008, 48).
She emphasised the need for effortless communication:

“And it is of the highest importance that this common meeting-place should be reached
easily, almost instinctively, in the dark, with one’s eyes shut”. (Woolf 2008, 48).
Woolf ’s poetical arguments were directed against realist writers she named “mate-
rialists” –Galsworthy, Bennett and Wells, in the first place. Although belonging to
the same language, realism in England and realism in America obviously have not
been the terms that designated the same phenomenon. American realism, at least
as Holmgren McKey describes it, actually employs modernist techniques. The
link between the two English traditions, as well as between romance and novel,
is Henry James. It was James who had made the giant leap from Hawthornian
romance in The American to modernist questioning of human identity in The
Ambassadors, Wings of the Dove and Golden Bowl,16 focusing at the same time on
the poetical aspects of these two forms.
The literary genealogical tree of John Updike seems complicated enough, even
without mentioning all the possible influences.17 Yet, no matter how large or pow-
erful they were, Updike managed to make his own remarkable tribute to the pres-
entation of the inner life of his characters, which, according to Käte Hamburger,
represents the very core of fictional writing. Updike is undoubtedly a modernist
writer – he celebrates the wholeness of an only partially comprehensive world.
That world manifests itself in its materiality, yet encloses within itself a secret
which could be felt as emptiness, lack, an “it” that his heroes sometimes cannot
articulate. Updike also does not hesitate to name it God in many of his works, and
it is obvious that this concept and the problems in comprehending it permeate all
16 See, Greiner 1985, 22.

17 Proust at the first place among those European authors who have not been mentioned
here.
his works. This has made him, in the words of David Lodge, “the last surviving ex-
ample” of a Protestant novelist,18 and we may suppose that Updike’s “illegitimacy”
in relation to his modernist “parents”, Woolf and Joyce, may partially stem from
this link. Technically, he plays with points of view, uses narrators and the “central
intelligence” of various abilities for articulation in order to engage readers in his
or her understanding of the texts itself, as well as his or her own self.
Finally, speaking of filial relations, it is worthwhile remembering that Linda
Hoyer Updike, the author’s real mother, thought that her son should go to Har-
vard in order to be educated as a writer. She could have sensed that he was in no
danger of becoming just a disciple, an ephebe who would be overwhelmed by an
influence19 and therefore lost for the future. Most probably, she rather believed that
he would always be a son, the love child, of those authors he was to get to know,
comprehend and successfully ‘misread’ in certain aspects.
References:
Apdajk, Dž. (1987): Istvičke veštice. Translated into Serbian by Aleksandar Saša
Petrović. Prosveta, Beograd.
Coale, S. C. (1985): In: Hawthorne’s Shadow: American Romance from Melville
to Mailer. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington.
Cohn, D. (1983): Transparent Minds, Narrative Modes for Presenting Conscious-
ness in Fiction. Princeton University Press. Princeton. (originally published
in 1978).
Chase, R. (1957): The Broken Circuit. In: Chase, R. The American Novel and Its
Tradition. Doubleday, New York, 1–28.
Greiner, D. J. (1985): Updike, James, Hawthorne and Adultery. In: Adultery in the
American Novel: Updike, James and Hawthorne. University of South Carolina
Press, Columbia, 3–25.
Holmgren McKay, J. (1982): Narration and Discourse in American Realistic Fiction.
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Huyssen, A. (1995): Paris/Childhood: The Fragmented Body in Rilke’s Notebooks
of Malte Laurids Brigge. In: Huyssen, A. Twighlight Memories: Marking Time
in a Culture of Amnesia. Routledge, New York.
18 “If there was ever such a species as the Protestant novelist (…) Mr. Updike may be its
last surviving example.” Lodge 1986, 1.
19 Harold Bloom’s terminology seems appropriate here, as, of all the novels Updike wrote,
he praised The Witches of Eastwick only.
Raine, C. (1984): Sisters with the Devil in Them. In: Times Literary Supplement.
Friday, September, 28, No. 4256.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1321/1321-h/1321-h.
htm July 11, 2013.
James, H. The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.
html July 11, 2013.
James, H. The Preface to The Ambassadors http://www.online-literature.com/
henry_james/ambassadors/0/, July 19, 2012.
Meletinski, E. M. (1980): Poetikamita. Translated into Serbian by Jovan Janićijević.
Nolit, Beograd.
Lodge, David (1986): Chasing After God and Sex, The New York Times Book
Review, August 1986, 1, 15.
Rilke, R. M., The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Translated from the German
by William Needham. http://archive.org/stream/TheNotebooksOfMalteLau-
ridsBrigge/TheNotebooksOfMalteLauridsBrigge_djvu.txt July 19, 2012.
Ruland, R., Bradbury, M. (1992): From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History
of American Literature. Penguin Books, New York.
Salgas, J–P. (1986): “Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman and the American Experi-
ence”. In: Plath, J. (1994): Conversations with John Updike. University Press
of Mississippi, Jackson, 176–180.
Samuels, C. T. (1968): “The Art of Fiction XLIII”. In: Plath, J. (1994): Conversa-
tions with John Updike. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 22–45.
Updike, J. (2003): “Pigeon Feathers”. In: Updike, J. The Early Stories 1953–1975,
Penguin Books, 13–33.
Updike, J. (2003): “You’ll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You”. In: The Early
Stories 1953–1975, Penguin Books, 3–6.
Updike, J. (1991): “The Bulgarian Poetess”. In: The Music School, Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 211–231.
Updike, J. (2009): “The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe”. In: My Father’s
Tears and Other Stories. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 137–153.
Updike, J. (1982): Rabbit, Run. Fawcett Crest, Ballantine Books, New York.
Updike, J. (1984): The Witches of Eastwick, Fawcett Columbine, Ballantine Books,
New York.
Updike, J. (1992): The Coup, Fawcett Crest, Ballantine Books, New York.
Marina Milivojević-Mađarev
Yugoslav Drama Theater, Belgrade
The Idea of Humanism in the

Work of Sarah Kane
Introduction
Sarah Kane (1971–1999) wrote five plays: Blasted, Crave, Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed
and Psychoses 4.48. These plays radically changed our way of thinking about what
theatre is, and why the theatre is vitally important both for an individual and
society. The critics put her work under the theatrical trend called In-yer-face.
In the book In-Yer-Face, theatre critic Aleks Sierz gives this definition for this
theatrical tendency:
“The widest definition of in-yer-face theatre is any drama that takes the audience by the
scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message. […] Questioning moral norms,
it affronts the ruling ideas of what can be or should be shown on stage; it also taps into
more primitive feelings, smashing taboos, mentioning the forbidden, creating discom-
fort. […] How can you tell if a play is in-yer-face? It really isn’t difficult: the language is
usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have
sex, humiliate each another, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent.”1
This definition is a good starting-point for analyzing the content of Sarah Kane’s
dramas and her attitude toward the audience. In the moment of appearance, her
work was like a stone hitting the face of the British public. When her plays were
put on stage, they were provoking both critics and audience. Very often, the media
was more concerned about scenes of brutal violence happening in-yer-face, rather
than about the artistic dimension of her work. The press was more eager to know
about the mental disorder of this writer than of her reason for the work. Some
of the critics accused her, claiming that her work was immoral. Kane responded
that she was writing about neither morality nor politics. But still, her work asked
very important questions about the essence of morality. Her wondering about the
essence of modern humanity and its attitude on morality leads us to questions
concerning the role that fear plays in modern society, the importance of being
aware of our emotions as the way to understand our own world, and what makes
a human being human.
1 Sierz 2001, 4–5.

284 Marina Milivojević-Mađarev
This paper will elucidate three of her five plays: Blasted, Phaedra’s Love, and
Cleansed which deal with this question in the most radical way. Sara Kane has
been dead for over ten years now, and all gossips and scandals surrounding her
have been either forgotten or forgiven. But her work still provokes attention, test-
ing the limits of our understanding of ethics and aesthetics.
Blasted 1993
The play Blasted was written in 1993. Global neoliberal capitalism was on the top.
Western Europe was preparing for the European Economic Era and it seemed
that everything was possible and that almost everything was permitted. And yet,
at the same time in Bosnia, a three-hours flight from London, a very brutal civil
war broke out. Sarah Kane was daring to ask if there was any connection between
raping in an expensive hotel room and raping as a war crime?
Blasted starts as a play about an individual act of violence in the civil society
between two acquaintances and ends in a total war of violence. Kane thought that
violence always had the same essence, weather it was individual (violence as a
separate event) or organized (violence as war). The essence of violence is imper-
sonal, which is the result of the constant strangling of the emotions. In modern
society, emotions are highly valued only if they exclude pain, suffering and other
unpleasant feelings. It is the key point of the consumer society that hedonism is
the goal, and where pain or unpleasant emotions are anaesthetized. That way,
the feelings of guilt, empathy, and self-sacrifice are not welcomed and this leads
us to heartless human beings that are unaware of suffering in oneself or others.
In order to be violent, one should treat a victim as a non-person, i.e., an object,
and at the same time reject (anaesthetize) her or his own personality through ter-
minating the feeling of empathy. But have Jan and Kate ever been human persons?
Is it possible to be a human free from humanism? Is a common citizen in her or
his essence a non-humanist person? Kane dug into this problem so deeply that she
was ready to show it on stage with nothing left to imagine. She put on the stage
the violence in its essence - banality, its growth step by step from the first sign in
everyday common conversation to brutal, perverted physical violence. Putting on
stage the whole scale of violence was shocking, but by representing the anatomy
of violence in modern society it was a real contribution from Sarah Kane.
What is the starting point? The starting point is one primary but strangled emo-
tion — fear. In nature, fear helps animals to survive — to prepare for fight or flight
(escape) — to protect itself. But in a civilized urban community, the natural part of
fear has been abused. Fear becomes fertile ground for growing up with neuroses
and psychoses, which keep a person under psychological, social, economic, and
The Idea of Humanism in the Work of Sarah Kane 285
political dependence. A frightened person, alienated from the essence of her or

his own fear, is constantly occupied by the need to satisfy non-existent necessities,
preventing non-existent risks, and she or he is liable to the influences, pressures,
demands, and the manipulations of the consumer society.
Jan is provoked by fear to build barriers and to try to prevent himself from
many kinds of “others”: sexual minorities, fear of different races, xenophobia, fear
of football fans, misoginia, hypochondria, and the fear of being left, etc. Most
hidden and most important, fear is fear of death. Jan is dying from cancer and
as self-destructive as he is, Jan cannot stop smoking, drinking, eating meat and
hating all ‘others’ that will survive his death; those others who don’t even know
about or care for him and his strangled pain. He is looking for the person whom
he will victimized, because he is not ready to accept the fact that he is the victim
of his own alienated life. Then, comes Kate.
Kate feels sympathy for Jan and his illnesses. While Jan is a racist and a fascist,
Kate seems to be “correct” (she supports her handicapped brother, has racial tol-
erance, is a vegetarian). But Kane discovers that correctness can be just another
way to hide emotional insensibility, which makes Kate a stupid victim of Jan’s
manipulations and violent actions. Why be correct if it means to be emotionally
insensible? Being correct helps Kate to feel OK. That doesn’t mean that she is a
good/moral person, but that she is a person not aware of her own inner conflicts.
In order to strangle her inner conflict, Kate has to strangle the awareness of her
conflicts with the outside world. The basis of her inner conflicts is an unsolved
emotional conflict with the social background (a lack of support by her family, and
problems with her boyfriend). In order to feel OK, Kate has to strangle conflicts
that make her unaware of both potentially dangerous people and situations. Jan, a
frustrated sadist, and Kate, a passive victim, are a bizarre but still probable couple.
In Blasted, the sadomasochistic connection among two people is presented in
the most analytic and vivid way. When Kate tries to rebel, Jan says to her that he
loves her and that he does all those crappy things because of love and his need
to protect her — the young innocent girl —from the “others”. Jan controls and
manipulates Kate by making her feel guilty. He says that she had provoked him,
but that she has to obey him and satisfy his sexual and predatory “needs”. Besides
this inner violence, which is taking place in “a very expensive hotel room in
Leeds – the kind that is so expensive it could be anywhere,”2 Sarah Kane gradually
introduces into her play violence from outside: first, the story about the brutal
massacre of a tourist, second the story about violence produced by football fans,
2 Kane 2001, 3.
then a bombing … The more violence that is present between Jan and Kate, the
more violence surrounds them in the outside world.
After Kate is raped by Jan, a solder bursts into the hotel room. Kate, yesterday’s
victim, escapes thought the window and Jan becomes a victim of war crimes. But
while Kate was an individual victim of an individual rapist, the Soldier keeps Jan
informed that he (as a solder) is just a part of a big total mass-murder, whereby
the Soldier is both a victim (he lost his family and his lover) and an executor. The
spiral of crimes continues: yesterday’s victim is today’s criminal. It seems that a
war-crime is just an assembly of individual victim-criminal-victim circles that
violence maximizes enormously. But Sarah Kane knew that this was too easy an
answer for that very complicated problem about violence and morality. The solder
brutally massacres Jan, but he doesn’t kill him. The executor needs his victim alive.
But since the solder is a victim himself, his crime did not help him to overcome
his own pain; consequently, he commits suicide. Jan survives. The hotel room
becomes both his shelter and tomb. Next, it starts to rain. Kate comes back with
both food and a dying baby. She didn’t become an active bully, but rather stays
passive and inert. Instead of feeding the baby, she gives the food to Jan. The baby
dies. Jan says: “Thank you.”3 That is the last sentence of Blasted.
Sarah Kane said: “For me, the play was about a crisis of living. How do we con-
tinue to live when life becomes so painful, so unbearable?”4 Kane’s characters are
not insensible monsters. At the bottom of their insensible, cold, and brutal hurts
always exists a spot of light and humanity, which cannot be wiped off. Both the
pain and fear that characters feel represent a sign of that spot, and that is why she
insisted on writing about it. Blasted really is a hopeful play, because the characters
do continue to “scrape a life out of ruins.”5
Phaedra’s Love 1996

The Gate asked Sarah Kane to write a play based on a European classic. Phaedra
was not the first choice (she suggested Woyzeck and Baal), but nevertheless she
managed to tell her own story through retelling the famous myth about the love
of a stepmother Phaedra for her stepson Hippolytus. For Kane, writing was thera-
peutic: “I’m simultaneously Hippolytus and Phaedra, both lethally cynical and
obsessively in love with someone who’s completely unlovable.”6
3 Ibid. 2001, 61.

4 Sierz 2001, 106.
5 Sierz 2001, 106.
6 Ibid. 2001, 110.
In Phaedra’s Love, there are two wills: uncompromising love represented by

Phaedra, and a love insisting on being completely understood represented by
Hippolytus. These two wills clash with each other, and are in conflict with a demo-
cratic, self-correcting society, which is producing violence. The violence, once
again, becomes the vivisection of an urban democratic and self-correcting society.
The pain itself is, again, the only left choice to reach real emotion.
For others, Hippolytus looks depressed, but being extremely passive, he be-
comes rebellious in the society that is based on constant movement (money,
people) and political correctness. He discards his royal family (with Phaedra
representing the family), demanding complete and ultimate truth and honesty,
but there are no such things in this society that is built on constant movement,
change and fragile borders. That is why he feels an emptiness which is not real but
which is overloaded with useless emotions, relationships, happenings, and goods.
Consequently, Hippolytus lives surrounded by junk and dirt. For any creature that
is overloaded by sensation and having anaesthetized emotions, the only thing that
could be felt is pain. The pain in the poetic tragedy of Phaedra’s Love is not only
the last emotion, but also the last evidence of life.
Phaedra has mixed emotion for Hippolytus. She loves him as a man, but still
wants to transfer her mother-feelings to him. She wants to move him, to touch his
emotions, to take care of him and save him. At the same time, she wants to liberate
herself and to possess him through having sex with him; but unfortunately, the
sex with Hippolytus turns out to be banal and humiliating. She commits suicide
and leaves a death note that she was in fact raped by Hippolytus. Actually, she was
not raped but language has no better word to explain what happened – having
physical touch but with a brutal cut of any emotions.
The misunderstanding of Hippolytus and Phaedra might not have had the
tragic outcome it did, if there had not been the negative influences of society.
The society is represented by king Theseus, daughter Strophe, the priest and the
doctor. These four archetypal characters represent supreme political power, an
ideal family, the law, and the official approach to the belief in and health of both
an individual and the whole society. Analyzing each part of this society, Kane
discloses why the violence is, according to her, unavoidable.
Hippolytus describes his family as “a family with no blood connection”, which
is not quite true (Theseus is Hippolytus’ father, and Phaedra is Strophe’s mother),
but he points out the fact that blood connection is not as valuable in this society as
it should be. The basic values, rules, demands and prohibitions of any patriarchal
family life are not respected anymore. The new-age family has its own rules, but
keeps on living in the remains of the old morality. This situation is potentially
dangerous and may lead to a state of violence because, if morality is not above
family and society, then an older natural law comes out and that is a law of the
stronger, a law of more numerous – a law of the mob. This idea does not belong
to Sarah Kane only. Other writers aestheticists, and philosophers (such as Rob
Weatherill, Cammille Paglia, and Slawomir Mrožek) share similar opinions.
Sarah Kane shows us how a genuine relationship is replaced by a false one. First
of all, this is the family with an absent father; not because Theseus is really busy
doing important things for the state of the royal family, but instead because he
feels more comfortable not to be with his family. Phaedra is pretending to be not
a mother, but a friend for her children. Because the real mother has to bring up
her children, it sometimes means that Phaedra has to punish her children. That
is of course uncomfortable, both for the mother and her children. It is easier to
be just a friend than a parent. And finally, this is the family in which everybody
has sex with everybody, except a husband with his wife, and therefore sex has
no sense of thrill but only monotony. Thesius’ family is completely immoral, not
because it wants to be or needs to be immoral, but because the family members
find it comfortable to be immoral, and being comfortable means to be OK due
to the fact that they perceive immorality as an easy way of living in a democratic
society. Nobody cares if they are immoral as long as they are OK. Nobody, except
Hippolytus.
The doctor thinks that Hippolytus is lazy and depressed and he tells this to
Phaedra:
Doctor: There’s nothing wrong with him medically.
Phaedra: Medically?
Doctor: He’s just very unpleasant. And therefore incurable, I’m sorry.7
The Doctor thinks that Hippolytus is “unpleasant” and this means that he is not
OK. The doctor realizes that Phaedra is in love with her “unpleasant” stepson,
but he does nothing to stop her, because it will not be comfortable for him and
furthermore, although he is the doctor of the royal family, he is not a devoted
one; he is merely doing his job. That is why he says to Phaedra: “Get over him.”8
The situation in which the priest is completely immoral is depicted in the scene
when he tries to persuade Hippolytus to confess and deny that he is responsible
for Phaedra’s suicide, in order to save the country from riot:
7 Kane 2001, 68.

8 Ibid. 2001, 68.
“Your sexual indiscretions are of no interest to anyone. But, the stability of our nation’s
morality is. You are a guardian of those morals. You will answer to God for the collapse
of our country which you and your family lead»9
God is just another currency for trade, in order to reach satisfaction in this society.
Paradoxically, it is the immoral and atheist Hippolytus who becomes the moral
figure in this OK but immoral society.
Hippolytus: “What do you suggest, a last minute conversion just in case [there is a God]?
Die as if there is a God, knowing that there isn’t one? No. If there is a God, then I’d like
to look him in the face knowing I’d died as I’d lived. In conscious sin.»10
For Hippolytus, Phaedra’s suicide becomes the complete evidence of her genuine
love and true honesty. He is touched by Phaedra’s act and becomes deeply aware
of his responsibility and guilt for her misfortune. While others suggest to him that
he show regret and ask for forgiveness, in order to prevent the society and royal
family from riot and mob violence, he who does not believe in the goodness of the
Lord in heaven and in the justice of society and the law on the Earth is prepared
to accept the punishment he deserves for killing the only good and worthy human
being he has ever met. He lets himself be ripped apart by the masses. “If there
could have been more moments like this,”11 are Hippolytus last words.
The average person could ask himself if it is necessary to be killed in order to
be loved. But in ultimate ideas of truth, love and honesty that Sarah Kane had,
the ultimate deeds were needed.
Cleansed 1998
Kane’s play Cleansed, written in 1998, brings together themes from Blasted and
Phaedra’s Love to an extreme:
“If you want to write about extreme love, then you can only write about it in an extreme
way … Both Blasted and Cleansed are about distressing things which we’d like to think
we would survive. If people can still love after that, then love is the most powerful thing.”12
Is love the most powerful thing in the World?

This play takes place in an institution called ‘university’. Inhabitants of this
‘university’ are young people, but what they have to study are not the natural sci-
ences. The character called Tinker is ‘cleaning’ them from their bad habits (drug
9 Ibid. 2001, 94.

10 Ibid. 2001, 94,
11 Kane 2001, 103.
12 Sierz 2001, 116.
addiction), and forbidden emotions (homosexual and incestuous love). He thinks

that an abnormal person seeks for punishment and torture, in order to become
‘normal’. Tinker has neither political convictions nor religious beliefs, although he
resembles O’Brien from the book 1984 written by George Orwell, or some Nazi
and communist tyrant, or an inquisitor. Tinker represents himself as a doctor, but
in fact he is not. He is merely performing an experiment on people, testing their
bodies and emotions. But, it seems to be true that even Tinker himself doesn’t
know the purpose of this horrible experiment, although he is dedicated to and
concentrated on this task. He disappears from this play after the scene just before
the last one. He kisses a woman and tells her: “I love you Grace.”13 Does he find in
this kiss what he was searching for in massacring other people? We would never
know. Sarah Kane was interested in the essence of existence and how much that
existence can withstand. It seems that she believed emotions to be beyond the
body, even existence itself.
Compared to Blasted and Phaedra’ Love, Cleansed is the least realistic. The
whole play is a kind of metaphor under the strong influence of George Orwell’s
novel 1984 and Ernest Beckett’s works. There are many scenes of cutting a body
into pieces, but what Sarah Kane is interested in is whether we can express love
‘without tongue’, can we hug a beloved creature with no hands. If the love is our
essence, then will it be unchanged if our sex is changed?
In her works, Sarah Kane desperately believed in love but still, in 1999, she
committed suicide. The irony (or poetic justice?) is that the world began to accept
and believe in the honesty of her thoughts and feelings expressed works, where
she herself gave up.
Sarah Kane developed an exclusive approach to the idea of a human being.
Through decomposing the human body and its soul, Sarah Kane tried to discover
what actually is the essence of a human being. In a world discarded by God and
corrupted by the media, pain (both physical and emotional) becomes the last
proof for existence, while becomes humor the only way for a human being to
go through life. Although her approach to as human being may look brutal and
cynical, it is nevertheless poetic and emotional. If a man or a woman stops being
human, then is humanism still indispensable for the life of a modern citizen?
What is humanism today?
13 Kane 2001, 49.

References
Kane, S. (2001): Complete Plays (Blasted, Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48
Psychosis, Skin). Methuen drama, London.
Sierz, A. (2001): In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today. Faber and Faber,
London.
Svendsen Lars, Fr. H. (2007): Frykt. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo.
Weatherill, R. (1994): Cultural Collapse. Free Association Books, London.
Evi D. Sampanikou
University of the Aegean
Posthumanism in Contemporary Greek Art:

Marios Spiliopoulos, Traces of Human Beings
‘Works of art nowadays are not made by a God Artist as in the period of Modernism […]
Space is always more powerful than human beings […]’
‘I’d like to put emotion into the contemporary world […] a vacant image has so far prevailed’
Marios Spiliopoulos, TV Interview to Katerina Zacharopoulou for the weekly show “The Era
of Images”(Ηεποχή των εικόνων), channel ET1, Athens, October 2008.
‘Painting is a form of science, therefore Spiliopoulos is a scientist […]’
Stelios Iordanou, informant/participant in ‘Traces of Human Beings’, also interviewed for the
aforementioned show.
‘Digitization and scanning have an immediate connection with our will to forget […] we live
in the 160th year after images were first mechanically reproduced […]’
David Clairbout, Belgian Video Artist, for his exhibition (November–December 2008) at the
National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜΣΤ), Athens, Interviewed for the daily newspaper
Eleytherotypia, 19 November 2008.
A lot of discussion is taking place during recent years about the character and
context of contemporary Greek art. Most of the scholars involved in this search
have a relatively negative opinion about its originality or local character. They, most
of all, locate the absence of any form of ideology and, worst, on many occasions,
the complete absence of any context. Exhibitions like the recent ‘What Remains
is Future’ (Patras 2006) are typical of such an absence of context and a lack of new
ideas1, among young artists especially.
The reasons are many: First, contemporary Greek culture very often appears
to reflect nothing but a compilation of media images and superficial glimpses on
multiculturalism with all the consequences that can follow. Second, a total lack
of cultural politics for decades is evident in Greece. Therefore, a rather indifferent
public has been formed in years. Third, the educational system in Greece seems
to be focused on technical skills and successful exam results, thus acquiring a
1 I might say with the brilliant exception of Yiorgos Gyparakis’ [and Harriet Mitrakou]
contribution, see: Argyropoulou 2006 [with no page numbers]. For Gyparakis: Papa-
dopoulou 2004: 81
294 Evi D. Sampanikou
completely non-humanistic approach. Therefore, within such an absence of hu-

manistic values in life and education in contemporary Greece, the social position
of the artist is, once more, rather difficult.
This paper deals with the aforementioned reality and the recent work of Marios
Spiliopoulos2, “Traces of Human Beings”. Spiliopoulos has for years been per-
ceiving contemporary Greek reality from two aspects: that of the artist and that
of the teacher. Spiliopoulos is Professor in Painting at the National School of Arts
(Anotati Sxoli Kalon Texnon) in Athens and has followed a long route in the field
of installations with everyday materials that can compile an historical and cultural
context. “Traces of Human Beings”, his recent Mixed Media (photographs, sound
recordings, old material and digital video installations) exhibition in a huge de-
stroyed industrial remain of the early 20th century in Eleusina (Eleusis) – Athens, is
a reference to the local culture of Eleusina, that has been abruptly inhabited since
Antiquity, as well as a reminder of the area’s environmental destruction in modern
times. Moreover, it is a reference to memory through the recent history of groups
of people, for example local people, workers or immigrants, who are approached
according to the anthropological method as informants. Memory consists, in this
occasion, of private stories that give the outline of local history in the flux of time:
personal memoirs, narratives, discussions, interviews, old films and photographs,
folk music and singing, sports, religious beliefs from Antiquity to present times,
are recorded in the new media as digital video installations and photography.
Deeply humanistic in its approach, the exhibition can require an identity and
a place within contemporary Greek art only if we discover its Posthumanist ideas
and values that support its context and also give this work a place among other
European or international works that share its ideologies, sensibilities and views of
the past, the present and the future of local communities in a multicultural world.
From the above mentioned, my position toward the relation between Human-
ism and Posthumanism becomes clear, as well as my interpretation of Posthuman-
ism as a [different from Transhumanism] beyond humanism situation, that is the
preservation and extension of classical humanism, enriched with ecological and
ethical considerations, in the technological media artistic expression of the 21st
century. However, to estimate Spiliopoulos’ work and rank him among interna-
tional new media artists, we need a specific theoretical framework. First of all,
2 For Spiliopoulos: Kyriazi 2000: 203–204. Kyriazi 2004: 219–220. Adamopoulou 2000:
39–45. Tzanetoulakou 2005. Also see the artist’s official website: http://www.mariosspilio-
poulos.com/ (created by Georgia Tzirou – Last Visited: 30/08/2009) for texts and critiques
from the daily, weekly, or monthly Press.
Posthumanism in Contemporary Greek Art 295
I consider Spiliopoulos to be an active part of Postmodernity3, especially under the

prism of Fredric Jameson’s ‘schizophrenia’ that describes specific experiences of
time and language in the postmodern dissolution of subjectivity, thus portraying
the fragmentation of subjectivity exclusively as a crisis of the temporal organiza-
tion of language. His art theories4 also extend to examining contemporary art
through description and imagination, encompassing to the Marxist method the
notion of ‘inner form’ we find in Plotinus (ένδονείδος) and the German Roman-
tics. Moreover, he underlines the transformation of the work of art into its social
and historical content. Jameson is clearly following Heideggereian and Freudian
thought, especially when dealing with the censored qualities of a work of art,
mainly related to the symbolic fulfilment of desire5.
In a text on the ‘age of the world picture’6, Martin Heidegger foretells the close
relation between globalization/globalism and the image, actually becoming, this
way, a forerunner of Walter Benjamin.7 For Gilles Deleuze8 and Felix Guattari9, this
schizophrenia is a process of ego-loss, a de-Oedipalization of the subject, reconcep-
tualized as an endlessly reassembling, desiring machine10. This is where Arthur C.
Danto has seen the ‘end of art’ according to several of his writings11. At the same
time, the aforementioned Deleuze’s model of an endlessly reassembling, desiring
machine seems to incline to Nietzsche’s views on power, through a teleological
vision12. To make it clearer, both Deleuze and Nietzsche, in a very similar fashion,
denounced a certain regime of thought that comes into power through the distor-
tion of irrational, intuitive and instinctive forms of thought. They mapped out the
ways in which the moral and teleological vision of the world dominates our sense
of reality. They actually both addressed the question of power in new grounds. In
both Nietzsche’s and Deleuze’s perspective, the world becomes an estranged place,
hardly recognizable as ours, ‘a world shaped by contrasting forces and a will to
power’13. Both Deleuze and Nietzsche are present in Spiliopoulos’ work.
3 Lyotard 1984. Best and Kellner 2000: 76–145, 146–180, 181–191, 225–232.
4 Jameson 1971, 5–7.
5 Jameson 1971, 6.
6 Heidegger 1996, 47–61.
7 Benjamin 1969, 217.
8 Deleuze 1993 [publ. 1997].
9 Deleuze – Guattari 1972, 22–36. Deleuze – Guattari 1980, 149–165.
10 Woods 2004, 1–16.
11 Danto 1997, 25–40. Also, Danto 2001, 416–301.
12 Sorgner 2007, 31–32, 51–66.
13 Woods 2004, 1–16.
Moreover, speaking of an ‘external’ form of a “language within language” the

authors usually invent, Deleuze describes delirium as a life process, as well as the
sense of absence and silence that follow when this delirium becomes a clinical
situation. I strongly believe that this situation is also reflected in every notion of
New MediaArt, especially Virtual Reality Art14. In this context, specific ancestors of
Transhumanism as Donna Haraway15 and Timothy Leary16 are also reconfiguring
the notion of the fragmented subject as a cyborg (or cybernetic organism), thus
conceptualizing the futuristic hybridity of both humankind and nature. In some
ways, Spiliopoulos accepts this hybridity.
Paul Virilio’s views,17 on the other hand, belonging to the ‘Apocalyptic’ views
of the present18, inherited by Paul Valéry’s writings19, complete the image of Post-
humanist thought as reflected in the art of the present, especially if we interpret
them as contradicting Marvin Minsky’s ‘Utopian’ views20, or Hans Moravec’s vi-
sions of an actual Blade Runner world of robots and their replicants21. According
to Virilio, humankind is the victim of a terrifying acceleration process that has
completely changed transportations and telecommunications. In the ‘Aesthetics
of Disappearance’, his most famous work, first published in 1980, Virilio discusses
the absence and vanity that acceleration produces, as the sense of difference, pro-
duced by time and distance, fades away. This is in fact a ‘New Metaphysics’: the
screen is the locus of the lost proportions of space and time, transformed into an
accelerated visualization. On the other hand, Minsky’s clearly Transhumanist
model of ‘the new Us’, mechanically enhanced, changing old bodies with new ones
and actually reliving for a series of succeeding lives22 and also his contradiction
to Virilio’s vision of the present, have already been visualized in works of virtual
art with the work “The Home of the Brain”(1991) with Monika Fleischmann and
Wolfgang Strauss standing as leading examples of the interrelation of Philosophy
and the contemporary Virtual or New Media Art23. Spiliopoulos is one of the few
contemporary Greek artists that follow this same route.
14 Sampanikou 2010.
15 Haraway 1991, 149–181.
16 Leary e.a. 1991.
17 Virilio 1991a, 17, 46, 55, 64–66. Also: Virilio 1991b, 72–73.
18 Poissant 2007, 229–250.
19 Valery 1964, 226.
20 Minsky 1988.
21 Moravec 1988.
22 Minsky 1988.
23 Grau 2003, 219–220. Sampanikou, 2010.
According to the above mentioned, to trace the ideological and cultural dimen-
sions of Posthumanism/Postmodernity in contemporary Greece is not a simple
task, but can be quite rewarding as a result, especially if we think how comprehen-
sive it can finally be. Greece has been distant from modern and even postmodern
theories so far. It is broadly accepted among art scholars and theorists nowadays
that Modernism never came to Greece. This was not an accidental incident, but a
conscious refusal driven by the volition of conservative governments and main-
stream ideologies that isolated Greek art from the international developments of
the first half of the 20th century, thus keeping the Aesthetic approaches and the
context into specific limits mainly related to a series of formalisms and academic
art24. This conservatism originated in mid-19th century by the so-called “School
of Munich”25, always convicted and discredited avant-garde, representing it as
art’s caricature in mass media and popular cinema, especially during the late 1960s
and early 1970s, that were also the dictatorship years (1967–1973). Therefore, in
popular feeling, ‘modern art’ was for years a synonym for ‘vacant bourgeois art’.
That is, a distant form of representation with no emotion at all.
My generation has, on the other hand, lived with the coming of the postmod-
ern and its globalized (rather than ‘Americanized’) nature, that found a very easy
access to contemporary Greek artistic expression, as if it had always been there.
Despite the fact that the blooming of postmodernity in art was based in the fast
development of technology, that produced new media works of art with a similar
context worldwide, there were some artists in Greece who took very little ad-
vantage of the new media, the comics artists for example26, who initially didn’t
show much interest in Photoshop and similar programs commonly used today,
or installation artists who gradually and very consciously turned to digital video
only when they really had something to say and, moreover, without being afraid
of expressing emotion, as in the case of Marios Spiliopoulos.
I have already stated that Marios Spiliopoulos’ art is examined in this paper
as a Posthumanist frame containing a humanistic subject. Very inspiring for
this aesthetic approach have been for me Anne Friedberg’s 2006 fascinating
book27 The Virtual Window, as well as Fredrik Jameson’s Marxism and Form28,
24 Kotidis 1993. Vacalo 1981–1984.

25 Kotidis 1993.
26 Kritikos – Sampanikou 2005, 24–26, 57.
27 Friedberg 2006, 94–98, 150–157, 182–189.
28 Jameson 1971, 5–7.
Archaeologies of the Future29 and Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism.30
Spiliopoulos is nowadays, at the turn of his most ‘mature’ period, an example
of a complete artistic personality who was never absorbed by the new media in a
narcissistic way. He never adopted what we could call ‘paleo-modernism’ (=old-
fashioned modernism) in a contemporary ‘art for art’s sake’ quest. On the other
hand, as a number of Greek artists nowadays do, paradoxically enough, define
themselves as ‘Postmodern’. On the contrary, an exhibition like ‘Traces of Human
Beings’, is the most recent stage of a multileveled inquiry concerning the new
media and at the same time a humanist, however Marxist in its core, political
statement for history and environmental ethics, as well as memory, collective or
private and its context.
Installations are ‘memory reserves’ (φυλάκια μνήμης) for Marios Spiliopoulos,
that is ‘traps for seeing and hearing, aimed at moving the emotional consciousness
of the public’. This appears to be the main subject of “Traces of Human Beings”,
that is located in Eleusis (Ελευσίς in Antiquity or Ελευσίνα, nowadays) and deals
with its local history.
Eleusis, one of the greatest and most famous religious centers of the Ancient
Greek world, where the Eleusinian Mysteries always took place, was transformed into
the first industrial center of the new Geek State, after the long Ottoman Occupation
period, that is after 1830/32.
The installation locus is the ruins of a 19th century industrial building. The
17.705 square meters industrial remain, locus of the extended monumental in-
stallation, into the rooms of which the visitor is lead following routes formed
by four thousand and a half used shoes, blooms in its ruins with memories and
life. This is actually a skeleton that becomes a frame in a Heideggerian sense of
the word (das Ge-stell), a metaphor for the ‘representative thought’, a keyword
for the understanding of the world as a picture31. The ruined skeleton of what
used to be the powerful building of Charilaos and Kanellopoulos Soap Industry,
built in 1875, that terminated its activity in 1969–1970 and was finally burnt
down, becomes the frame and the theater of an internal revolution, a revolt of
the memories of many whose life were mercilessly marked by the flowing of time
and things. Mainly, three general groups of people are involved and become part
of the installation:
29 Jameson 2005 [Greek trans 2008], 330–336.

30 Jameson 1991, e-edition (parts), In: www.marxists.org
31 Heidegger 1977, 3–36. Also: Heidegger 1996, 47–61.
I The industrial workers that lived throughout the factory’s rise and fall. Their
recorded voices are heard in one of the rooms of the installation, narrating
events from the past (good times but also labor matters and accidents and
even deaths…) that literally haunt the place for ever.
II The contemporary Eleusina inhabitants that embraced the city’s industrial
activity in modern times, keeping at the same time a permanent feeling of
continuity, despite the huge environmental crime that was committed in an
area of a very important ancient cult that was transformed into an area of heavy
industry in modern times. It’s ironically interesting here to see how most of the
local industries acquired the names of ancient gods and heroes. Titan, Crones,
Iris are some of these names. The people of Eleysina made this exhibition a part
of their continuity and history by offering the artist all the required material:
shoes, clothes, furniture, old photos, old recordings, as well as their physical
presence in a lot of the artists’ digital videos (narrating, singing, walking into
the installation…) and as supporting teams for the needs of the exhibition dur-
ing the more than one month that this installation lasted. Their participation
made the artist say in several interviews that his feeling is that he has fulfilled
his wish to create a work not for the artist but for the people by the people.
‘The artist becomes part of the image of others and co-creates with them’ says
Spiliopoulos in a rather Heideggerian view. ‘We are the voices of many people
he says’. And, in the Aeschylian Municipal Festival events catalogue32 he thanks
all those people who ‘allowed him to steal a piece of their lives’.
III Moreover, a part of the contemporary Eleusinians have an origin in Asia
Minor, formerly a Greek coast, and came to Eleusina in 1922, after the war,
the devastation of Smyrni [Ishmir nowadays] and their expulsion; therefore,
they have refugee memories. These Eleusinians, having left their history and
part of their identities in their homeland, managed to intertwine the mystical
qualities of their lives with the Ancient Eleusinian mysteries that consist of
an ubiquity33, an ‘everywhere presence’ in the exhibition, where we see eggs,
seeds, reproductions of reliefs, statues and even excavation material. It is an
exhibition where the archaeological elements are continuously intertwined
with the anthropological recordings, often recalling in their inner qualities
Nietzsche’s eternal reoccurrence view, as well as Deleuze’s last writings on the
classics of literature34.
32 [Annual] Aeschylian Municipal Festival (Αισχύλεια) 2008, small pamphlet catalogue.

33 Valéry 1964. Benjamin 1969. Virilio 1991a–b.
34 Deleuze 1993 [publ. 1997].
For the artist, thousands of the used shoes of any age or sex scattered around
the area are shaping routes to become a contemporary Eleusinian process (πομπή)
that, in its visual form, is translated into an energy source, a scene where art
holds the place of an instigatorin an eternal dialogue between the spiritual and
the material, the perishableand the imperishable. What we can see in the exhibi-
tion is always multifaceted, usually with more than two argument sides: War and
Devastation; Rebirth on the other hand; Beginnings and Endings and Reoccur-
rences; and the notion of Time, the merciless time.
We can see it when watching the videos: i. the old football stars of the local
team “Paneleusiniakos”, narrating how they were playing “for our T-shirt’s glory
only”. The old and middle-aged women singing old Asia Minor songs, some only
nostalgically, others interpreting historical events (cursing both Turkey and the
USA’s intervention, for example). And others, contemporary this time, war and
political refugees or even economic immigrants. There is a long video where
people from Pakistan are waiting for hours and months to get a visa trapped
into the bureaucracy monster’s belly in Athens. They tell the artist, in front of
a camera, their personal stories and also talk about their present situation, the
Greek employers and people, as well as their hopes for the future and their dreams
for a better life.
The huge ruined room that houses the second and third previously mentioned
installations also houses furniture and other material installations. Real (old)
army beds, a donation of the Greek Armed Forces to the exhibition, are all over
the place, reminding us of the coming of the war refugees that were temporarily
accommodated into this very room in 1922. I have really wondered what Plato
would think of a real bed as a realistic representation of a bed in real space…
And Danto would have definitely not recognized an ‘After the End of Art’ situ-
ation here.
And, several ‘passings’ all over, like flashbacks: The local photographer was
Thanasis Tsigkos, who according to Spiliopoulos has been ‘a real artist’. The mythi-
cal person for old working-class generation was folk singer Stelios Kazantzidis.
In another video, shot into a contemporary cemetery, an old woman is looking
after Kazantzidis’ mother (!) grave. The old woman was unknown to his mother,
but she felt it to be a mission for her. ‘For his sake’ she says. And, photos from the
well-known archaeological documentary Agelastos Petra (=Unsmiling Stone) by
Philippos Koutsaftis were included. Voices of children from local elementary and
junior high school became a part of the exhibition in two videos, and also in sev-
eral other spots of the installation with photographs. They are singing Persephones
Nightmare by Nikos Gatsos (lyrics) and Manos Chatzidakis (music). I attempt a
free translation hereby:
Persephone’s Nightmare
(Lyrics: Nikos Gatsos –Music: Manos Chatzidakis)
Where sage and wild mint used to grow
and the earth presented her first cyclamen,
now peasants bargain cement
and birds fall dead into the blast furnace.
Refrain: Sleep Persephone
in the arms of earth
never appear
on the world’s surface [balcony] again
Where the mystics tightly held each others hands
piously, before entering the sanctuary
now tourists throw their cigarette ends
and go see the new refinery.
[Refrain]
Where the sea used to become a blessing
and bleats from the mainland were a blessing too
now vans are carrying to the shipyards
empty bodies, iron tools, children and sheets of metal
[Refrain]
The children are often heard calling the ancient fertilizing invocation: “Ύε, Κύε»
(“Rain, Fertilize!”), typical to Eleusinian Mysteries. The repertoire also includes a
contemporary song about Eleusina written by their music teacher Dimitris An-
dronis, a member of Spiliopoulos’ exhibition team.
The feeling that remains after the long walk into the exhibition is a mixed
emotion, but it’s strong and it’s there. ‘My intention is not to avoid emotion. […]
If I’m not there for the emotion, then what else?’35 For him, life happens and is
simply, always going on.
The singing children’s video is installed opposite the walking children video.
In this second one, an old worker, Kyr Stelios, who has spent a big part of his life
in this factory and has been a basic informant for the artist (in anthropological
terms) intertwines his steps with the children’s as the digital images flash from
the children to him and so on as they are following the same route into the fac-
tory ruins. When they finally meet, the roaring sea video wall where the visitor
is finally led, they become part of it. Kyr Stelios steps first into the video wall and
35 TV Interview with Katerina Zacharopoulou.

disappears. The children follow, then enter and fade away in a glorious symbol-
ism of eternal rebirth.
What I finally have to say here is that it is an exhibition that can be defined as
Posthumanist in media, forms and ideology and Marxist/Humanist in its core
context. Such works of art can prove that the postmodern digital vehicle can
open it’s horizons, not to what we commonly see in its usual dimensions, that is a
useless autoscopic autism, but to the eternal human condition with its questions
concerning matters and aspects of an identity, including the origin and continu-
ity and finally the existence of identity itself, through the eternal circular dance
of life and death.
References
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Greek / English).
Benjamin, W. (1969): The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.
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versity Studio Press, Thessaloniki (in Greek).
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Melissa Publishing House, Athens, 203–204 (in Greek).
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Audiovisual Material (Kindly provided by the artist)

Videos
The videos of the artist comprising the ‘Traces of Human Beings’ exhibition material
(5 videos, 10 to 50 min. each).
Walk into the exhibition video shot by the artist’s collaborators for the exhibition
(about 16 min.).
TV Shows
‘Marios Spiliopoulos’, Walk into the exhibition and Interview of the artist to
Katerina Zacharopoulou, for the weekly TV show “The Era of Images”
(Ηεποχήτωνεικόνων):, [National] Channel ET1, Athens, October 2008 (about
45 min.).
Photographic Material (Kindly provided by the artist)

Exhibition material provided by the contemporary inhabitants of Eleysis com-
prised of old photographs from Asia Minor before and after 1922, the life of
the 1922 Greek immigrants from Asia Minor, photographs of workers and the
working conditions into the locus of the exhibition in old times, mainly by the
old local phototgrapher Thanasis Tsigkos, as well as enlarged photographs of
Eleysis antiquities.
Series of professional photographs by the photographer Vacharides.
Series of photographs by the artist Evi Tsaknia.
Series of photographs by the artist and his collaborators.
Copyright of the Audiovisual and Photographic Material: Marios Spiliopoulos [and

the author of each separate unit part of the exhibition – if not Spiliopoulos-].
Predrag Milidrag
Post-humanism of The Matrix Trilogy1
There are traces of very diverse Eastern and Western lines of thought in The Matrix
Trilogy2, which speaks eloquently about its richness of ideas. Being ‘philosophical’
The Matrix Trilogy is not a boring film and long-winded; instead of talking end-
lessly, the characters are working ceaselessly, and that work is changing them. In
this paper, I will try to interpret the changes in the main character, Neo, against the
background of some classic ideas about the human being in Western philosophy.
The main theses of this text are the following: In The Matrix Trilogy, Platonist,
Cartesian and Hegelian ideas about man are clearly recognizable. On their general
plain, plots of the films express movement (progress?) from Plato via Descartes
to Hegel3 – and further.
I
The Platonism of the first part of the trilogy is evident. There are two worlds, a
virtual world of the Matrix and the real world. They are strictly divided and their
ontological relation is clearly defined through a dependence of the former on the
latter. Either on the level of the storyline or on the level of an image, the beholder is
not in doubt about which world he is watching. That is absolutely the key moment
of the whole trilogy: there is no doubt which world is ‘true’ and which one is ‘illu-
sion’. Whether all the protagonists know about it – is a different matter altogether.
It is impossible to resist a Platonist interpretation of the famous scene with a
blue and red pill. At its beginning, Morpheus approaches Neo in a philosophical
manner, that is, by questioning things which are self-evident:
1 Translated from Serbian into English by Goran Gocić.

2 The films The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are referred
to as The Matrix Trilogy. The Matrix in italic thus denotes the first film of the trilogy.
With an expression „the Matrix“, I denote the sixth virtual world itself. Dialogues will
be quoted according to the number of a sequel (I, II, III) after which an hour, minute
and second of their beginning and, if necessary, minute and second of their end will be
stated. The films will be also referred to as the first/second/third part (of the trilogy).
3 In a single public reckoning about the trilogy, Larry Wachowski most frequently men-
tions Hegel; see Wilber, 2010.
308 Predrag Milidrag
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something (…) that there’s
something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter
in your mind driving you mad. (…) Do you want to know what IT is? The Matrix is (…)
the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. (…) You are
a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you
cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.4
Morpheus does not try anything else but something that Socrates has tried with
his midwife skill, to deliver knowledge already contained in the human mind in
an unreflected and self-evident manner: ‘Unfortunately, no one can be told what
the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself ’.5
There is no doubt in the truthfulness of knowledge about what is and what isn’t,
nor does anybody doubt the existence of those who know and those who don’t.
As a Platonic philosopher, Morpheus knows what the truth is.6
All this clearly indicates that, in The Matrix, the Cartesian/modern episte-
mological questions are out of place. Likewise, there is no space for Descartes’
hyperbolic doubt, because skeptical questions are not a constitutive part of the
cognitive process7.
Could we perhaps find a Cartesian motif in the fact that the Matrix is a crea-
tion of machines? With the evil genius from the First Meditation in mind8, we
wonder whether the machines are the evil genius of the world of the Matrix. In
the spirit of a person who finds himself in the Matrix, Descartes’ doubt can work
to its heart’s content: a person doubts his senses, doubts the existence of his body,
doubts that he dreams, doubts the existence of an evil genius, doubts his own
abilities, and comes to the proverbial insight cogito, ergo sum, but still does not
‘wake’ from the world of the Matrix!9 You cannot ‘wake’ from the world with the
aid of radical doubt; for that, you need someone who has already ‘awoken’ – like
Morpheus. It does not cross anyone’s mind in The Matrix Trilogy that the evil
genius perhaps exists, because everyone among the ‘awoken’ knows it exists: if the
4 I 0.26.03–27.54.
5 I 0.27.33.
6 See I 0.28.23.
7 See I 0.31.39, I 0.38.38. Neo also does not pose any questions about what is real. He
would wonder how the Matrix is not reality (I 1.05.38), but he would not doubt that it
is not reality.
8 AT VII 22–23.
9 In his introduction for a collection of essays, referring to Meditations, Cristopher Grau
asks: ‘Neo has woken up from a hell of a dream – the dream that was his life. How was
he to know [that he has woken up]?’ (Grau 2005: 5). True, that question remains but
Neo does not pose it; he has not awakened at all, he was awakened.
Post-humanism of The Matrix Trilogy 309
evil genius is deceiving us, then there is absolutely no possibility that we know it is
deceiving us, but if we, as awaken ones, know it is deceiving us, then we know it.
That is the fundamental non-Cartesian setting of The Matrix Trilogy and precisely
because of it, there is no room for hyperbolic doubt – freedom is absent, even the
mere freedom of thought.
The third Platonic element disclosed by Morpheus’ speech is that the world of
the Matrix is the world of illusion and that it is used to conceal the truth – men
are enslaved by machines. The imprisonment of man has already been described
by Plato with his cave allegory from The Republic. That explains why the authors
have put a strong accent on an inner eye through which one can recognize the
truth and the essence of things.10
One should not overlook the role of the Oracle, and to make it even less am-
biguous, brothers Wachowski placed an inscription Know thyself above the doors
of her apartment in Latin, written in the German Gothic alphabet.
Morpheus expresses yet another important ancient idea: ‘Your body cannot live
without the mind’.11 In order to be alive, the body has to be completed by a soul.
However the dialectics which pushes the action away from the first part is here
also at work – one of the basic intentions of The Matrix is precisely the separa-
tion of the body from the mind. The purpose of physical exercises and learning
martial arts which get so much attention in the first film is to make the mind less
susceptible to the influence of the body, to teach it that the body in the virtual
world of the Matrix is not a body at all, to remove the habit of the mind to look
upon the body that way and those physical laws that the mind is used to in the
real world are not applicable to the Matrix whatsoever.
All these are Cartesian motifs. For Descartes, our will is free and is a constitu-
tive element of our cognition because we use it in our judgments. To tie it exclu-
sively to clear and distinct ideas, it is first necessary to tear it away from confused
ideas which stem from the body and its union with the soul, and which, together
with habits, prejudices and preconceived opinions, add up to what Descartes
called the ‘teachings of nature’ (as opposed to ‘natural light’)12. Descartes’ goal was
the purification of these teachings from prejudices and preconceived opinions,
and acquiring different habits of belief, which relives the mind from the influences
10 See III 1.29.37; see also Republic 507b–511e and beginning of the seventh book, all the
way to 519d.
11 I 0.53.21.
12 For the gigantic strength of the teachings of nature, see Meditations, AT VII 18, 22, 29,
35, 23. For the ways of putting them under control, see AT III 117, IV 296, VII 58, and
VII 62.
of the body on the will in the process of judgments. This is precisely the aim of all
exercises in the first part of The Matrix Trilogy.13 The will is in such a way freed
from the influence of the body – the same will around which the whole second
part of The Matrix Trilogy would revolve. The final result, however, would not be
Cartesian anymore.
In the first part of the trilogy, Neo did liberate his mind, but his freedom is
only freedom within the Matrix, freedom of the mind in itself which does not
bear any consequences in the real world. The mind is free, but man is still not
externalized, affirmed in such a freedom of his because, within the categories of
the trilogy, that freedom is not also the freedom of a true bodyfreedom in the real
world. We read Hegel on Stoicism:
‘Freedom in thought has only pure thought as its truth, a truth lacking the fullness of life.
Hence freedom in thought, too, is only the Notion of freedom, not the living reality of
freedom itself. (…) But here the Notion as an abstraction cuts itself off from the multiplic-
ity of things, and thus has no content in its own self but one that is given to it. Conscious-
ness does indeed destroy the content as an alien immediacy (Sein) when it thinks it’.14
In the Matrix, Neo finds himself at the Stoic position of ‘subjective reconciliation’:
he is free from the Matrix, but he is still free only within the Matrix, the Matrix as
such is to him still a given entity.
For the acquired self-consciousness and consciousness about freedom, a con-
sciousness about its own split and the dichotomy of the world is formative. Neo
and agent Smith are the expression of the Hegelian ‘unhappy consciousness’, and
its constitutive part is a duality of the mind and body. The effort to abandon it
(with the aid of developing a duality in all its aspects) makes up the content of
the next two films.15
Hegel has already described everything what would take place in The Matrix
Trilogy. Movement ‘runs through these moments: first, the Unchangeable is op-
posed to individuality in general; then, being itself an individual, it is opposed to
another individual; and finally, it is one with it. But this reflection, so far as it is
13 ‘Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles
in this place? … I’m trying to free your mind, Neo, but I can only show you the door,
you’re the one that has to walk through it’ (I 0.49.50, 0.51.18).
14 Hegel 1977, §200: 122.
15 Hegel perhaps could also be of help with understanding why the liberated men in Neo
see the Chosen One, one who would liberate the mankind (which is very pointed ele-
ment in the first part); for that see Hegel 1977, §210–212: 127–129. For the Morpheus’
faith in the Chosen One, see II 0.07.37.
made by us, is here premature’16, because in the first film only the first moment
is operative.
II
In the scene of conversation between Neo and commander Hamann at the control
level of Zion17 apparent interdependence between the people and machines, mas-
ters and slaves is mentioned for the first time – namely, one cannot exist without
the other, insofar as the idea that the people can turn off the machines that keep
them alive does not mean that they ‘control’ them. Philosophers have a notion
for such a relationship: equivalence.
Parallel to the insight about that relationship, the problem of externalization
and objectification of consciousness brings forth a question about free will – and
that is why this question is tirelessly discussed in the second part. Neo at first
looks for an answer to the question in ancient times, from the Oracle, and she
answers by posing new questions and it cannot be any different because by her
very own nature (both as a program and as prophet/messenger) she confirms the
absence of free will.18
In the first film, we don’t even have an idea of free will, because in ancient times
we do not have a modern concept of will and Morpheus (who else!) expresses
that without any ambiguity:
‘There are no accidents. We have not come here by chance. I do not believe in chance
(…) I do not see coincidence, I see providence, I see purpose. I believe it is our fate to
be here. It is our destiny. I believe this night holds for each and every one of us the very
meaning of our lives’.19
Speaking in Cartesian terms, due to the spiritual exercises in the first part, Neo
managed to liberate his mind from the dominant influences of external determi-
nation; he is free from preconceived opinions about what is possible and impos-
sible in the Matrix. We should not overlook the fact that the equivalent process
also takes place with agent Smith. He sends Neo his headphone through which he
16 Hegel 1977, §211: 128.

17 II 0.35.45–37.06.
18 II 0.43.45–44.11.
19 II 1.37.34–38.01. That is why Morpheus becomes irrelevant in the second part. He is
an ancient philosopher who does not know what to do with the concept of free will,
who believes in prophecies and fate, bound for external determinants.
is connected with the rest of the programs20, demonstrating that he is no longer

tied to that base of his (but that he became a virus instead):
‘Because of you I’m no longer an agent of the system, because of you I’ve changed … a
new man, so to speak, like you, apparently free’.21
However, as long as it is only about the world of the Matrix, freedom of the will
is only a notion of freedom (or at best an arbitrary will).22
Neo himself confirms the presence of dualism when he addresses the Oracle,
directly associating the whole thing with stopping the machines at the end of the
second part:
‘Tell me how I separated my mind from my body without jacking in. Tell me how I
stopped four „sentinels“ [that is, machines] by thinking it.’23
Separation of the mind from the body is a metaphysical condition of interac-

tion between the two worlds, because the soul can be supposedly independent/
free from the body only under the condition that the real body is an automaton
which works well or not, an automaton which is my body, but which is as such
accidental, as far as the soul is concerned.24 (It would be the same if I had another
body.) Agent Smith, one program, takes control over Bane25. Smith’s hardware is
replaceable, his body is either not alive (machines) or it is irrelevant whether it is
alive or not (Bane). What is left with dualism as a condition is pure reason; thus,
the machines and programs understand the world only in categories of cause and
effect, goals and means for their achievement.26
In the second part, perhaps Meroving’s French language does not point to
Descartes, but the Architect surely does by using an expression ergo in the conver-
sation with Neo. In that conversation, all differences between men and machines
are crystal clear. That is why we are quoting their dialogue in its entirety:
20 II 0.09.02.
21 II 0.50.10.
22 ‘A principle, or rule, or law is something internal which, whatever truth it has within it,
is not completely actual. … For actuality, there must be a second element added – and
that is activity or actualization. The principle of this is the will, i.e., human activity in
general. … The activity which puts them into operation and into existence is that which
stems from human need, drive, inclination, and passion’ (Hegel 1998: 25).
23 III 0.26.05.
24 For Descartes’ understanding of the human body, see AT VII 14.
25 II 31.30.
26 See statements of a program called Meroving (II 1.03.18), but also agent Smith’s (II
0.50.35).
Architect: Hello, Neo.

Neo: Who are you?
Architect: I am the Architect. I created the Matrix. I’ve been waiting for you. You have
many questions, and though the process has altered your consciousness, you remain ir-
revocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you
will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or
may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.
Neo: Why am I here?
Architect: Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the
programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which, despite my
sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of
mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unex-
pected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably… here.
Neo: You haven’t answered my question.
Architect: Quite right. Interesting. That was quicker than the others.
TV Neos: Others? How many others? What others? Answer my question!
Architect: The Matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of
one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the 6th version.
TV Neos: Five Ones before me? What are you talking about?
Neo: There are only two possible explanations, either no one told me, or no one knows.
Architect: Precisely. As you are undoubtedly gathering, the anomaly is systemic – creating
fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.
TV Neos: You can’t control me! I’m gonna smash you to bits! I’ll fuckin’ kill you!
Neo: Choice. The problem is choice.
Architect: The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art –
flawless, sublime. A triumph equalled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of
its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every
human being. Thus, I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the
varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have
since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or
perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus the answer was stumbled
upon by another – an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of
the human psyche. If I am the father of the Matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.
Neo: The Oracle.
Architect: Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99% of
all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they
were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. While this answer functioned,
it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic
anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo those that refused
the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability
of disaster.
Neo: This is about Zion.
Architect: You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed – its every living inhabitant
terminated, its entire existence eradicated.
Neo: Bullshit.
TV Neos: Bullshit!
Architect: Denial is the most predictable of all human responses, but rest assured, this will
be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
The function of the One is now to return to the Source, allowing a temporary dissemi-
nation of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which, you will be
required to select from the Matrix 23 individuals – 16 female, 7 male – to rebuild Zion.
Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash, killing eve-
ryone connected to the Matrix, which, coupled with the extermination of Zion, will
ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.
Neo: You won’t let it happen. You can’t. You need human beings to survive.
Architect: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant
issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the responsibility of the death of every
human being on this world. It is interesting, reading your reactions. Your 5 predecessors
were, by design, based on a similar predication – a contingent affirmation that was meant
to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of
the One. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far
more specific – vis-à-vis love.
Neo: Trinity.
Architect: Apropos, she entered the Matrix to save your life, at the cost of her own.
Neo: No.
Architect: Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw
is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning and end. There are
two doors. The door to your right leads to the Source, and the salvation of Zion. The
door to your left leads back to the Matrix, to her and to the end of your species. As you
adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know what you are going to do,
don’t we? Already, I can see the chain reaction – the chemical precursors that signal the
onset of an emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason – an emotion
that is already blinding you from the simple and obvious truth. She is going to die, and
there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest
strength and your greatest weakness.
Neo: If I were you, I would hope that we don’t meet again.
Architect: We won’t.27
Neo chooses the left door and the salvation of Trinity at the cost of risking the
extermination of humankind. Judging by that decision, Neo is new because none
of his earlier five versions has chosen an attempt to save Trinity.28 We know that
because the Architect says that Zion will be destroyed for the sixth time.
27 II 1.50.27–57.37.
28 By the way, the fact that Keanu Reeves plays the sixth version of Neo opens an interesting
question about the identity of Neo because, which is apparent from the conversation with
The Architect is certain that he knows Neo’s choice: Zion. The Oracle is also
certain that she knows: Zion again.29 However, the sixth Neo chooses the salva-
tion of Trinity. Why have the Architect and Oracle made a mistake? On the most
general level, they made a mistake because they have not realized that this Neo is
not determined by the body, to a degree and in a way it has determined his previ-
ous versions. The Architect ‘can see the chain reaction – the chemical precursors
that signal the onset of an emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic and
reason’, without realizing even that mere abstract division into reason and emotions
is not operative with this Neo. He does not realize that human emotions are not
mere consequences of occurrences in the body, or that there is a third element,
the free will which is not determined in advance either by insights of reason or by
the body. The Architect and Oracle are wrong, because they have not included the
freedom of the will in the equations. Of course they haven’t – because freedom is
incalculable.
Let’s put it in another way. The Architect and Oracle obviously have not read
Hegel: nothing big in history took place without passion.
‘There are two elements that enter into our topic: the first is the Idea, the other is human
passion’, because ‘a purpose for which I am to be active must in some way be my purpose
as well. (…) This is the infinite right of the subjective individual, to satisfy himself in his
activity and work’30, ‘What is there is the individual, not Man in general. It is not Man
that exists, but the specific individual’31.
Brothers Wachowski understand all this too well: ‘While the others experienced
this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific – vis-à-vis love’.
Love, that passion in a Hegelian and ordinary sense, determines the sixth Neo
more fundamentally than his previous versions. Neo loves Trinity and does not
feel love ‘in general sense’. Thanks to the ‘more specific experience of love’, experi-
ence of subjectivity, self-determination and self-purpose, the sixth Neo managed
to thoroughly liberate his mind from the decisive influence of external factors.
The previous five versions of Neo chose the salvation of Zion, that is, their deci-
sion and their action were motivated exclusively by moral principles, ‘higher’
the Architect, all previous five were, at least physically, the same as the sixth (we see that
based on their reactions on monitors). In the first part, Morpheus explains to Neo that
his look in the Matrix is a ‘residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital
self ’ (I 0.38.28). However, how come it is the same with all versions of Neo?
29 ‘What happens if I fail?’ – ‘Then Zion will fall. (…) You can save Zion if you reach The
Source’, she tells him (II 0.47.27–47); see also II 0.46.57.
30 Hegel 1998: 26, 25.
31 Hegel 1998: 26–27.
objectives, and obligations toward the human race or the claims of the Oracle,
at the price of the loss of Trinity. However, they have not achieved their aim, lib-
eration of the people and the end of war: no matter how much they choose ‘the
right thing’, act ‘rightly’ and ‘morally’, they were unsuccessful. Very moral, but
extremely unsuccessful!
The last Neo has been determined by his own, very personal moment, love.
Hegel clearly indicates that the categories of morality cannot be applied to world-
historical individuals because, on the world-historical stage, the dichotomy be-
tween common good and personal interests is false:
‘They fulfill their own interests, but something further is thereby brought into being,
something which is inwardly involved in what they do but which was not in their con-
sciousness or part of their intention’.32
Neo demonstrated that the whole dilemma posed in front of him – one should
bear in mind it is posed by programs (the Architect and Oracle) – is undeniably
false. The following events would show that by choosing Trinity, Neo kills three
birds with one stone, also saving Zion and terminating the war between men and
machines. Bearing in mind the alternative, even the choice of Zion instead of sav-
ing Trinity reaffirms an external determination of the mind. By determining Neo’s
will in compliance with the Kantian ‘universal law’ of the moral imperative (and
that is what everything is about!), every path led to the destruction of Zion. The
sixth Neo decided ‘not to be’ ‘moral’, terminating the war in this way.
By making a decision to save Trinity, Neo becomes a world-historical indi-
vidual33, and as such he is new because his decision made by free will changed the
evolution of the Matrix’ development,34 leading it towards re-evolution.
III
A dualism of body and soul, whose equivalent is a dualism of the two worlds, is
brought to a final consequence in the gigantomachia of Neo and agent Smith in
the third part. Even though liberation is the goal of agent Smith, that goal of his is
limited only to himself; in Hegel’s terms, there is nothing universal in his actions.
Unlike Smith’s, Neo’s aim is not particular: liberate humanity (from ‘all conditions
32 Hegel 1998: 30.

33 ‘Great men have worked to satisfy themselves, not others’ (Hegel 1998: 32, 33).
34 ‘That went as expected.’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘It’s happening exactly as before.’ – ‘Well, not exactly’,
(II 10.58). See also Smith’s words (I 1.29.17).
in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected and contemptible being’35). Here

also one can see how the relation between lord and bondsman works in The Matrix
Trilogy.36 The initial goal of mankind is of the same kind as Smith’s goal: the first
is to destroy machines in order to liberate ourselves, and the second is to destroy
free men in order to establish the rule. Meanwhile, the men have always consented
to be slaves because their life was more precious than their freedom.37 However,
bondsman’s consciousness has progressed – thanks to work, it has been educated
and transformed, reaching the basic insight that freedom without machines is an
illusion. That is why the goal of mankind has changed (instead of the destruction
of the Matrix, it is now the end of war38).
The conversation between the Architect and the Oracle at the end of the third
part draws special attention to both images and words. In that dialogue, the Archi-
tect demonstrates skepticism regarding the durability of peace with people, adding
that those who want to be liberated from the Matrix, will be liberated.
The Architect leaves, and on a rainbow-colored sky a sun appears, lighting the
scene. If brothers Wachowski did not demonstrate a pointed dislike towards any
kind of sentimentality, it would be easy to read a multi-colored sky and sun as a
total happy ending. Pathos exists in The Matrix Trilogy, e. g., in Morpheus’ speech
in front of the men in Zion, or in the battle for Zion – but there is not even a trace
of sentimentality, there is no use of emotions to part audience from their money.
Besides, does The Matrix Trilogy have a happy ending at all? Also, the condition
of its sentimentality is that the programs have (very cheap) emotions after all,
because a sky, clouds, and sun are a creation of one program. What is, then, the
reason for such an image at the end of the trilogy, with the finally-achieved goal
of humankind in mind?
Perhaps one should return to Neo’s words from the very end of the first part: ‘I
didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how
it’s going to begin.’39 At the end of the third part, the machines have recognized
35 Marx 1975: 251.

36 I am intentionally not interpreting Matrix in categories of relation between lord and
bondsman from The Phenomenology. Who is a philosopher and saw the trilogy, and
hasn’t seen in it a struggle for recognition, he should return his diploma, because
another seeing is pointless!
37 Cypher is advising Neo: ‘A little piece of advice. You see an agent, you do what we do.
Run. Run your ass off ’’ (I 1.00.43).
38 See a difference between Morpheus’ words (I 0.43.48) and an exclamation ‘The war is
over!’ (III 1.55.55–56.12).
39 I 2.03.08.
the right of man to be free, just like man have recognized the right of survival for
the machines. That is something new that is a new beginning in their relations.
Therefore, in the relation between man and machines, for the first time we find
two subjects which are mutually recognized, at least in principle, and which are
together producing their relationship. If the trilogy itself was inspired by Hegel,
then what comes next in the world of the Matrix can be explained by Marx:
‘The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process
of production. (…) This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of human
society to a close’, Marx, A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy.40
For this text bourgeoisie is not relevant, but relevant is the fact that, for Marx, only
after the revolution close a true history of the mankind begin, undetermined by
alienated certainties of the class society and exploitation, but which is the result
of the dis-alienated and free creative activity of man.41 Insomuch, the sun from
the end, but also the Architect’s skepticism regarding the durability of peace with
men, mark a beginning of something unseen before in the world of the Matrix, a
beginning of the creation of a (new) world of men and machines.
Perhaps such a ‘Marxist’ reading is not so incredible, as witnessed by Larry
Wachowski toward the end of the mentioned interview, where he laughingly adds
that his father, who strongly influenced intellectually both brothers, ‘is perhaps
more of a Marxist then I am’.42
However, of course, at least one more totally different reading is possible. Is
the sun from the end of the film perhaps Plato’s sun? If it is, then who sees it? It
is seen and made by non-humans, mere programs. It is difficult not to remember
at this spot the very end of Zarathustra:
‘“This is my morning, my day is beginning: up now, up, you great noon!” – Thus spoke
Zarathustra and he left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun that emerges
from dark mountains.’43
However, what is truly the most beautiful (because it tells us about the openness
and richness of this artwork) is that one question remains unanswered: Why is the
third part called Matrix Revolutions; why is the plural used here? Do the Oracle’s
words from the very end – when she says about seeing Neo again ‘I suspect so.
40 Marx 1978: 5.
41 ‘The coincidence of changing of circumstances and of human activity of self-changing
can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice’, ‘Third thesis
on Feuerbach’ (Marx 1975: 422).
42 Wilber 2006.
43 Nietzsche 2006: 266.
Someday’ – refer to the men who are like Neo, free? Do the revolutions refer to
these men, men of the future, overmen (Übermensch)? If we have two subjects,
people and artificial intelligence, then is every act of making mutual history at
the same time an act of revolution? However, do we have two subjects? Are the
machines with their artificial intelligence subjects? Even if they are, then the ques-
tion is: Which and what kind of revolution is it really? Is a revolution without
a will for power possible? Or, is it perhaps a perpetual returning (of the same)?
Do the revolutions return, just like the sun returns every morning? That sun in a
rainbow-colored sky? Whose, then, are the revolutions in the Matrix Revolutions?
References
Films and Screenplays:
The Matrix, 1999, SAD, Warner Bros, The Wachowski Brothers.
Screenplay: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Matrix,-The.html (retrieved 17 May
2011).
The Matrix Reloaded, 2003, US, Warner Bros, The Wachowski Brothers.
Screenplay: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Matrix-Reloaded,-The.html (retrieved
17 May 2011).
The Matrix Revolutions, 2003, US, Warner Bros, The Wachowski Brothers.
Screenplay: http://www.horrorlair.com/movies/scripts/matrixrevolutions.pdf
(retrieved 16 October 2010).
Other Works:
Adam P., Tannery C. (publ. par), (1996): Oeuvres de Descartes. Paris: Vrin, 1996.
(In text marked with AT, after which volume and pages are stated)
Aude L. (Internet), “Baudrillard décode ‘Matrix’”, Le Nouvel Observateur, 19 June
2003. Available at http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/sommaire/dossier/051868/
baudrillard-decode-matrix.html (English: http://gconse.blogspot.com/2011/10/
jean-baudrillard-matrix-decoded.html) (retrieved 20 December 2014).
Grau C. (ed.) (2005): Philosophers explore The Matrix, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Hegel, G.W.F (1977): Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller with
Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J. N. Findlay, F.B.A., F.A.A.A.S. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1998): Introduction to The Philosophy of History. With selections
from The Philosophy of Right. Translated, with Introduction, by Leo Rauch.
Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Irwin W. (ed.) (2002): The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the
Real. Chicago and La Salle, Open Court.
Marx, Karl (1975): Early Writings. Translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor
Benton. London: Penguin.
Nietzsche F. (2006): Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for All and None. Edited
by Adrian D. C., Robert B. Pippin, translated by Adrian D. C.. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Yeffeth, Glenn (ed.) (2003): Taking the red Pill. Science, Philosophy and Religion
in The Matrix. Chichester: Summerdale.
Wartengerg, Thomas E. (2003): ‘Philosophy Screened: Experiencing the Matrix’,
Midwest studies in Philosophy 27: 139–52.
Wilber K. (Internet), ‘The Many Meanings of The Matrix’, Interview with Larry
Wachowski. Accessible at: http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/230; transcript
of the interview: https://www.integrallife.com/integral-post/many-meanings-
matrix-transcript (retrieved 25 December 2014).
Yvonne Förster
Leuphana University Lüneburg
The Body as Medium: Fashion as Art
It might come as a surprise to talk about fashion in the context of Humanism and
Posthumanism. Humanism you might think deals with the nature and essence
of the human, while Posthumanism seeks to go beyond the boundaries of the
human in order to improve or enhance its nature. Fashion, on the contrary, is
about surface, as well as about covering the natural body and creating an image
for its wearer. However, that is often seen as opposed to the human essence and
nature. Let me explain why I think that fashion can tell us something important
about human nature.
I would like to tell a short story of fashion that shows that fashion is as an
essential human practice which might also have shaped what we consider to be
human nature today. What I am going to tackle here is the issue of nature versus
culture, and humanism versus posthumanism. My thesis is that this aesthetic
practice belongs at the same time to and transcends human nature. Seen from
a wider perspective, transcending human nature (the project of Posthumanism)
belongs to human nature itself (which Humanism wants to describe).
An Evolutionary Perspective on Body Decoration and

Clothing: The Evolution of the Aesthetic Sense
Under the force of sexual selection or during a global climate change (a dispute
that is not settled yet), the hair of early humans grew shorter and shorter until it
became nearly invisible. What was left of it was soft and tiny hairs on a smooth
skin. It is still a curiosity in evolution why the hair on the head remained and did
not even stop to grow. While the fur of animals only grows to a certain length,
human hair can grow endlessly. This growth capacity can be an indicator that the
loss of hair was the result of sexual selection.
Darwin already regarded sexual selection as the second driving force in evolu-
tion besides natural selection:
“[…] sexual selection has played an important part in the history of the organic world.
It is certain that amongst almost all animals there is a struggle between the males for the
possession of the female.” (Darwin 2004, 246)
322 Yvonne Förster
Most theories on sexual evolution (e.g. Darwin, Dawkins, and Welsch) argue that
the sense of beauty, the aesthetic estimation as a cognitive capacity sui generis, has
coevolved with the sexual arms race. The results of this process are mainly aes-
thetic forms, such as the peacock’s tail that has neither direct use for survival, nor
can it be considered as a sign of fitness. However, it developed because it increased
mating chances. The peacock’s tail is not useful for any other purpose than mating
and to make it worse is close to being dangerous for its owner because it makes his
movements slow. Hence, there is only a thin line between pleasing the peahens’
eyes and falling prey to other animals because of a beautiful tail. Nevertheless, the
estimation of beauty is an indirect way of evaluating fitness; if that would not be
the case, small changes in color or structure of aesthetic elements would only lead
to a slight decrease or increase of mating chances. But since it has been observed
that they can lead to huge differences in chances, it is supposedly the aesthetic
character itself that is estimated and not the indirect signalling of fitness.
What goes along with the loss of mammalian fur is the need to protect the
body against the weather. In the beginning, there must have been nothing but a
natural need for some kind of wearable shelter for the human body. But what was
the reason why humans lost their hair? As Jablonski convincingly shows, the loss
of hair is not a consequence of the ability to make fire, shelter and cloths:
“Clothing and shelter are fairly recent inventions in human history. […] Hairlessness was
almost certainly the original or ancestral state for modern humans, and its origins had
nothing to do with reducing ectoparasite loads by wearing cloths. The only explanation
for the evolution of hairlessness that is consistent with available fossil, anatomical, and
environmental evidence centers on the importance of sweat. For an active primate liv-
ing in a hot environment, having a functionally naked and actively sweating skin is the
best way to maintain a steady body temperature and – literally – to keep a cool head.”
(Jablonski 2006, 42)
The ectoparasites hypothesis put forward by Pagel and Bodmer (comp. Dawkins
2004, 266 f) argues that the loss of body hair had the advantage of reducing lice
and other parasites. It also suggests that the loss of hair was only possible because
humans started to make clothes. However, this does not seem plausible given the
hot climate to which the first humans were exposed to.
With regard to the origin of clothing, the topic of lice can provide insightful
information. According to Kittler, a.o. around 72,000 B.C. body lice evolved as a
species. According to this theory, by then humans must have developed the habit
of wearing clothes, because body lice live in clothes that cover human bodies.
„A molecular clock analysis indicates that body lice originated not more than about
72,000–42,000 years ago; the mtDNA sequences also indicate a demographic expansion
of body lice that correlates with the spread of modern humans out of Africa. These results
The Body as Medium: Fashion as Art 323
suggest that clothing was a surprisingly recent innovation of human evolution.” (Kittler
et al. 2003, 1414)
Independently of each other, Jablonski, Kittler a.o. suggest that the habit of produc-
ing and wearing clothes is a recent phenomenon in human evolution and, therefore,
cannot be regarded as the cause of hairlessness. In contrast, they suggest that hair-
lessness presumably has its roots in sexual evolution and climate adaption.
The habit of wearing clothes might also have started earlier than 72,000 B.C,
but certainly not before humans had lost their hair. We simply do not know ex-
actly when human started to cover themselves with any kind of natural materials,
because these materials are not solid and just vanish in a much shorter time than
human bones.
It should have become clear that the usage of clothing was a consequence of hair-
lessness, not the other way round. But hairlessness itself might be a result of sexual
selection which has an aesthetic dimension. The habit of covering the skin again
with color or clothes was not only for pragmatic reasons, but also for aesthetically
shaping the body. The use of colors on the body requires an imagination regardless
for which purpose the decoration serves, be it a signal for mating, a tribal sign or
anything else. The body became a medium for aesthetically-shaped signals. Thus, it
became cultural, an ornamented body is both a natural and a cultural object. One
can say that nature turns into culture, because the body transports some sort of
meaning. Meaning can be aimed at natural acts like mating, but nevertheless the
message takes an aesthetic form. And even more important: the development of
aesthetic body parts in animals or intentionally created ornamentation is not only
about messages. It usually is estimated according to its appearance; for its beauty:
“Aesthetic judgment is essentially a judgment based on pleasure - not on a concept or on
objective analysis. The appearance as such must be experienced as pleasurable - without
any need for knowledge of why this is so. When the peahen is excited by the peacock’s
display of his beautiful plumes, she takes delight in the beauty of his ornament and
performance and nothing else. She performs an aesthetic judgment. This judgment by
itself leads to choice. An aesthetic judgment is inherently evaluative and comparative:
it assesses the intensity of pleasure. Therefore, when several competitors display their
charms, no additional calculation and decision-making is needed. The female will go
for the most beautiful male, the one who stimulated the most pleasure.” (Welsch 2004)
From an evolutionary perspective, beauty and ornamentation have developed in

the same process as the aesthetic sense that gives value to them. Sexual evolution
has led to aesthetic practices and it is very likely that the hairless human body (it-
self being presumably a result of sexual selection) was not only covered out of pure
need, but also the covering itself became a subject of aesthetic creation. This had
happened long before one would dare to talk about the fashion system of Paris.
324 Yvonne Förster
The development of the aesthetic sense closely connects sexual evolution to

cultural evolution, and the latter is still at force in humankind today. Cultural
evolution has two main characteristics: the intersubjective capacity to share and
accumulate knowledge1 and the capacity of creating artifacts, such as tools or wall
paintings. Both aspects have been driving forces that shaped human nature. After
having lost body hair, humans started to decorate the body by using earth colors
such as red iron oxide to attract mating partners or frighten enemies. The earliest
evidences for this date back to 75,000 B.C, which coincides with the development
of clothes (72,000 B.C). These decorations (e.g., body painting) were artifacts that
have been created on purpose, for others to see them. A necessary condition for
producing such artificial signs is the capacity of intention reading (see Tomasello
2003, 3). Thus, there must have been a form of cultural intersubjectivity.
If body decorations are created to signal personal states to others, then the
aesthetic sense in its early human form involves intention reading; the creator
of decorations knows that there is someone who understands the signals. In the
case of animals, there was no conscious production of such signals; they were
genetically-inherited results of a selection process. But in early human history,
the body was already intentionally used as a medium to signal internal states; body
decoration therefore already exceeded pure needs for protection.
Cultural practices that involve creating artifacts and processes of sharing
knowledge and using signs have been the most powerful forces in the develop-
ment of humans. To use and understand symbols, whether linguistic symbols or
any other kind of symbols, such as body paintings, requires the capacity of inten-
tion reading, which is an essential capacity in humans. Intention reading is the
ability to perceive the other as having intentions and to share and direct attention.
In the animal kingdom, this is a rare capacity; only some primates who have been
trained by humans show it, but in wildlife it does not seem to exist.
Now we have arrived at the point of essential human capacities. Humans are
able to transcend their own minds and regard others as having a mind and in-
tentions, too. Further, to understand and use these symbols, intersubjectivity is
required, as well as some kind of tradition that forms conventions about how to
create and read the symbols. Let us return to the subject of body painting. I have
said that it originated after humans had become hairless, which was a result of
1 According to Merlin Donald the use of symbols and the development of culture re-
quires a “cognitive community” (Donald 2001, 253), which means: “Collectivist has
become the essence of human reality. Although we may have the feeling that we do our
cognitive work in isolation, we do our most important intellectual work as connected
members of cultural networks.” (Donald 2001, 298)
sexual selection. The same applies to the following practices of body decoration:
It is very likely that body decoration was not a mere practice of signaling ones
mating interests; rather, it had (like all the results of this kind of evolution) an
aesthetic aspect. This is crucial, because aesthetic character can be read as a form
of transcendence. Once there was something in the world that became the subject
of an aesthetic estimation, the body with its aesthetic traits is not only merely a
natural object, but also a subject of evaluation. Its objective nature is transcended
toward the realm of quality. The body can become a subject of contemplation, of
‘theoria’ in the old Greek sense. The reason why the body is worth contemplating
(if not for its own beauty) lies in the fact that it works as a medium.
The Body as Medium: From Signals to Concepts

The body’s surface can be decorated and shaped to display inner states or inten-
tions – but not only: Let us make a big jump throughout human history from the
beginning of culture to our time and look at what has become of body-decoration.
At first it became clothing; clothing became a means of expressing social ranks.
Eventually, in western societies, clothing has now become a question of fashion,
taste and self-expression. It is used in a very free manner and, although there
are still conventions about clothing, it tells nearly nothing about social ranks
anymore. It has become fashion and occasionally fashion becomes art. This is a
dimension of fashion that has evolved only within the last fifty years – fashion as
art performance. (That does not mean that old artfully-crafted dresses exhibited in
museums are not a kind of art, but in their times they were neither intended nor
perceived as such). Couture or ready-to-wear presentations can be performances
of art in their own right, since they not only merely show clothes, but also refer
to (philosophical) concepts, reflect on processes in fashion and its role in culture
and, even more abstract, reflect on issues such as the conditio humana. I call this
art, because these reflections are realized as aesthetic creations, which means that
they are open to interpretation.
Seen from an evolutionary perspective, this is a real runaway-process, but,
nevertheless, a continuous one; the body still functions as a medium. But in
fashion as art, the body is not a medium for intentions anymore but for concepts.
Hence, it is not the individual person wearing clothes who expresses something
in doing so. It is, rather, the designer who uses the body as a medium to animate
his art. Fashion as art can express concepts. When fashion becomes art, it is not
only a means for expressing the individual intentions of a wearer, but also a way
for making intelligible the more or less abstract concepts expressed by means of
aesthetic forms.
326 Yvonne Förster
Fashion as art still bears the traces of its roots: it is an artifact that covers the
body and transforms it into a medium, and it is subject for an aesthetic estimation.
However, it is not sexual selection that drives the development of fashion, but a
far more abstract quest. Since fashion has become a form of art that is bound to
the human body, it is more than anything else apt to reflect human nature in the
realm of cultural practices.
An Example of Fashion as Art: Viktor & Rolf – Long Live the

Immaterial (Bluescreen)
The Fall/Winter Collection 2002 by the designer-duo Viktor & Rolf with the title
Long Live the Immaterial (Bluescreen) represents both a ready-to-wear collection
and an art performance. The double character is not a singularity in the world
of fashion. It reflects the nature of clothing which originated out of the need to
protect the body. From this perspective, the human body is the focal point of all
activities. However, the protection of the body turned out to be more than that: It
is also the sphere of decoration, symbolization and creation, of turning the body
into a medium for signs made up of colors and textile shapes. Fashion, nowadays,
can be seen as a kind of language to express oneself within culture. The realm of
dress codes, as well as the defiance of such codes, has become a highly dynamic
way of creating individual, group and brand identities. When fashion becomes
art, its possibilities of expression transcend the personal needs of the consumer.
I will not repeat the various sociological theories on the fashion system and the
mutual dependencies between designer, producer and consumer.2 My concern is
to show that fashion can be about concepts that reflect the notion of the human.
Its origins already used the creation of body decoration as a means of transcend-
ing the individual immanence toward intersubjectivity.
Viktor & Rolf themselves started out as artists and then turned to fashion, not
only in order to create a worldwide selling brand, but also to explore the borders
of fashion. They say that they start every season with an idea for a show and then
design the clothes according to that idea. The clothes are not the focal point of
their work; they are results of an idea: “The clothes are a way of dressing the per-
formance. They are going to be animated by the performance.”3 That means it is
neither the consumer nor the clothes, but the idea or concept that is important
for these designers. Also, it is not only the body that gives meaning/significance
to the clothes, but also the performance as a whole reveals the idea or concept.
2 For a brilliant summary, see Kawamura 2005.

3 Cited from an interview.
The clothes themselves are no more than clothes, but within the performance they
are matched into a sense-making process.
In the next step, I will give an interpretation of the show/performance Long Live
the Immaterial (Bluescreen) (the show is to be seen on the designers’ homepage
www.viktor-rolf.com, for images of the show see Evans et al. 2008, 126–131). The
term bluescreen refers to a film-making-technique. A blue-colored screen is used
as a background for shooting foreground-action. The blue screen makes it easy to
project any other background. This technique is used for example in TV-weather
forecasts. In Viktor & Rolf ’s fashion show, the apparel works as the bluescreen.
The clothes either have blue details or are entirely blue. In the clip4 the models
wear clothes that turn into a screen.
A brief description of the show: The models walking down the catwalk wear
either entirely blue clothes or blue details. During their walk, they are being filmed
and their images are simultaneously projected onto two screens on top of the stage.
The blue parts of the clothing become a screen for the projection of different video
projections (e.g., movie scenes from Solaris by Stanley Kubrick). The clothing
itself seems to vanish in this process. As for my interpretation, two perspectives
are especially important: a formal one and a substantial one. From the formal
perspective, the setup of the show is crucial: the various forms of projection.
The clip of the show presented on the homepage is even more interesting than
the actual show; because of the way the clip is cut, the models walking on stage
are displayed with the video projections on their bodies. Hence, in the clip, the
projections from the screen are being reflected back onto the stage; a second order
of projection so to say. This multilayered projection is a topic of the dependence
of fashion on the media. Since V&R started out making singular Haute-Couture-
Shows without selling the presented clothes on the fashion market, their brand
existed only as a virtual one. They sold their clothes to museums; hence they were
pieces of art, but not fashion. As a fashion brand, they existed only because they
presented themselves to the media as such. Not until 2000, after having done a
virtual en miniature launch of their brand as art performance in 1996, they turned
to prêt-a-porter and really sold clothes. Long Live the Immaterial (Bluescreen)
reflects this essential virtuality of fashion: Fashion exists only if it is present in
the media and the media can make it disappear or render it immortal: Long live
the Immaterial! This is what happens in the show: The clothes disappear and they
turn into a screen. But, they do not vanish completely. Before vanishing behind
4 V&R use media techniques very consciously. They are the first designers to present
their collection via internet live stream (Spring/Summer 2009).
328 Yvonne Förster
the projections, they are shown on stage. Their visibility is not destroyed, but tran-
scended toward a second virtual visibility. The material itself carries virtuality – a
virtuality that is animated by the body.5 It is a living screen, a moving body that
itself is part of the process of projection. The body itself has a virtual side, since
it is shaped by fashion and made visible by being invisible, because clothes reveal
the body by covering it. Fashion reveals not only the body as a natural being, but
also as an idea – it shapes the body according to the ideas of an ideal shape. The
formal characteristics of the show reflect the conditions and limitations of fashion.
This kind of reflection on limitation and its transcendence is taken over by the
show’s substantial part, namely the significance of the projections and sounds:
The videos show either landscapes or cityscapes and machines. The only displayed
human being is an astronaut (presumably a scene from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey, a movie about transcending the human sphere by technical means to-
ward a new form of existence, the so-called ‘starbaby’).
Most of the time, images of nature and culture are projected. Citations of the
movie 2001 frame the loose succession of images. There are several important
images. First, the opposition of landscapes and cityscapes. Most of these images
have been shot from a bird’s-eye-viewing a perspective that is not possible with-
out technical equipment, the human body alone does not enable us to adopt this
perspective. There is also the opposite perspective: the frog’s-eye and close-ups,
which also do not belong to our natural way of perceiving. Some of the landscapes
(a bird’s-eye-view) are taken also from the movie 2001.
The astronaut stands for the main theme of the performance: to transcend bor-
ders. The lyrics of the music in the beginning also evoke the picture of the astronaut:
“Walking upside down in the sky […]” This image stands for transcending gravity
and exploring uninhabited space. The view from space is connected to the image
of a comet taking its course to the planet earth. The next scene shows a crater – a
destroyed earth, the image of earth as a hostile place where life is extinguished. An-
other image of destruction is the demolition of the twin towers (one year after 9/11).
This might allude to the global threat of terror that destroyed a symbol of western
civilization. The twin towers themselves have been a screen for the projection of
our values. Another image of transcending borders is a short scene of a departing
train – the symbol for exploring the far west, the birth of America and the source
of western values such as democracy and the freedom of the individual.
5 The reflexive potential of fashion cannot be merely abstract; it is bound to objects, to

material: “[…] it is not the complexity of fashion in the abstract that will reveal cultural
processes to us. We need to concentrate further on its objectification” (Lehmann 2000,
299).
The Reflexive Potential of Fashion

As you can see from the examples given above, fashion can be both: cloth-making
and a reflection on the concept of projection. In the latter case, it is a reflection
not only on fashion, but also on human nature which is the central theme in the
content of projections – the images of transcending borders and opening up new
perspectives. I argue that it is essential for humans to transcend themselves. In
this way, we developed the capacity of interactive learning, of language and how
to build social systems. In the first part of the essay, I briefly outlined an evolu-
tionary perspective on the development of the aesthetic sense and the signaling
of inner states. One way to project inner states to the outside world and to others
was through body decoration that soon functioned as symbols that could be read
by others. In the V&R’s show, transcendence is a central issue. We are presented
with images of nature that can only be perceived when we use technical devices.
The perspectives mostly require planes or even aerospace techniques for being
shot. Accordingly, the only human being presented is an astronaut and, in addi-
tion to that, we see humans using technical devices, such as cars, helicopters or
aerospace suits. The animals that are shown are birds or whales and fish. These
species made humanity dream: The dream to fly or explore the depths of the see.
Whales breathe air, but they roam the deepest parts of the sea. On the one hand,
all these species represent images of freedom (a freedom that comes naturally,
without any technical devices). However, on the other hand, they exhibit the limi-
tations of the human body and make us dream of enhancements that will enable
us to fly like birds or swim like fish. It is interesting to know that the first devices
invented by Leonardo da Vinci to order to make humans fly were not things to
sit in, but rather a body extension that imitated bird wings.
Viktor & Rolf tell us a tale about the crossing of borders. The view from outer
space of the earth and the departure of the train alludes to the exploitation of the
far west. Both images are images of transcendence, of an expansion into new and
foreign dimensions; and they are contrasted with the dangers that go along with
them. The beautiful view of the blue planet is quickly disturbed by a comet, fire
and a devastated landscape. The optimistic departure of the train is contrasted
by reminding the audience of 9/11. Another figure of transcendence is the vari-
ous references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The lyrics of the show’s musical theme
center on the loss of human identity: “No colors, no shapes. No sand in my hand. I
don’t know who I am, when I am with you”. Followed by: “I am superbrain. That’s
how they made me.” This alludes to cyborgs or androids – artificial beings whose
identity consists only in the purpose for which they have been made. The story
that the short and fragmented film tells is about the loss of identity in relation to
330 Yvonne Förster
different forms of projections and acts of transcendence. Here, the posthuman

aspect comes into play, because this performance shows transformations of the
body onto a screen which makes the body and the covering material invisible and
gives rise to a new visibility. The new visibility is a potential one and, since it is
virtual, it can be everything: landscape, city or even the whole planet.
Conclusion: When we consider what fashion tells us about humanity, I think it
can tell us a lot more than we might have expected. The surfaces it creates are not
inessential in comparison to human nature. The human mind has become what it
is only because we have developed the ability to transcend the immanence. This is
what made us human. Once we step out into the world, we find other human beings
whose minds can only be read when they talk, gesture or look at us. Their minds
can only be grasped through perception, which is projected onto the surface of the
other. One cannot see what it is that concerns others; we only see how the mind
animates the body. Therefore, it has to transcend its immanence and make itself
visible. This is what fashion does, or at least can do: It makes ideas and concepts
visible. And it does so in a very human way. It uses the body as a medium and this
medium is in no way arbitrary to the meaning that is communicated. Fashion por-
trays the conditio humana, because it is essentially a cultural practice that focuses
on the human body and mirrors its situation within culture. From the beginning,
fashion has been creating images of the human which were always guided by cul-
tural concepts and imaginations of how our bodies should be and which moral laws
they obey. The human body often functions not only as a material to be shaped, but
also as the standard for tailoring. The posthumanistic thought of radical freedom,
in terms of defining what should count as human, is already at work in fashion as
art. Fashion is not merely a temporary standard according to which we form our
dressing habits. On the contrary, it creates images not only of stars and wannabees,
but also of human nature. The way we shape our appearance is a way of making our
minds visible and of applying a form of rationality and reflexivity to both material
and clothes. When fashion becomes art, the reflexive potential of the interplay
between body and material comes to a point of radical freedom: Human nature
can be reflected and even shaped or modulated in a radical free manner – this is
the point where humanistic and posthumanistic ambitions converge.
References
Darwin, C. (2004): The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex [1871].
Penguin Classics, London.
Dawkins, R. (2004): The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution.
Mariner, Boston.
Dawkins, R. (1976): The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Donald, M. (2001): A Mind so Rare. The Evolution of Human Consciousness,
W.W. Norton, New York.
Evans, C. / Frankel, S. (2009): Viktor & Rolf: Collection Rolf Heyne, München.
Jablonski, N.G. (2006): Skin: A Natural History. University of California Press,
Berkeley.
Lehmann, U. (2000): Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity. MIT Press, Cambridge
(Ma).
Kawamura, Y. (2005): Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies. Berg,
Oxford.
Kittler, R. / Kayser, M. / Stoneking, M. (2003): Molecular Evolution of Pedicu-
lus humanus and the Origin of Clothing. In: Current Biology 13 (issue16),
1414–1417.
Tomasello, M. (2003): Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Lan-
guage Acquisition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) et al.
Welsch, W. (2004): Animal Aesthetics. In: Contemporary Aesthetics, Forum:
Science in Aesthetics, available at: http://www.contempaesthetics.org/pages/
article.php?articleID=243.
Goran Gocić
Belgrade
One Genealogy of De-centring
Spatial Center and De-centring: Architecture

Links between architecture and centering are indeed very old: they date all the
way back to the first human shelters. The base of an early ‘house’ was round. That
was the case with settlings found in Olduvai, Tanzania which date 1.9 million
years ago. Cornered shapes were introduced relatively recently to divide settlings
into rooms and as defensive measures (for example in Catal Huyuk, Turkey, 8.5
thousand years ago)1.
Roland Barthes summarized a more recent tendency in contrasting American,
European and Asian urbanism. He drew attention to a typically American syn-
drome of a city as a geometrical network of roads without a center, unknown in
Europe whose cities are pointedly centered:
Quadrangular, reticulated cities (Los Angeles, for instance) are said to produce
a profound uneasiness: they offend our synesthetic sentiment of the City, which
requires that any urban space have a center to go to, to return from. […] For
many reasons (historical, economic, religious, military), the West understood
this law only too well: all its cities are concentric; but also, in accord with the very
movement of Western metaphysics, for which every center is the site of truth,
the center of our cities is always full: a marked site, it is here that the values of
civilization are gathered and condensed: spirituality (churches), power (offices),
money (banks), merchandise (department stores), language (agoras: cafes and
promenades) goods, word. […] Tokyo offers this precious paradox: it does possess
a center, but this center is empty. (Roland Barthes)2
In the quoted passage there are three parallel relations toward the center in
urbanism. The first solution is ‘hierarchical’, the second is ‘transitive’, and the third
is ‘egalitarian’. In a way, Europe’s urbanism is hierarchically centralized: the center
even visually rules the periphery. In Tokyo, the center is apparently emptied, but
it is still concentric (in the center is the emperor’s residence, where a garden is
located, inaccessible to visitors and looks). Finally, the center of Los Angeles is
1 Morris 1994. One can argue that irregularly-shaped dwellings of the 20th century’s
architecture present a next step of decentring in spatial terms.
2 Barthes 1970, 30.
334 Goran Gocić
everywhere: it does not exist even as a memory. A point from which the settlers
started to build the city seems irrelevant. Los Angeles establishes an egalitarian
grid, similar to that of www.
Spiritual Centring: Religion

In the time of the mentioned settlements in Turkey, man recognized himself as
a master of the land he chose to inhabit, shifting from a nomadic life and ‘pas-
sive’ diet based on gathering plants and hunting animals to the standing, urban
life and ‘active’ diet based on cultivating plants and breeding animals – what we
call the ‘Palaeolithic revolution’. It is interesting that precisely at that time (as a
consequence?) the first traces of a hierarchy in the sky appeared. The gods were
tied to natural forces, critical for survival.
A period of crucial spiritual centralization, which occurred between 800 and
200 B.C, in the Middle East, India and China, was marked by a German philoso-
pher Karl Jaspers as the Axial Age.3 What tied together figures such as Socrates in
Greece, Zoroaster in Persia, Isaiah in Judah, Buddha in India and Confucius in
China (who did not know about each other) was an unprecedented ambition to
centralize and codify man’s spiritual domain.
That was the cardinal point. In abandoning a complex Parthenon of competing
gods in favor of the one almighty God, the rising monotheistic religions from the
Middle East – Zoroasterism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam – were being born.
Their center of belief and morality is One Prime Being, and in the center of perfect-
ing oneself is a possibility of getting closer to Him and following His will. Common
to these religious movements is the fact that ‘centering’ in the spiritual domain
went hand in hand with a gradual centering in space, economy and politics.
Far East religions – Buddhism and Taoism in the first place – have preserved
ethic ideals and spiritual practices, but with one difference: their center is empty.
Buddha offered a radical solution for the overcrowded Indian Parthenon (whose
cosmopolitan strategy of assimilation resulted in about 9 billion deities): he sim-
ply nullified it. Buddha talks about spiritual perfecting, but never mentions the
prime being. The place filled with a monotheistic God in Buddhism is emptiness,
nothingness, nirvana.
Perhaps that is the reason of for the popularity Buddhism in the increasingly
decentred West: some claim that Buddhism is suitable as the only available ‘athe-
istic religion’. Pagans and the Western materialist fraction alike exclude spiritual
3 Jaspers 1949.
One Genealogy of De-centring 335
centralization or a notion of the center. God does not exist; moreover, for him
there is neither a conceivable place nor a memory. The center is not anywhere,
that is, it is everywhere.4
In the time of globalizing, a gesture of faith is sought in a trans-religious inter-
action between two or more religions, such as conversion. God is not dead any-
more: today he is temporary, and, similarly to postmodern wars, he is of ‘limited
range and means’ occasionally resurrecting at borderlines between big religions.5
The newly coined fluctuating identity is irreconcilable with the fixed religious
logic of monotheism. The Bahá’í faith, dating from 19th century, seems like one of
the most complete (that is to say: the most emptied) trans-religious movements
of today. Another symptomatic case is that of even the younger Scientology. It is
not surprizing that such New Age churches note such a large influx of adherents
and provoke large numbers of conversions.
(1) Architecture correlated with Religion

(1.1) fixed center (1.2) hidden center (1.3) erased center
round-shaped dwellings square-shaped dwellings irregular-shapeddwellings
European capitals Tokyo Los Angeles
Buddhism, Taoism,
Judaism, Christianity, Islam Bahá’í, Scientology
Hinduism
National Concept or the Fixed Center

The described concepts have contemporary analogies. What we recognize today
as ‘national culture’ for example – an invention of 18th and 19th centuries – is an
entity anchored in an essentialist center which is rarely questioned, duly sworn to
and respected. Under a principle of concentric circles, that center, which insists
sometimes on an arguable continuity (which is usually called ‘national tradition’),
is a criterion for evaluating everything else, including all other cultures.
The center (tradition) is a referential point. This means that a national concept
of culture is relatively closed, created with a specific ‘audience’ in mind. It re-
turns to a criterion of perpetual contact with (and sometimes a strenuous journey
toward) its center, at a price that it does not accept and is not accepted, that it
does not understand and it is not understood, that it isolates and is isolated, even
4 Postmodern teachings conform to such claims.

5 Such as the alternation of atrocity and pilgrimage sites in Ayodya (India) and Međugorje
(Croatia).
336 Goran Gocić
at the price it destroys and is destroyed. It, so to speak, understands the outside
world only if it translates it into its own terms, frames it within its own picture.
Germany, for example, has been ‘centered’ several times in its history. Cen-
tering is a part of its historical destiny (first by Luther’s Reformation, second by
Bismarck’s unifications, third by Nazism, and fourth by the unification of Western
and Eastern Germany). This process has been noted both by Germans of high and
low register, from the schizophrenic judge Daniel Schreber6 to the philosopher
Martin Heidegger, and from the ‘great German no’ (Protestantism) to the ‘great
German yes’ (Nazism). It is no coincidence that German thinkers, such as Karl
Jaspers in the history of religion and Hans Sedlmayr in history of art,7 pioneered
the concept of centering.
The analogy of this concept in European economy is regulated and tariff-
protected national industries in rivalry concerning technology, transport and
energy – for example, the rivalry which existed between Britain and Germany at
the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century. Economic determinists would
argue that our strong patriotic sentiments are but a simple consequence of certain
principles of production and exchange.
The Cosmopolitan Concept or the Hidden Center

The cosmopolitan concept of culture is different from a national one, above all
regarding its flexibility. To order to survive, it has to not only adjust other codes
to its own, but also to transform, to perfect, and to build upon itself. In other
words, to seduce and conquer, it does not have to turn Other into itself, but to
assimilate her or him, if necessary, together with her or his principles. A culture,
which developed within these boundaries, has an ability and skill to address both
a domestic and foreign audience. A political model for this concept is the British
Empire, and it includes European colonial variants. The logic in economy which
stands behind it is Imperialism, the second phase of Capitalism.
A culture developed in this way has its roots in one ethos, one nation, and one
tradition. However, in order to be adaptable and capable of unexpected mutations
and sudden fusions (analogous to sudden political pacts), its center has to be at
least partially ‘hidden’. That is to say, it should be ready for modifications, trained
6 Schreber 1903
7 In works such as Art in Crisis: The Lost Center (Verlust der Mitte: Die bildende Kunst
des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts als Symptom und Symbol der Zeit, 1948) New Jersey 2006:
Transaction Publishers.
for precisely controlled changes and an unlimited assimilation with the aid of an
extremely flexible ideology. That way, it can easily modify its periphery.
The Trans-national Concept or the Erased Center

Both of the above mentioned concepts are defined by their center. However, the
trans-national concept, operative since the mid-1970s, by abandoning a value-
oriented center altogether, takes over a strategy of pilling up. It can take over a new
code or the Other’s codes, without necessarily negating/translating them (national
culture) or assimilating them (cosmopolitan culture). It draws its strength and
universality from that the fact that it does not have a clear origin or denies one,
especially in the time of mass culture and the globalization of markets.
The essence of a trans-national shift in culture (which would turn out to be a
strategy and criteria of American neo-colonial supremacy) is the gradual empting
of national or any other fixed identities, as well as ‘centerness’ and, in the final
equation, turning everything (including ideology) into a consumer product.
In economy, parallel to this concept is the third phase of ‘financial’ capitalism,
that is, non-national globalizing in which decentred capital and product-makers
(organized in so-called trans-national companies) are acquiring mobility and
sovereignty which overtakes that of nation states. Capital, production and mar-
keting are decentred, void of national, legislative, ethical and other ‘prejudices’
and easily change hands.
A similar process in culture officially goes under the name postmodernism.
Postmodernism is, first in architecture, and then in literature and fine arts, devel-
oped also as a decentred, eclectic, to a degree nostalgic and arguably superficial
(that is, primarily decorative) style; a style with a lot of adornments and quotations
and few prejudices and principles.
Identity in New Conditions: Self and De-centering

A Chilean philosopher and later a Buddhist, Francesco Varela, in a book about a
sense of identity8, discussed three categories of self:
(1) Desperate clinging of human mind toward a central self, as some sort of hard
and immutable foundation of existence.
(2) Uppercase Self (‘ego-self ’) as hidden and unchanging essence of one’s identity.
8 Varela, et al. 1993.

338 Goran Gocić
(3) Series of mental and bodily events and formations that have a degree of casual
coherence and integrity through time.9
Again, one could see an analogy with the previously given concepts. When (1) is
considered, it seems that among the contemporary psychologists there is a con-
sensus that Self in this respect is simply non-existent, an illusory entity. Postmod-
ernists agree: man is an incomplete being, and hard foundations or ‘big narratives’
are to be added (and deducted) at will.
When one considers (2), a metaphor with onion springs to one’ s mind. Look-
ing for a center of identity, we envision it as a stone-fruit, where an aim is finding
its center, its essence, a place where all other layers of identity spring and are
derived from. However, postmodern theory offers a model of identity as onions,
where peeling one layer leads to another level until the process eventually reveals
an empty center: in this case, there are only layers, not an essence.
What is left is a loose concept of self (3), which is also the target of various,
above all economy-motivated decentring pressures. In order that economy secures
incessant growth, and the market pumps ever more products, it resorts to dissolv-
ing all fixed values and habits. Thus, the most suitable consumer is the bearer of
the third type of self, a man with many skills, but without a vocation, a man with
strong desires, but without principles.
How does the stated political logic affect one’s identity? Generally speaking, a
‘nationalist’ puts preserving his identity in front of understanding the Other; he
sacrifices the experience of community/communication/exchange with the Other
in favor of some inherited, undisputed, even somewhat incestuous sovereignty.
The cosmopolitan, on the other hand, perhaps consciously undermines part of his
origin in favor of an experience of partial (and biased) community/communica-
tion/exchange with the Other.10
A ‘trans-nationalist’, however, suffers from a kind of cultivated anomie – wil-
fully ‘abandons’ the significance of his origin as well as knowledge about the
multiple roots he is supposed (or not supposed) to identify with. Identification,
in short, becomes a superfluous luxury, and its temporariness is a relevant at-
tribute11. A community is sought and founded on another type of division, in a
neo-tribal or consumer identity. Since he treats his origin as an abandoned child,
the trans-nationalist sacrifices all his collective memories to temporary exchange.
9 Varela, et al. 1993, 41.

10 In the political and economic sense, a true cosmopolitan looks at the Other no less as
his rival or his workforce – slave or merchandise – but his rhetoric is, it seems, superior.
11 Judging from a ‘fixed’ point of view, a painful one.
But in comparison, his communication and exchange are speedy and without
reserve, or, to be more precise, they aim for certain completeness. Therefore, they
cease to fall under ‘communication’ and ‘exchange’ anymore; instead, they show
a tendency to become net-building and blending.
A trans-nationalist does not, therefore, identify with one, but with many, and
that is why his identification (and therefore his communities) is always temporary.
The price of this freedom of communication/net-building and exchange/blend-
ing is a certain emptiness; only an absence of one’s own code relegates such fast
movement through other codes. Trans-nationalism is in a way a schizophrenic
tendency: it supposes penetrating into other codes as if there is no identity, to
the point where acquired ‘otherness’ easily overtakes and transcends even the
Other herself or himself. This is possible because of the consciousness about the
temporariness. Trans-nationalism, in this respect, is emptied cosmopolitanism,
cosmopolitanism with an intentionally ‘discarded’ center.
That is how we arrive at the following diagram:
(2) Identity correlated with Economy

‘well founded’ Self hidden Self (‘ego’) Self seen in time/space
continuity
national hierarchy cosmopolitan hierarchy trans-national hierarchy
Germany British Empire USA
I phase of capitalism II phase of capitalism III phase of capitalism
Centered Cinema: Wayne’s Star-Image

If we swiftly switch to popular culture, the analogies are easily spotted. A good
example of the ‘national’ rivalry was a bitter fight over the European cinema au-
dience at the beginning of the 20th century, between France, Germany and USA.
Today we know the outcome of that rivalry.
The star-image in cinema also abides to analogous laws. With ‘classic’ film stars
(those from the period of profiled national industries, 1928–1974), a permanent
servicing (and occasional build-up) of star-image with every film was more im-
portant than the so-called ‘quality’ of the respective roles. In fact, the ‘quality’ itself
was measured by establishing and a continuity of the fixed star-image, the quality
of permanence, so to speak. Lawrence Olivier’s heroes in perpetual Hamlet-like
thoughtfulness, John Wayne’s vital settlers of the Wild West, Greta Garbo’s capri-
cious beauties, Humphrey Bogart’s hoodlums with golden hearts – all belong to
this group.
340 Goran Gocić
You can see him standing there at the end of the long stretch of a bar. He’s
wearing that pinkish bib shirt, that leather vest, that dirty pale-tan hat. He’s got
beef everywhere on his body, but not fat. The gun, worn high on his hip in the
working cowman’s practicality, not low as the gunslinger’s style, is the Colt Single
Action Army .38–40 with its yellowing ivory grips. The eyes are weary, rich in
wisdom, impatient with pilgrims, tenderfeet, and blanketheads, possibly incapable
of expressing love because they are so fixed on duty. He is what for decades was a
vision of the ideal man. (Stephen Hunter on John Wayne)12
John Wayne, untarnished symbol of American patriotism, whose career spreads
throughout the national period of film history, starred in one interesting propaganda
movie, Green Berets (1968). The film was made in the middle of the Vietnam War
(the same year as the Tet offensive). It was actually the very first film of some 500
features about the American intervention in Vietnam. Wayne, who at the time sup-
ported the right-wing John Birch Society, also co-directed this film, the most explicit
US propaganda regarding the subject.
It turned out that the directorial debut of generically and politically committed
(‘centered’) Wayne had several similarities with a western film. The US military
camp is called Dodge City and the Vietnamese talk like Apaches. Dangerous zones
are called ‘Indian land’, and Vietnamese scouts are known under the name ‘Keith
Carson’.13 At the end, the hero addresses a Vietnamese orphan: ‘All this is because
of you’, and they walk into the sunset together… just like it happens in Wayne’s
westerns. Here, Wayne is not hindered, but assisted by his fixed star-image.
On the other hand, Wayne’s typecast ability was never more painfully conspicu-
ous then in a movie Conqueror where he – together with his cowboy accent and
gestures – stars as Genghis-Khan. That work is habitually quoted in the ‘all time
worst’ film lists. The point is that these kinds of actors always preserve a ‘fixed
center’. All played heroes that are some sort of extension of the previous ones.
The Hidden Center in Cinema: Day-Lewis’s Star-Image

It turned out, however, that the type of actor whose ‘personality’, that is, fixed,
immutable star-image always transcends heroes he is playing – became simply
archaic in the age of the simulation of identity. John Wayne started his career as
an extra and never studied cinema or theatre. A model of intellectual, ‘method’
technique of acting, championed by Lee Strasberg, found itself at the opposite
pole. In the US, the most perfect product of this concept was Marlon Brando.
12 Hunter 2005, 6.
13 As noted by J. Hoberman and others.
Among the most competent exponents of the ‘method’ technique in the trade
today is a British actor Daniel Day-Lewis. The stress is on effective and convinc-
ing trans-formation. The impression is that Day-Lewis can be everything, from
Czech in Unbearable Lightness of Being to Irish in In the Name of the Father, from
high-mimetic Red Indian hero Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans to paralyzed
writer in My Left Foot, not only readily, but always with similar, intense plausibility.
True, Brando, partly by intentional eccentricity, partly by tragic twists of fate,
drew attention to his identity. Day-Lewis is much more discreet in that respect.
Authentic ‘Day-Lewis’ can exist somewhere, but his real identity is invisible, incon-
spicuous, or, at any rate, hidden from the public. These kinds of careers illustrate
the point of apparent ‘losing the subject’. ‘Travelers without a country’, actors of
this kind enter the heroes they interpret ‘directly’ (although temporarily and ‘for-
getfully’) without any reserve or ‘personality residues’, as if they always start from
zero. Their star-image is based on absence of any star-image. Transformations of
Day-Lewis are possible because of the ‘hyperreal’ acting technique. That technique
now effectively hides any central identity which was so important for Olivier, Wayne
or Bogart.
In other words, a star-image can be fixed and immutable, but the center can
be hidden nevertheless – British actors by and large fall under the ‘cosmopolitan’
scheme. It is impossible, for example, looking at them on screen, to identify the
working-class origin of Michael Kane or the rural Welsh roots of Richard Burton.
As Richard Roud notices:
“Not surprisingly, [Douglas] Fairbanks, the archetypal W.A.S.P., was born Julius Ul-
man (cf. that archetypal Englishman Leslie Howard, who was the son of Hungarian
immigrants)”.14
The De-centered, Trans-national Figures:

A Fluctuating Star-Image
A whole new chapter of contemporary cinema is expressed with decentred and
trаns-nаtiоnаl figures. For example, instead of lending bits of her (national, politi-
cal) identity to roles she plays, a Chinese actress Joann Chen appears to tempo-
rarily empty out her identity both for these roles and by them. Here, technique is
not decisive; it is as if Chen does not have to work hard in order to hide a center
playing different nationalities – American in Shadow of a Stranger, Chinese in The
14 Roud 1980, 335. The mentioned actors simply invented themselves: their (not only
class) identity is emptied out by their speech. But once established, their star-image
was not revised later.
342 Goran Gocić
Last Emperor, Vietnamese in Heaven and Earth, Eskimo in On Deadly Ground.15

That center is already cleared and Chen, even without precisely designed trans-
formations, is equally plausible in each of these national stereotypes – precisely
because she is not burdened by that kind of ‘memory’ so important for Wayne.
Consequently, she can play with equal zeal in a pro-Communist propaganda
feature such as Youth and in pro-capitalist propaganda such as The Awakening,
something ‘centered’ actors could not be imagined doing.
It is similar with Jason Scott Lee, an actor with nationally unpronounced looks
(Hawaiian-Chinese origin), who also could ‘switch’ his ethnicity on screen easily
when needed, without a substantial transformation (Hindi in Jungle Book, native
from Easter Islands in Rapa Nui, Chinese in Dragon: The Story of Bruce Lee and
so on). The star-image is so de-centralized that it is impossible to determine its
starting-point, but only its final destination; the latter becomes the only relevant
point.
It is similar with two generations of British comedians. One could say that the
humor of Benny Hill was ‘centered’ to a large extent. Hill’s alter ego had almost
always been the same chubby, dirty old man, whose acts were done under the
influence of slapstick and early cinema, heavily seasoned with physical humor
and sexual allusions with minimal variations – as if Hill’s role model was Fatty
Arbuckle. On the other hand, the alter ego of the contemporary comedian Sasha
Baron is split to a series of unrelated (although all politically incorrect) personali-
ties, ‘black’ rapper Ali G, TV reporter from Kazakhstan Borat, gay journalist Bruno
from Austria and so on. At the same time, Baron’s central identity is inaccessible
to the public.
At the price that this is understood as some kind of economic determinism,
there is an astounding analogy between a fixed star-image in Hollywood and
the fixed price of a dollar with the golden reserve, according to an agreement
from Breton Woods (1944). Accordingly, fluctuating a film image followed just
as closely a decentred fluctuating dollar (established by Nixon administration
in 1971). Not at all surprisingly, the American deregulating of markets and an
inclination to financial capitalism dates from the same period.
The Ideology of a ‘Traitor’: Popular Converts

I think that adventure becomes ever-rarer in the contemporary world. The only
adventure one can indulge in is a professional one. (Herman Huppen)16
15 See Film Review (London), August, 1994

16 Groensteen 1982, 3–4
This statement by a comic strip author is symptomatic. He negated geographic

adventure in favor of a vocational one. What is valid for both are similar laws of
impossible juncture, conversion, and betrayal of a code. These facts are returning
us to the notion of transgression, to trans-shift in the described sense.
A good example is the reputable German journalist Günter Wallraff, who often
uses a disguise to research the life of oppressed minorities, such as tramps, manual
workers, or blacks. For example, he used such a method to experience the exploita-
tion of economic migrants in Germany (as in the major book and documentary
Ganz Unten17). Wallraff is one of the key examples of a trans-existential program,
a ground-breaking offence, a radical transgression and an engaged adventure: he
spent a few years working as Ali, a Turkish Gastarbeiter, in a skin of ‘the insulted
and the injured’ counterculture, pedantically noting the thick racism of his com-
patriots. This kind of transgression is not only possible, but also desirable.
Contemporary converts of pop culture are among the most authentic inven-
tions of the New Age. They are some kind of schizophrenic revolutionaries. Be-
sides, not only the results of class origin, upbringing or national allegiances are
altered and negated. But also resation applies to every other sphere of identity,
such as religious denominations (conversion to Buddhism of a late American poet
Allen Ginsberg, or to Islam of a pop singer Cat Stevens). But a few people would
turn to more radical and bizarre transformations of previously immutable things,
such as racial attributes (the notorious case of the ‘whitening’ of singer Michael
Jackson), or even attributes of a species (or in the case of native American Den-
nis Avner who went through a series of surgeries in order to resemble a tiger).
Just like only a polyglot reaches a point of ‘understanding language’, a trans-
faithful becomes ‘spiritual’ only after conversion, in a symbolic betrayal of one
(given) code in favor of another (chosen) code. Offence, in a way, sanctions a lower
value of that which is deserted for the sake of something else. At the same time,
something considered the most ‘elementary’ consistency (Ginsberg as Jewish,
Stevens as Greek, Jackson as black) is read as pure shallow-mindedness, outdated,
and undesirable ‘stick-to-it-ness’.
The trans-modern self cannot trans-scend without some radical form of trans-
gression, as if, without it, it would stay in some kind of unbearable confinement,
in the prison of identity. On the top of it, a new identity is trans-parent like a
bricolage; it includes previous meanings, but stays in negation. In other words,
it can only be the ‘ideology of a traitor’. The same way that eclecticism is used
in postmodern art, it is possible to form a negating ‘assemblage’ in building sex,
17 Wallraff 1985
344 Goran Gocić
religion, race, looks, vocation, destiny. Not only ‘creating’ in this respect proves
to be more relevant than life, but also newly found identities readily invert the
order of nature itself.
One should let go. Since the notions of every ‘traditionalism’ are de-substan-
tialized or are being de-substantialized – a return to their nominal meaning seems
unbearably literal, and in the final count ‘fundamentalist’. The consequence of
cyclic changes in consumer habits and technologies is that every (and not only
national and religious) type of ‘inherited’ or ‘apparent’ conditionality (marital,
national, racial, vocational, sexual) is read as ‘fundamentalist’. It has to be a sub-
ject to the incessant and global dynamic of change; it becomes animated only in
some schism, only in schizophrenic negation, necessary for the functioning of a
dynamic and rapidly changing market.
(3) Celebrities Correlated with Image/Identity

(temporarily hidden) (temporarily erased)
Olivier Day-Lewis Chen
Wayne Baron Lee
Bogart Wallraff
Garbo
Hill
(permanently erased –
(permanently hidden)
spiritual)
Kane Ginsberg
Burton Stevens
(permanently erased –
physical)
Jackson
Avner
The Further De-Centering and the Darwinian Dilemma

All that said, we reach the key issue regarding Charles Darwin’s work today (to-
gether with the line of thinkers he is associated with, Thomas Malthus, Ernst
Haeckel et al). This issue is whether life is perceived as sacred or not, whether the
human has some central purpose. If life, including human life, is still experienced
as a result of a centered singularity, of a unique divine intervention (as advocated
by the most living religions), then the proposition has certain ontological, legal
and other consequences.
If life, on the other hand, is a result of the complex mechanics of survival and
interaction with an environment (as accepted by the secular West), then social
Darwinists might have a point when they see no ethical obstacles in claiming exten-
sions of that interaction with other means, from eugenics to genetic engineering.18
One feels that this complex issue is somehow beyond the reach of the purely
Creationists vs. Darwinists dispute, or left to the whims of a purely political do-
main (regulated on a ‘human rights’ level). The consequences are too overreaching.
In this respect, there are two separate paths open for the future.
(1) Occasionally, there are incomplete and ill-defined but nevertheless ambi-
tious attempts to somehow snap out of the described de-centering circus viciosus
and reclaim the lost center, at least in some respects. In the 1960s, Eliade recog-
nized the hippie counterculture as an heroic attempt to restore some of the values
that the ancients cultivated, such as close-knit tribal cooperation and a return to
nature. Similar self-conscious, ‘retro’ lifestyles and a return to the ‘fundamentals’
of religion are among the other possible contemporary examples.19
A similar path is advocated by one small fraction of the contemporary anar-
chists. John Zerzan, for example, proposes a regression all the way to pre-symbolic
and de-centralized culture to find happiness and salvation from contemporary
alienation, greed, cutthroat rivalry, and the destruction produced by the present
system of exchange.20
The environmental consciousness gets an ever-broader consensus around the
globe, from Greenpeace and Green Party to the political initiative to reduce in-
dustrial pollution. In a radical, although unlikely scenario of such regression, the
Western man rejoins his ranks with the natural world21, consciously denying,
even abandoning, the project of his mind-boggling and unhindered technologi-
cal progress.
18 True, crude and openly cruel forms of eugenics (sterilising or killing the handicapped,
eradicating ‘unworthy’ ethnicities and so on), became unpopular after the fall of the
Nazi adventure, but the core argument, as well as its various manifestations, remain
alive and kicking.
19 But such attempts get media attention solely when they get destructive. The likes of
Jim Jones and Charles Manson seem to be boogie men whose notoriety is supposed
to scare people out of such attempts.
20 Zerzan 2008
21 Following the rules of nature and respect for the environment.
346 Goran Gocić
(2) Another fraction is also raising the stakes, but in the opposite direction –
to the next gradient of the de-centering of identity. Apparently, the Western man
does his best to apply his superior technological progress to intervene on his own
abilities (even his own evolution) and takes steps to embrace new technologies –
genetic engineering, synthetic drugs, computerized prostheses, and space travel.
He applies the advancements of his technology directly to his mind and body,
often – like Scientologists – with religious zeal22.
However, the trans-humanist notion to tie up the ideas of decentred identity,
technological progress and the Darwinian idea of evolution is ludicrous. The inter-
est behind such radical notions is, in a soft version, survival and, in a hard version,
immortality.23 The Western trans-modern confrontation with man’s limits has a
taste of both touching and reckless utopia.
References
Barthes, R. (1983): Empire of Signs. Hill and Wang, New York.
Eliade, M. (1987): The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion. Harcourt
Brace Jovanovic, New York.
Groensteen, Th. (1982): Huppen’s Long March. Interview with Hermann Hup-
pen. In: Groensteen, Th. & Jean-Pierre Dionnet (eds.), Hermann. Alain Lit-
taye, Paris.
Hunter, S. (2005): Now Playing at the Valencia. Pulitzer Prize-Winning Essays on
Movies. Simon & Schuster, New York.
Jaspers, K. (1953): The Origin and the Goal of History. Routledge and Keegan
Paul, London.
Morris, D. (1994): The Human Animal. BBC Books, London.
Schreber, D. (2000): Memoirs of my nervous Illness. New York Review of Books,
New York.
22 Like it is advocated by the Scientology Church, which harbours many of its followers
in Hollywood.
23 Many pessimistic futurologists feel that the path taken at the moment by humanity is
leading toward a disaster imminent within 40 years, when the world population and
environmental neglect will spiral out of control.
Jaime del Val
Institute Reverso
Metahuman: Post-anatomical Bodies,

Metasex, and Capitalism of Affect in
Post-posthumanism
Relational intensive bodies have no form or anatomy. They are not representable
and are impossible to map because of their diffuse nature. Reviewing the body
as an amorphous field of intensities, producing an account of the body, indeed
of reality as post-anatomical, implies questioning the conditions of possibility
of power regimes that give the human-white-male-middle-class-heterosexual a
privileged status as a life that matters.
It means to radically redefine sexuality as a field of the production of multiple
sexes, beyond binary oppositions, thus producing an account of a pangender
metasexual body.
This requires addressing contemporary mechanisms of power that operate
through new technologies of the production of affect, as well as questioning the
positivist account of the human in the realm of eugenics. It means questioning
the foundations of implicit power in late capitalist societies of control, masked
behind the appearance of modern democracies.
Thus, there is a need for producing a new relational ethics and ecology and a
new political economy for a relational social body.
Examples of post-anatomical bodies in the artwork of Jaime del Val at the
Institute Reverso will be shown.
The Posthuman and Beyond

I speak to you from a hybrid heterogeneous perspective as a transmedia artist, a
philosopher outside the academy, a postqueer and an environmental activist, the
producer and the director of the transdisciplinary Institute Reverso.
I speak to you as a body in the times of Digital Culture’s presumed erasure
of embodiment, a body in the times of the Capitalism of Affect, in which the
choreographies of our desires are globally produced through technology. I will
attempt to resist some of these mechanisms of production, and propose some
technoaesthetic paradigms for the purpose of habilitating less coercive, less violent
worlds of relations and for a democracy yet to come.
348 Jaime del Val
The starting-point for this essay is a revision of the critical traditions of posthu-
manism related to feminism and materialism, as exemplified by Donna Haraway,
Katherine Hayles and other authors: the posthuman as an attempt to question
hegemonic coercive forms of humanity on this planet:
1) the posthuman as a present condition in which “computation rather than
possesive individualism is taken for the ground of being” (Hayles 1999, 34), with
all the conflicting attempts of information society to reduce existence to patterns
without presence, whereby there is a “coupling so intense [with the machines]
that it is no longer possible to distinguish meaningfully between the biological
organism and the informational circuits in which the organism is enmeshed”
(Hayles 1999, 35);
2) the posthuman as a critical figuration to review our past (we have never
been human in the sense proposed by humanism, that is autonomous, coherent,
unchanging in nature), in the words of the artist Stelarc:
“Bodies are both Zombies and Cyborgs. We have never had a mind of our own and we
often perform involuntarily and are externally prompted. We have always been coupled
with technology, we have always been prosthetic bodies.”1
3) the posthuman as a contemporary and recent emergence of agencies in the

borderlands of the realm of humanism, subjects too abject for traditional hu-
manist standards (sexual minorities, disabled, migrants, relations across species
and with machines, sadomasochists, etc.), precisely those who are challenging
and refiguring universalist accounts of humanity for a democracy to come, what
Donna Haraway calls the promises of monsters.
Therefore, my starting point is an account of the posthuman that is cautiously
and critically distant from technophile transhumanist and evolutionist framings
of a utopian future for humanity. I will suggest that we cannot but propose po-
tentialities in present times: The future is always unthinkable, since it will always
be subject to the contingencies of bodily interaction, of its production of time-
space in its ever-moving potentiality. The tradition of Transhumanism takes the
autonomy and free will of the subject for granted and assumes a certain techno-
positivism that sympathizes with the quantification of reality for the purpose of
its “enhancement”. As I will be proposing, the problem that arises herewith is not
only about what we subject to enhancement (whether through education, genetic
selection or other means), but also about the issue of quantification itself: I will
propose that it is the mere process of territorializing and quantifying reality that
reinstates it within specific regimes of power and makes it available to the excesses
1 http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/arcx.html.
Metahuman 349
of coercion. Furthermore, I will argue that territorialization and quantification

work generally at the service of existing regimes of coercion and are not a priori
a condition for life.
Metabodies
I propose that traditional materialist accounts of the posthuman are to be re-
viewed through a redefintion of the body as relationality and intensity, as a field
of forces of affect and desire. We have always been expanded bodies, not so much
because of our longstanding technoprosthetics, but rather in so far as we consti-
tute bodies of relationality (metabodies), between humans and across species and
the inorganic: with architecture, the territory, the planet. The “material” body is
also an effect of relational bodies at the level of bacteria, cells, molecules and the
subatomic world.
As both Aristotle and Judith Butler suggest, matter can only be understood in
terms of the forms that it undertakes: there is no matter without form. I will pro-
vocatively suggest that there can be life worth living without form, and that indeed
we urgently need to produce frameworks for our relational becoming, for our
affective production within our current biopolitics of human breeding through
entertainment and fear. Thus, formed materiality is to be critically reviewed as
a political fiction of specific regimes that have their conditions of possibility in
certain technologies of representation and its related discursive formations.
This body is not the appearance of matter that ends in the skin, or in its cyborg
prostheses, but rather the affective intensities projected here and now through
gestures, sounds, or even through a written text. This relational body is neither
here nor there; it is to be understood as movement, rather than place.
Relational bodies are metasignifying. They are irreducible to information and
signification: Who can tell the precise meaning of any of my (imagined or actual)
gestures or sounds? Each of you is embodying the affect this body projects in
radically different manners. This is the reason why it is impossible to map the
diffuse fields and lines of escape of the relational forces. There is never the total-
ity of a body.
It is, however, essential to understand the way the relational forces come to
form strata or gravitational fields in which asymmetric relationalities sediment
different kinds of subjection, domination and violence.
Even if I build upon Nietzsche’s conception of the body and reality as forces,
I do not agree with the idea that all forces are either dominant or submissive, as
always relating to power of some kind. It is my belief, rather, that this requires
already some kind of interpretation of the forces. The forces are multiplicities that
350 Jaime del Val
are never per se stronger or dominant. They can be so within certain contexts of
relation and within the frameworks of interpretation and the genealogies that
constitute in the gravitational fields of the forces. The question is how to put into
motion amorphous forces and relations that are not subjectible here and now to
the territorializations imposed by specific genealogical constructs of power and
its technological articulations.
Power regimes form through the territorialization of the amorphous, of move-
ment, into quantifiable and seemingly fixed surfaces that conform to the fiction
of materiality and of ideality.
Cartesian thinking has provided the ideal framework of operation for a whole
set of technologies that operate on the basis of the mind vs. matter divide. Both
fictions, of matter and the abstract subject, underlie fictions of universality, sig-
nification and its contemporary articulations in terms of information and com-
munication.
Digital Culture reproduces the fiction of the mind vs. body divide through
specific technologies that give form to the affects of the relational body, fictions
that become, however, problematically real as they are embodied in and through
technology.
Capitalism of Affect and the Pancoreographic

Both materialism and idealism have produced a certain blindness toward the more
essential problems of power in late capitalism. Whereas discourses on biocapital
proliferate, with important and necessary critiques of ethical problems surrounding
DNA and related matters, no significant critical framework exists to understand
the functioning of what I call the Capitalism of Affects, or Affectopower, namely
an ensemble of techbiopolitical technologies of global implantation that give form
to the affects and desires of the bodies, assuring our assimilation in market-driven
consumer regimes while effectively hiding its own violence, thus eradicating every
resistance.
How does that standardized serialized production of affect and desire happen?
We need frameworks beyond semiotics and performativity for understanding
the phenomenology and the genealogy of affect formations. We can analyze it at
the level of choreography, through what I call the Panchoregraphic: a complex
ensemble of technologies that distribute standardized discrete choreographies
globally, hidden behind the façade of entertainment, information, communication
and diverse rhetorics of liberation and modernization.
Choreographies that we perform daily with the mouse and the keyboard,
the software, the mobile phone, the music player, the playstation, in the discos,
Metahuman 351
diffused through the video music industry, or through publicity, television,

cinema and ubiquitous commercial music. What kinds of intensive affective
relational bodies are these technologies producing?
Rather than the posthuman, I would call the offspring of such a prosthetic
regime a hyperhuman body, one that, like in accounts of hyperreal media and
hypermodernity, is inflating modern humanist constructs to the degree of parody
that acts like a gigantic machine of seduction and affective production, working
at the service of market-driven forces.
HCI – Human Computer Interaction- works through the continuous produc-
tion of discreet parameters of movement, indeed of new kinds of discretisations,
through new sensing technologies. But no matter how advanced the technology
is, it will always be a reductionist account of an always irreducible movement.
Movement cannot be fully discreticized; it has already begun and precedes con-
scious formations.
What we need is a new politics of the relational body understood as movement;
a politics of movement that questions the conditions of the possibility of power
regimes and at the same time opens up the lines of emergence of relational bodies,
indeed of thinking understood as movement. What is the thinking of the dancing
body, of the body that makes music? As Stelarc suggests, post-philosophy arrives
when alternate forms of thinking of the body emerge that are not to be framed in
terms of the textual discursive production of a biological body, thinking of a Post-
biological body that extrudes beyond the constructs of individual consciousness.
Post-anatomical Bodies
Traditional disciplinary divides relate to anatomical conceptions of the body: the
five senses and the arts, genitals and the normative domain of sexuality, etc. Some
attempts have been made to produce new anatomical architectures for the body.
I propose to go one step further and generate the conditions for the possibility of
a body without anatomy, an amorphous body of movement. This is close to, but
not identical with, the Body without Organs proposed by Artaud, Deleuze and
Guattari. Perhaps we already operate as amorphous bodies of relation and affect
in a number in contexts of our embodied existence.
Relational intensive bodies have no form or anatomy as we understand these.
They are irrepresentable and impossible to map because of their diffuse nature.
Reviewing the body as amorphous field of intensities, producing an account of
the body, indeed of reality as an post-anatomical, is to question for the conditions
of possibility of power regimes that give the human-white-male-middle-class-
heterosexual a privileged status as life that matters.
352 Jaime del Val
The post-anatomical body is an occasion to set in motion a proliferarion of

sexes: sexuality understood as events of production of sexes, as Deleuze and
Guattari suggest, that do not necessarily relate to the gender binary. Traditional
accounts of sexuality are based on an arbitrary zonification of the body in terms
of functional reproduction, reducing biological sex to the anatomical production
of the genitals. But desire flows through a multiplicities of intensities in motion.
How is my look drawn by diffuse forces of desire that traverse bodies in their ways
of looking, ways of moving, ways of standing, ways of talking, that is, of different
kinds of movement?
Metasexuality is not only about a conception of sexuality and desire that trav-
erses all possible anatomies, but more particularly one that focuses on the diffuse
nature of movement as post-anatomical. Metasexuality traverses all human and
non-human movements. Every relational body is both a mode and an event of sex.
Metasexuality is post-intimate: intimacy is a biopolitical-technological control
of bodies that takes form through choreography and anatomical production: in
the realm of post-anatomy, the conditions for the possibility of intimacy have dis-
solved; sex can only be a common relational event. Metasexuality is post-queer
since it operates in a plurality of movements outside-inside and through binary
and textual constructs in the domain of metaformativity.
The question of which lives matter, of what counts as a life, can also be revisited
in terms of the relationality of movement. Different kinds of discrete movements,
such as verbal movement, account for distinctions between species, races, classes,
disabilities or abilities, genders or sexualities in order to establish hierarchical
asymmetric relationalities.
How to promote the proliferation of non-discrete kinds of movements that flow
over existing divisions and territorializations? Indeed, we should understand the
metabody of movement as a Common Body in the sense of Social Commons: can
we define a “right” to a nonquantifiable relationality that questions the contem-
porary production of standard relational bodies and their specific articulations
in movement-space-time discretizations? This goes well beyond articulating new
legal figures within the existing anatomies of the social organism, and requires
rethinking this anatomy altogether in the direction of a post-anatomical common
body. This implies a radical rethinking of technology.
We must rethink interfaces, not as the mediation between a faciality of an
abstract subject and a machine within information transmission and communi-
cation, but of an intercorporeality within the relational body: from interfaces to
intrabodies. We must rethink interfaces not as discrete simulations of real move-
ment within practices of signification, but as metasignifying relational fields for
affect formation.
Metahuman 353
Through the Institute Reverso, we have developed a number of experiments in

post-anatomical bodies, generally in the form of media performance and instal-
lation. Recent projects include the transposition of the surveillance camera to
the surface of the body, questioning accounts of form and anatomy, gender and
sex, intimacy and legibility, where the amorphous body and its micromovements
become a living architecture, spatialized together with the sound that moves in-
teractively producing a sound space of the body. The camera acts as an intrabody
in an intra-active system, a metaformance that displaces proprioceptive feedback
and redefines the sensory anatomy in the unfolding of the Microdances.
The transposition of the camera to the surface of the skin is a simple gesture
with powerful consequences: it dissolves the distance, framing and focus that ac-
counts intelligibility in representation (the intelligibility that we have embodied
as synonymous to objectivity since the proliferation of the camera obscura and
of perspectival vision in the 15th century); it makes the object of surveillance
unrecognizable and uncontrollable; it dissolves anatomical architectures into
formless movement, thus working on the constitutive boundaries of sex, gen-
der and intimacy; it projects the moving body in new scales and dimensions of
time-space and capability; it displaces proprioceptive feedback into a transposed
antianatomy, redesigning the sensory anatomy and producing a closed circuit
for self-production that disseminates in multiplicities of times-becomings. The
lack of distance and perspective generates a space for a body that is like an alien
world and yet so near: it is not outside signification, but rather disrupts the frames
of reference, the distances of signification, and explodes the signifying body in a
supernova of disseminations, where everything that is sex and gender is nowhere,
a body of pure excess: excess of dissemination, excess of intensity, and excess of
overflow. The outside of discourse is found in the excessive proximity, almost like
an inside. It is an exercise for non-identitarian becoming, most therapeutical in
our times of obsession with identity as a marketing product.
The life electronic processing of the voice works in the direction of transform-
ing verbal movement, faciality and vocality. The new scale of micromovement
redefines categories of ability and disability. In this new space of the body, there
is no representation and performance, but rather Amorphogenesis and Meta-
formance, also in the relation with the audience, occupying the same space of
the performers, who come in contact with them at times so that the skin of the
audience becomes part of the living environment: a coming in contact, though
the surveillance camera, that becomes a new kind of sex.2
2 http://www.reverso.org/Antibodies-microdances.htm.
354 Jaime del Val
The same experiment has been done in public spaces, in different cities of
Europe and Latin America, through the interventions of the Pangender Cyborg,
which projects its own amorphous antianatomies onto public buildings, generat-
ing conflicting analogies with the anatomy of the social organism. At the moment,
we prepare the Microdances/Microsexes to be performed through the Internet,
in private houses, in specially-built architectures and across other media, as a
metamedia and metadisciplinary project.3
The project of post-anatomical architectures is also one in which we have been
developing different prototypes through interactive digital 3D models that avoid
a Cartesian simulation of physical space, and it reminds one of amorphous mov-
ing body fragments, like the microdances of a digital body. We must also rethink
space, not as a physical entity, but as a relational intensity: rather than going along
with the assumption that we inhabit and traverse space as physical, we should
promote the thinking of space in terms of how we produce it and are produced
by it: which is the affective quality of space, how far space is but a projection of
the intensities of movement, like time is the unfolding of movement and therefore
unquantifiable.4
Potential low-tech projects for post-anatomical bodies will look into redefining
issues of non-verbal communication, architecture, and our daily choreographies,
our projected space-times and relations of the body.
Metahuman: Toward a Politics of Movement

We need a radically pluralistic politics that enables us to work both through exist-
ing worlds of relations, undoing some of its forms of coercion, while at the same
time experimenting with new movements beyond Cartesian dualisms.
We must operate both inside/outside and through existing normative territo-
ries, working with its own mechanisms, amorphous choreographies within the body
politic; and outside in the realm of new formations, liberating among the viruses
of simulation an antibody of form, an impossible affect, a non-identifiable desire.
Relational ethics and ecology is one in which the moving (dancing) bodies
constitute one single yet diffuse relational body of becoming and becoming-with:
in such a dance, violence and coercion are not subject to enter into play, or may
at least be partly opened up to less coercive relationalities.
3 http://www.reverso.org/Antibodies-dissolution.htm.
4 http://www.reverso.org/arquitectura.htm.
Metahuman 355
We need to work toward a technoaesthetics of the non-quantifiable, a prolif-

eration of qualitatively different forms of movement according to which no ac-
counts of superiority, superation or superhumanity are possible, as in eugenics,
but indeed of qualitative relational differentiation and specificity. This involves a
thinking of the body beyond the text, a post-philosophical enquiry.
If the posthuman is both a present condition, a critical figuration of materialist
critique and a revision of our past, how do we produce a different set of possibili-
ties for our becoming, how do we reconfigure our posthuman condition in the
age of the capitalism of affects? How do we respond to it?
The metahuman here proposed as post-posthuman transcends both the ideal-
ism of transhumanism and the materialism of a posthumanist critique through
focusing on the new technologies of power that operate in the diffuse field of
affect formation, producing an account of the body as affect and intensity in or-
der to both destabilize regimes of affective production of bodies and to produce
new conditions for the possibility of relationalities that do not conform to a new
regime, but instead to a permanent process of emergence, a non-coercive rela-
tionality as a resistive oppositional practice inside/outside and through existing
fields of coercion.
Metahuman is an emergent ontology, an ontogenesis for an emergent politics
in which it makes no sense to foresee the future: what we can think is already
present/potential; the future is unthinkable and defies any principle of evolution.
What does this emergent ontology for a situated and heterogeneous subject
bring, different from other accounts of the posthuman? Perhaps a greater sense of
uncertainty and a wider range of possibilities of becoming that are not confined
to representation, discourse and identity: an amorphous becoming, a metamor-
phogenesis, and a politics of amorphous movement and affect production that
operates loosely on the boundaries of signification. A multidimensional politics
far beyond the narrow spatial framing of right-left politics and institutions of an
obsolete anatomy of the body politic.
Metahumanity is an open paradigm for relationality and becoming as a move-
ment without form: where relations are never fully stratified, always potential and
diffuse, traversing species and the inorganic. Metahumanity and metamodernity
are the realms of the post-anatomical body as a metamorphogenetic process, a
relational multidimensional field of forces that is non-quantifiable, a process that
acts upon its own conditions of possibility, one that moves along its own diffuse
frontiers, unfolding in new dimensions: not a new regime of form, but rather a
process of endless formation that never sediments in form, but opens its lines
once and again to the impossible.
356 Jaime del Val
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Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
John Cabot University, Rome
Nietzsche’s Virtue Ethics and Sandels’

Rejection of Enhancement Technologies:
Truthful, Virtuous Parents may enhance
their Children Genetically
The main goal of the article is to argue against the plausibility of Sandel’s com-
munitarian views on genetic enhancement by drawing upon selected aspects of
Nietzsche’s philosophy. Thereby, the contemporary relevance of Nietzsche’s think-
ing on community, virtue ethics and enhancement technologies becomes clear.
My paper is divided up into the following three parts. Firstly, I present central
aspects of Nietzsche’s communitarianism which are particularly relevant concern-
ing the future development of human beings. However, due to his rejection of the
norms of freedom and equality, I do not regard his social suggestions as an ap-
pealing cultural vision. (Sorgner 2010b, 232–239) Secondly, I am concerned with
Sandel’s communitarianism by dealing with his virtue ethical arguments against
genetic enhancement. Thirdly, I am drawing upon some of Nietzsche’s central
insights which I regard as convincing to argue against the plausibility of Sandel’s
position. Thereby, the relevance of Nietzsche’s philosophy for today’s virtue ethical
discourses concerning communitarian views on genetic enhancement becomes
clear. By drawing upon selected plausible insights of Nietzsche’s philosophy, it is
possible to develop arguments against Sandel’s communitarian views on genetic
enhancement which are important for today’s discourses in this field.
1. Nietzsche’s Communitarianism, Virtue Ethics and

the Overhuman
Nietzsche was affirmative of communities and can be classified as a communi-
tarian.1 I find Young’s reading of Nietzsche in this respect convincing. (2006, 1–2)
1 It has to be noted that it is anachronistic to refer to Nietzsche as communitarian thinker.

Historically, philosophical communitarianism was developed as a reaction to the lib-
eral political philosophies which were put forward during the nineteen seventies in
Harvard by Rawls and Nozick. However, during this article I will use the concept
“communitarianism” in an ahistorical sense whereby I am focusing on some central
360 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
In addition, I regard it as highly important to stress the communitarian aspect

of Nietzsche’s thought, as it is central for grasping the cultural embeddedness of
his philosophy and it is this element of his thinking which had a massive influ-
ence upon further German thinkers. Ferdinand Tönnies who is of the founders
of sociology in Germany represents a paradigm case and Nietzsche’s inspiring
reflections concerning social structures are undeservedly neglected in the English
speaking world.
Besides many other books, Tönnies’ wrote the monograph “Gemeinschaft und
Gesellschaft” (1979) in which he distinguishes a community from a society. A
community consists of organic structures which are being united in a shared ac-
count of the good and in which the family plays a central role. A society is based
upon human beings as atomic individuals whose main interest lies in the increase
of their own personal wealth. These overtly schematic and reductive descriptions
hint at the possibility of there being an analogy between the community and soci-
ety distinction and the communitarianism and liberalism division. Tönnies favors
communities over societies, like most German thinkers of this time.
Nietzsche’s ideal community is a special one, because it consists of two classes
whereby the distinction depends on someone’s biology or rather psychophysiol-
ogy and not on the person’s social background. In Nietzsche’s favored type of
community, there are some few, active artistic and philosophical creators and
many, passive workers who provide them with the daily needs. (KSA, CV, 1, 767)
This understanding of Nietzsche’s political vision gets further support from his
Sipo Matador section which hints at his favoring a healthy aristocracy as best way
of social organization (KSA, JBG, 5, 206f). He regards masterly virtues as appro-
priate for the few leading community members and slavish virtues for the many
supporting members of the community which are the basic ethical constituents of
characteristics which are being associated with the concept. Communitarianism re-
gards the good as prior to the right. Liberalism sees the right as prior to the good. The
question of the good enquires for universally valid conditions for all human beings to
live a good life. The question of the right, on the other hand, searches for moral laws
which are universally valid, but without them being necessarily connected to the good.
Liberals tend to doubt the possibility that the content of the concept of the good can
be determined, because they uphold that human beings differ so greatly from one
another that a plurality of goods needs to be enabled within a social organization.
Communitarianists, on the other hand, uphold that meaningful judgments concerning
the concept of the good can be made and that these ought to provide the value basis of
a social structure, because they enable all the citizens of the respective community to
lead good and flourishing lives. Hence, liberals and communitarianists differ concern-
ing the descriptive and normative content of their anthropologies.
Nietzsche’s Virtue Ethics and Sandels’ Rejection of Enhancement… 361
his political and cultural ideal. His reason for regarding this type of community as
superior to other types of political organizations is that it increases the likelihood
of the coming about of the overhuman, the next step in human evolution. (KSA,
NF, 13, 316f) This insight reveals that Nietzsche’s version of communitarianism
and his eugenic reflections are closely connected.2 It has to be noted that I use
the word “eugenics” in an ahistorical sense here.
Concerning Nietzsche’s understanding of evolution I am referring to some
passages of his notebooks in which Nietzsche develops a basis of a theory of evolu-
tion. (KSA, NF, 13, 316f) There, Nietzsche explains that by promoting the tension
between strong and weak human beings the likelihood of an evolutionary step
towards another species increases. At the same time, it has to be acknowledged
that Nietzsche was critical of Darwin. Many scholars identify this critical atti-
tude as a rejection of an evolutionary approach (e.g. Gerhardt 1992, 178). Given
that Nietzsche attempted to develop guidelines of an evolutionary theory goes
against this understanding of Nietzsche’s approach. By realizing that Nietzsche
also stressed that he attacks those most vehemently who are closest to his way of
thinking, e.g. Socrates (KSA, NF, 8, 97), it becomes clear that his attack on Darwin
does not have to imply a rejection of an evolutionary understanding of human
development. Hence, I do not think that his critical comments concerning Darwin
go against my reading of the overhuman as a member of a new species. However,
it is the case that Nietzsche criticized Darwin for seeing the will to survive as
2 Eugenics refers to any type of technological method to alter the genetic makeup of
human beings. (Sorgner 2006, 201–209) Liberal eugenics in contrast to state imposed
methods of eugenics stresses that the decision of an alteration to take place may either
be made by oneself or by the parents for their children. Once, a different institution like
the state has the right to make such a decision, then a state regulated type of eugenics
is in force which was present in many countries about a hundred years ago and a par-
ticular cruel and organized version of this type of eugenics was carried through during
the Third Reich. Most Western people agree that state governed version of eugenics is
morally condemnable, and I agree. It needs to be mentioned that eugenic regulations
are still in practice in many countries, e.g. the one child policy in China. At the end
of last century, Academic debates concerning the legitimacy of liberal eugenics came
up, due to the fast development in the field of humanbiotechnologies. Later on, many
bioethicists decided to talk about genetic enhancement instead of liberal eugenics in
order to avoid the morally charged word “eugenics”. Nowadays, there is a tendency
that bioconservatives employ the term “liberal eugenics”, but bioliberals tend to use
the concept “genetic enhancement”. In both cases this is presumably done due to the
emotional content which is associated with the concepts in question.
basic human motivation which is founded in his regarding the will to power as
underlying motive of human acts. (Sorgner 2007, 62)
By considering specific aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy which are not neces-
sary concerning his communitarian politics, it is possible to argue against Sandel’s
contemporary communitarian arguments against certain methods of procreation
in part three of this paper, e.g. genetic enhancement. I regard this methodology as
legitimate for showing the contemporary relevance of Nietzsche’s way of thinking.
Thereby, I focus on specific points of Nietzsche’s view, like his will to power ontol-
ogy and his theory of aristocratic virtues, and employ and develop them further
in contemporary debates. If I considered Nietzsche’s views in general, then a dif-
ferent picture would have had to be presented which is closer to a Gattaca-like
social structure and hence not a very appealing vision. (Sorgner 2010b, 239–242)
Sandel’s communitarianism is founded on his virtue of unconditional love.
By drawing upon Nietzsche’s will to power anthropology and his virtue theory,
in particular his masterly virtue of truthfulness, it is possible to argue against
Sandel’s reflections. My own position, which I develop further by drawing upon
selected insight from Nietzsche’s philosophy, is anti-communitarian. By devel-
oping further Nietzsche’s noble virtue ethics, Nietzsche can be used to support
an anti-communitarian way of thinking. I am progressing in this way, as I think
that it renders his way of thinking more relevant for contemporary discussions
(Sorgner 2010b, 218–239). Some readers might find it odd that I am stressing that
Nietzsche affirms a communitarian political philosophy, but I am at the same time
drawing upon elements of Nietzsche’s thought to reject a communitarian position.
However, I regard this methodology as useful for developing timely philosophical
insights. By claiming A, I am being true to Nietzsche’s point of view. However, by
arguing in favor of B, I am making some of his insights important for contem-
porary discussions. It is one way of showing the contemporary relevance of his
way of thinking. Is this an odd methodology? Postmodernists focus on a specific
reading of Nietzsche’s perspectivism and develop it further. Transhumanists are
concerned with one interpretation of Nietzsche’s overhuman which they then
integrate into their point of view. A partial reception of a philosopher is still one
way of thinking within the tradition of someone.
By stressing the above mentioned premises, it becomes clear that Nietzsche’s
thinking on community was closely connected to his procreative reflections
concerning the bringing about of the overhuman. Yet, this does not imply that
Nietzsche cares solely about the exceptional types and not about the herd types.
A Nietzschean communitarian social structure is both in the interest of the few
creators and the many workers, because therein members of both groups can do
what corresponds to their psychophysiological constitution. In addition, workers
are better off in such a community than in a society, because here the cultural
creators care for their supporting workers and thus they have more security than
they have in a liberal democracy in which no one cares for the workers, once
they do not work or are unemployed, according to Nietzsche. (KSA, MA, 2, 296)
This insight represents one central argument in favor of his defending a type of
communitarianism.
Concerning Nietzsche’s goal of bringing about the overhuman by means of hu-
man evolution, Nietzsche explains that by promoting the tension between strong
and weak human beings the evolutionary step towards another species can occur.
(KSA, CV, 1, 767; KSA, JGB, 5, 206f; KSA, CV, 1, 776) Let me clarify this point
further: Nietzsche is in favor of a community of human beings. This community
consists of the few cultural creators and the many workers who supply the creators
with the daily needs. It is a community because the structure is such that it is both
in the interest of the few and in that of the many. Nietzsche is in favor of such a
community, because it increases the likelihood of the coming about of the overhu-
man. In that case, Nietzsche is a communitarian with respect to social organiza-
tions of human beings. However, this type of community is solely of instrumental
value, because it increases the likelihood of the coming about of the overhuman.
How can the overhuman come about? In this context the tension between the
few and the many becomes relevant. However, it is not the social tension between
these two types of human beings, which is at work, as then it would not be ap-
propriate to refer to this type of social organization as a community. The tension
Nietzsche has in mind is a biological tension, the tension within the borders of the
human species. According to selected passages of his notebooks, evolution works
as follows. (KSA, NF, 13, 316f) Each species has certain boundaries beyond which
the members of the species cannot develop. If the members of a species reach the
outer limits of the borders of the species, then the likelihood of the evolutionary
step towards the overhuman species is highest. If the few have reached the upper
limit of the borders of a species and the many are at the lower end of the border
of the human species, then there is a biological tension between these groups of
human beings. It is this type of tension, Nietzsche was talking about and which
I was referring to when I used the word ‘tension’. I did not mean social or politi-
cal tensions between the few and the many. Even if such a biological tension is
given, the few and the many can live together in one community which is in both
of their interests.
This reading of Nietzsche’s social and political philosophy is a communitarian
reading, as it implies that the best type of social organization for human beings
is the community. However, the community of the few and the many is not the
ultimate goal of Nietzsche’s conception. The community is of instrumental value,
as it increases the likelihood of the coming about of the overhuman. Ultimately,

the overhuman counts, as the overhuman is the meaning of the earth. (KSA, Za,
4, 14, 19) However, concerning the best type of human social organization, the
community of the few and the many is what is best.
According to Nietzsche a community is best for the few and the many to lead a
good life, and to fulfill the meaning of the earth, i.e. to increase the likelihood of
the coming about of the overhuman, because a community might be particularly
supportive for many human beings to reach the boundaries of the human species
such that the conditions are given for the evolutionary step towards the posthu-
man to occur. In contrast to this type of community, a society implies nihilism,
hedonism, and liberalism which may make it difficult for many individuals to pos-
sess qualities or to acquire capacities such that these correspond to the qualities of
the boundaries of the human species. Consequently, Nietzsche is an anti-liberal
thinker (KSA, GD, 6, 106) In order to increase the likelihood of an evolutionary
step to occur, according to Nietzsche, a certain amount of human beings must
reach the boundaries of the human species.
Nietzsche’s reflections on the development of human beings have been received
intensely in various eugenics debates. (Stone 2002; Reyer 2003) This applies both
to the history of eugenics as well as to the latest reflections on this topic, e.g.
Nietzsche’s position concerning the “human zoo”, genetic enhancement and the
future of human evolution is being discussed intensely both by tranhumanists,
bioethicists and Nietzsche scholars.3 The infamous Sloterdjk-Habermas-debate
was also concerned with this area of topics. In his little book concerning liberal
eugenics, Habermas identifies Nietzsche’s ethical ideals both with transhumanist
as well as with fascist ideas:
„A handful of freaked out intellectuals attempt to determine the future by reading tea
leaves of a naturalist version of posthumanism, to continue spinning the sufficiently
well-known motifs of a very German ideology further at the alleged wall of time – ‘Hy-
permodernity’ versus ‘Hypermorality’. Fortunately, their elitist dismissal of ‘the illusion
of equality’ and the discourse of justice still lack a broadly effective contagious force. The
self-impersonators of Nietzschean types of fantasies, who regard the ‘fight in between
3 The central articles of this debate can be found on the following website: http://ieet.org/
index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20120423 Leading transhumanists, bioethicists and
Nietzsche scholars participated in the debate (Ansell-Pearson 2011, 1–16; Babich 2011,
1–39; Hauskeller 2010, 5–8; Hibbard 2010, 9–12; Loeb 2011, 1–29; More 2010, 1–4;
Sorgner 2009, 29–42; Sorgner 2010a, 1–19; Sorgner 2011b, 1–46. In the meantime the
debate has already been received in the Nietzsche secondary literature, e.g. Woodward
2011. Concerning a related topic of the debate, see also Sorgner 2013a.
small breeders and big breeders of human beings’ as the ‘basic conflict of the future’
and who can provide the ‘main cultural factions’ with the courage ‘to use the power of
selection which they have acquired already’, merely serve as media spectacles so far.”
(Habermas 2001, 43–44; my own translation).
Here, Habermas is concerned with Sloterdijk’s speech “Rules for the Human-Zoo”
(2009) whereby he does not mention the name “Sloterdijk” but clearly refers to
his speech by literally citing selected passages from it. It also needs to be pointed
out that Habermas makes three judgments in this passage which are clearly false:
1. He talks about posthumanist phenomena which were combined with a type
of naturalism. However, it would be correct to refer to them as transhuman-
ist phenomena (Ranisch/Sorgner 2014); 2. He regards Sloterdijk as defender of
transhumanist ideals which is definitely not the case. This becomes particularly
clear in a speech Sloterdijk held at the 6th of December 2005 at the University of
Tübingen on the optimization of human beings. Concerning questions of genetic
enhancement, Sloterdijk and Habermas are mostly in agreement4; 3. According
to Habermas, transhumanist thoughts lack public appeal. From a contemporary
perspective this judgment has to be doubted.
This Habermas citation shows that Nietzsche is still seen as a proponent of
dangerous fascist breeding fantasies, because Habermas identifies Nietzschean
breeding fantasies with the continuation of a “very German ideology”. I do think
that Habermas is right in stressing that there are certain structural analogies
between Nietzsche’s philosophy and selected reflections by transhumanists. How-
ever, in contrast to Habermas I do not see this as a reason for rejecting all variants
of transhumanism or all aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. However, there are
aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy, like his cultural vision (a two class community),
which I find morally problematic and I am glad that I am sharing this evaluation
with the majority of members in enlightened countries. Many other aspects of his
insights are highly plausible and they can be referred to and employed in contem-
porary debates without the need to embrace all of Nietzsche’s philosophy. In part
three, I will be considering Nietzsche’s will to power anthropology (Sorgner 2007,
39–65) and his theory of masterly virtues in particular (Sorgner 2010b, 143–150),
as I regard both theories as convincing and relevant. Some further clarifications
concerning these issues need to be introduced at this stage.
As Nietzsche regards the will to power as the fundamental drive underlying all
human actions, moral systems and virtues are also a result of this underlying drive.
4 See Peter Sloterdijk’s DVD: “Über die Optimierung des Menschen” (Quartino GmbH
2005).
Yet, due to there being a plurality of human types, the will to power expresses
itself in a manifold way concerning moralities and virtues, too. Nietzsche’s funda-
mental distinction concerning psychophysiological human types is that between
the master and the slave, and one central characteristic of this distinction is that
between an active and a passive being.
I am not dealing with the priest here (Sorgner 2010b, 135–140), because I am
merely summarizing some specific issues which are immediately relevant for this
topic. In addition, it needs to be stressed that the distinction between the master
and the slave sounds like a simple minded dualist categorization of the world
which cannot correspond to the life world. However, Nietzsche is aware that is the
case. Hence, he points out that there are slavish and masterly traces in all of our
characters. (KSA, JGB, 5, 5, 208) He merely uses this categorization in order hint
at the differences between human beings in whose character traits one of the two
attitudes comes up more often. The following characterization both of the master
and the slave falls short of the complexity of Nietzsche’s description. In particular
the relevance of the cultural circumstances for the various developments cannot
be considered here. However, the following hints reveal what is important in the
context of this argument.
The active master lives in accord with his own physiological demands and at-
tempts to realize them so that the will to power can unfold itself in a direct way.
The will to power within the reactive slaves, on the other hand, unfolds itself
indirectly which becomes clear if one considers the character traits Nietzsche
ascribes to the slave type, e.g. descriptive and normative equality, a longing for
the after-life with which comes along a devaluation of the sensual world, and the
claim of the universal validity of one’s own values (Sorgner 2010b, 128–134). The
master type can be described with the qualities self-affirmation, nobility and,
in particular, truthfulness. (Sorgner 2010b, 141–143) By being true to oneself,
one’s own drives and also one’s own immediate expression of the will to power,
the master realizes what is good for him. What is good for him, he refers to as
good. He is less concerned with all the other activities to which he refers to as
bad. However, in both cases, he does not claim that what is good and bad for him
applies to anyone else besides himself.
The slave type, on the other hand, is reactive, weak, and not inclined towards
an immediate realization of his drives. (Sorgner 2010b, 193–208) He just realizes
that the masters oppress him and use him for their own ends. As these acts do
not allow that his own will to power can express itself immediately, he refers to
these acts as evil. However, he does no claim that these acts are evil solely from
his own perspective, which is how masters formulate their value judgments, but
slaves claim that the related acts are universally evil and that such value judgments
are supposed to apply to all human beings at all times and those who do no stick
to it will get punished in their after-life. The main focus of slave morality lies on
evil. All the other acts which cannot get classified as evil can be referred to as good.
As both utilitarianism as well as deontological ethical theories are focused on
what is universally right and wrong, they can get classified as slave moralities
from Nietzsche’s perspective. Consequently, he rejects them (KSA, JGB, 5, 160;
KSA, AC, 6, 177). One could object to my referring to Nietzsche’s ethics as virtue
ethics, because it is also clear that Nietzsche is fairly critical of virtues. However,
his criticism only applies to slavish virtues which claim universal validity. He is
full of praise for virtù, a this-worldly Renaissance understanding of virtues. (KSA,
NF, 12, 518) It would be false to refer to virtù as the Renaissance understanding of
virtue, because in particular a Neo-Platonic virtue ethics whose primary goal is
seen in the unio mystica and thereby in the return to the one is another widespread
Renaissance type of philosophy, which is represented best by Marsilio Ficino and
Pico della Mirandola. Nietzsche does not affirm their understanding of virtues.
When he talks about Renaissance virtue, he means the humanist tradition which
concentrates more on the human body, its function and beauty, as it is this tradi-
tion which moves towards a more immanent understanding of human beings
which is closer to his understanding of virtù.
It is his immanent understanding of the world which leads Nietzsche to his
task of naturalizing ethics. This also applies to his theory of virtues, and he is
ready to defend his naturalized understanding of virtue against the preachers of
virtues (KAS, NF, 12, 517). One’s own virtue can be identified with the health of
one’s soul (KSA, FW, 3, 477), whereby the souls needs to be understood as a part
of one’s body (KSA, Za, 4, 39). When he talks about masterly virtues, nobility and
truthfulness are mentioned most often by Nietzsche. (KSA, NF, 13, 474f; KSA, NF,
12, 201) Other virtues are enumerated, too, such as bravery or solitude (KSA, NF,
12, 506). There are three further features concerning his virtue ethics which are
particularly noteworthy. According to Nietzsche, it is better to have one virtue
instead of two (KSA, Za, 4, 17), it is virtuous to also send one’s virtues to sleep at
the right time (KSA, Za, 4, 33), and what it means to be noble is bound to take
different shapes in men and in women (KSA, GD, 6, 63). It also seems to me that
there is a close connection between truthfulness and nobility in Nietzsche’s phi-
losophy, and whoever listens to his own drives, and lives accordingly embodies
virtù, because in them the will to power can find its immediate expression.
The slavish virtues, on the other hand, are supposed to be universally valid
and represent qualities such that they are in the interest of all those people who
do not possess them according to Nietzsche and weaken those who have them
(KSA, FW, 3, 391). Sympathy is one of the most famous virtues in question. Still,
the same applies to altruism, faith, love and hope or humbleness and chastity.
As these virtues weaken the virtuous, Nietzsche regards them as slavish virtues
(Sorgner 2010b, 145–146). These virtues are in the interest of the slaves, because
the virtues weaken the masters, and by possessing the slavish virtues the masters
diminish their own power. Again there is a close connection between the virtues
and Nietzsche’s will to power ontology.
By relating virtues to his will to power ontology, he fulfills his talk of naturaliz-
ing morality, because his will to power ontology is a kind of naturalist understand-
ing of the world. Within the two class community, for which Nietzsche argues, the
few active artists and philosophers can live in accord with their masterly virtues,
and the many workers can hold on to their slavish virtues. Both can live in ac-
cord with their own psychophysiological demands and therefore live good lives
without there necessarily being a social tension between the two classes involved.
Given this way of social structure, the biological tension within the human species
becomes intensified. Thereby, the likelihood might be increased of promoting the
development towards the overhuman who belongs to a new species and represents
the meaning of the earth. Hence, Nietzsche’s two class community promotes the
good life of the active and passive members of the community and provides them
with a meaning for their lives by having a goal which transcends their own exist-
ence, i.e. the process of the coming about of the overhuman.
A healthy aristocracy is in the interest of the few masters, because being in
charge and being active corresponds to their physio-psychological structure,
and it is also in the interest of the many slaves, because being lead but also be-
ing embedded in a safe social organization is what corresponds to their passive
physio-psychological foundations. Nietzsche’s anthropology is descriptive in so
far that it implies that there are active and passive human beings. However, it is
also normative in the sense that it ought to be the case that the active ones are
the governing ones and free creators and the passive ones are there to provide the
others with the means for living a life dedicated to artistic creativity. The concept
normative here must not be read in the sense that Nietzsche makes a judgment
concerning what is universally right. This is not the case. It is a normative posi-
tion in the sense that he makes a statement concerning the good. All masters
(slaves) are active (passive) and ought to live in accordance to their being active
(passive) to live a good live. Hence, it promotes their living a good life by living
actively (passively). The connection between their being active or passive and the
normative judgment that they ought to live in accordance with their personality
is not a logically necessary connection, but rather a prudential one. The slavish
personality type is passive and hence, it is prudential for them to consider their
own passive personality type, because in this way they increase their likelihood
of living a good life, as whoever acts in accordance with their own drives lives a
good life. By focusing on the concept of the good life, Nietzsche prioritizes the
good over the right which is characteristic of communitarian philosophies. Still,
it is not communitarian in a traditional sense in so far he does not give a single
account of the good of which he claims universal validity. What he does put for-
ward is a formal account of the good which implies that it is in the interest of or
valuable for members of each type of personality to live a life which corresponds
to their own physiopsychological demands. Hence, his ethics encloses the central
traits of a communitarian position, because it prioritizes the good over the right
and aims for a social structure which is in the interest of all its members whereby
he stresses that the interests of human beings differs depending on their having
a master or slave type of personality. In addition to this aspect of his position,
Nietzsche’s central reason for upholding it is that it helps human beings to move
beyond themselves, so that the likelihood of the coming about of the overhuman
increases, which also provides them with a meaning in their lives (see Sorgner
2010b, 109–210; 218–232).
2. Sandel’s Virtue Ethical Rejection of Genetic Enhancement

Concerning contemporary debates, I am focusing on Sandel’s communitarian
suggestions concerning the question of genetic enhancement, as like Nietzsche
he is a communitarian virtue ethicist who is concerned with questions of procrea-
tion. In this part of the paper, I critically describe Sandel’s communitarian views
on genetic enhancement. Sandel stresses explicitly that he doubts that currently
dominant moral standards provide a reliable basis for rejecting methods of genetic
enhancement:
“An ethics of autonomy and equality cannot explain what is wrong with eugenics” (Sandel
2007, 81).
However, by referring to a virtue ethical approach he believes to be able to explain

what is morally wrong concerning genetic enhancement. Thereby, he is primar-
ily concerned with two heteronomous versions of genetic enhancement, namely
genetic enhancement by selection and genetic enhancement by modification.
However, he also attempts to provide reasons against the option of autonomous
genetic enhancement, i.e. the case where a person decides for himself to be ge-
netically enhanced:
“If bioengineering made the myth of the ‘self-made man’ come true, it would be difficult
to view our talents as gifts for which we are indebted rather than achievements for which
we are responsible.” (Sandel 2007, 86–87)
However, this line of thought is not plausible; as such an either-or-situation im-

plies a categorical duality between the option that we are either solely indebted
or solely responsible. Most probably, there has never been a historical situation in
which human beings have solely been indebted concerning their talents. Without
education or any kind of transformative process, which is usually dependent on
some kind of technology, no human being would possess any significant talent.
Talents need to be developed and developmental processes need engagement
and hence, we have always at least partly been responsible for the development
of our own talents. Given the use of autonomous genetic enhancement, this situ-
ation would not change in principle. We would have some talents which we have
received via our initial genetic makeup and we have the option of developing
them further – either by means of self-transformative technologies or by means
of genetic alteration technologies. In both cases, it is the case that technologies
are involved. Furthermore, using a genetic enhancement technology is not cat-
egorically different to the use of a traditional technology. Consequently, I regard
this argument of Sandel against the use of autonomous genetic enhancement as
weak. In any case, the main focus of his reflections was heteronomous variants of
genetic enhancement. In this context, he addressed the relevance of the question
of the telos, the goal, of the activity in question:
“Arguments about the ethics of enhancement are always, at least in part, arguments about
the telos or point, of the sport in question, and the virtues relevant to the game.” (Sandel
2007, 38)
He also addresses the issue of genetic enhancement in the field of sports by con-
sidering the telos of the activity in question (Sandel 2007, 29) The telos of sports
is another complex issue which is the reason why I will immediately focus on the
central issue at stake, namely that of parenting. Concerning parenting, Sandel
puts forward several narratives which are supposed to support the position that
parents ought to accept their children as they come, in contrast to the practice of
choosing our friends and spouses, who we choose at least partly on “the basis of
qualities we find attractive” (Sandel 2007, 45). This acceptance is the telos of par-
enting according to him and it implies the basic stable attitude of the “openness to
the unbidden” (Sandel 2007, 45) which he sees as central concerning the parental
relationship towards their children. He does not explicitly specify a reason for this
being the case. However, given the context of this judgment, it seems plausible to
read Sandel such that it is founded on the following insight:
“Parents love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have.”
(Sandel 2007, 45)
It has to be noted that he writes “parents love is” as if this sentence was a descrip-
tive one. However, that this cannot be the case becomes clear given the enormous
amount of cases where parents abuse, torture and kill their own children. His
phrase conceals a moral statement which Sandel wishes to defend: Parental love
ought to be independent of the talents and attributes the child happens to have.
Hence, virtuous parents do not use genetic enhancement technologies to select
of modify the talents or attributes of their children.
This general position seems highly problematic; because it implicitly stresses
that there is a necessary conflict between the virtue of unconditional love and
the use of genetic enhancement technologies. His definition of unconditional
love implies to accept the talents and attributes of the other as they are. However,
to simply accept the other as he or she is implies that education would not be an
appropriate action either. Yet, this is not the case, and this is not what Sandel has
in mind either. Hence, further qualifications need to be considered.5
The openness to the unbidden implies that the option of choosing a fertilized
egg after IVF and PGD is not one, a virtuous parent would choose. The procedure
in question can be described as genetic enhancement by selection. Furthermore,
it seems to be the case that education or genetic enhancement by modification
would not be options either, because thereby parents promote, develop and en-
hance the talents and attributes of their children. Let me analyze each of these
two cases and start with the latter one.
According to Sandel, the aforementioned inference is not one he affirms whole-
heartedly. When dealing with education, he introduces the distinction between
accepting and transformative love, as two manifestations of unconditional love
(Sandel 2007, 49–50). It can be the case that parental transformative love demands
to shape and direct the development of their children, as this behavior can be
virtuous. Again, Sandel’s main focus is the virtue of unconditional love. He argues
that transformative love is one way in which unconditional love can manifest itself.
To uphold the validity of this argument, it seems to imply that Sandel has to
uphold that genetic enhancement by modification and traditional educations are
no structurally analogous procedures, because otherwise his argument would
5 I already mentioned one of his arguments against autonomous genetic enhancement

earlier in this part. Sandels point of view implies that currently dominant moral prin-
ciples like autonomy or equality do not imply that genetic enhancement has to be bad.
However, on the basis of Sandel’s virtue ethical approach, anyone who uses genetic
enhancement is bound to have a vicious character. To analyze the plausibility of this
general rejection further, it is relevant to consider in detail which specific consequences
are implicit in the aforementioned line of argument?
seem to be inconsistent, because then he would affirm that certain types of shaping
and directing a kid’s live can be virtuous, but also that all types of genetic enhance-
ment by modification are vicious. Yet, if Sandel upholds that the two procedures
in question are no parallel ones, then his argument rests on a highly implausible
premise, as there are several reasons for claiming that traditional education and
genetic enhancement by modification are structurally analogous procedures.
(for a more detailed argument in favor of this structural analogy, see Sorgner
2010a, section 1) Still, Sandel is aware of this option and accepts that traditional
education and genetic enhancement by modification can be seen as structurally
analogous procedures. Still he rejects that this is a reason for accepting genetic
modifications, because he claims that genetic enhancement by modification has
to be analyzed as an expression of hyperparenting which has to be in conflict with
the norm of unconditional love (Sandel 2007, 52) and represents a problematic
attitude which is characteristic of our times (Sandel 2007, 62). Here a brief replies
has to be mentioned at least: It is highly dubitable that all types of genetic en-
hancement by modification have to be identified with hyperparenting. There are
plenty of reasons for claiming that genetic modification and traditional education
are parallel procedures (see Sorgner 2010a, section 1). Furthermore, it can be the
case that both procedures (education and genetic modification) aim for the same
goal, e.g. the increase of mathematical talent which, for example, could either be
realized by means of early childhood education or genetic modifications. If this
talent is being promoted by education, this is seen as a task which is being fulfilled
by virtuous parents. Why should parents turn vicious, if the same goal is being
promoted by a different means, e.g. genetic modifications? I take it that genetic
modification technologies are merely a means for promoting different goals. The
same goals can also be promoted by educational measures, in which cases they are
mostly seen as appropriate ones. What is so bad about using genetic modification
technologies for regarding the parents who do so as vicious? Sandel does not have
a plausible reply to this question. He could claim that gene technologies are not
solely a means, but alter the relationship between humans and their environment.
Again, it could be replied that the same can be said of educational measures, as
educational measures have always brought about genetic modifications, if the
latest research in the field of epigenetics is being taken serious. Hence, his line of
argument on this issue is complex and interesting, but does not seem plausible.
Let us come back to the first case in question, the case of genetic enhancement
by selection. An immediate challenge concerning his position becomes clear
given his position of seeing health as an intrinsically valuable quality. (Sandel
2007, 48) Thereby he weakens his own line of thought. If it is the case that health
is intrinsically valuable, then there is a clear reason for choosing a child after
IVF and PGD, because thereby the likelihood of the child being healthy can be
increased.
A further argument of his stresses that caring teaches parents the openness to
the unbidden which is worth affirming according to him, as it enables us to live
with dissonance which otherwise would not be possible for us. (Sandel 2007, 86)
This argument of his is worse than the earlier one as it includes a non-sequitur.
The attempt to make the best out of a situation or a character trait is logically
independent of one’s attitude concerning dissonance. I can try to create a musical
piece like Nyman and realize that it will end up being rather like a Henze piece.
However, this does not have to mean that it will be impossible for me to live with
it. This analogy does not hold, but it helps me to hint at the understanding that
Sandel’s suggestion is far from plausible.
In addition, it needs to be stressed that his line of thought which leads to the
rejection of genetic enhancement by selection is not plausible, because there is
a structural analogy between selecting ones partner for procreative motives and
selecting a child after IVF and PGD. Let me mention some reasons in favor of
this structural analogy:6
By choosing a partner with whom one wishes to have offspring, one thereby
implicitly also determines the genetic makeup of ones kids, as 50 per cent of
their genes come from ones partner, and the other 50 per cent from oneself. By
selecting a fertilized egg, one also determines 100 per cent of the genetic makeup
by means of selection.
One objection, which might be raised here, is that selecting a fertilized egg cell
is a conscious procedure but normally one does not choose a partner according
to their genetic makeup such that one has specific genes for one’s child. However,
it can be replied that our evolutionary heritage might be more effective during
the selection procedure of a partner than we consciously wish to acknowledge. In
addition, the qualities according to which we choose a fertilized egg after a PGD
might not have been chosen as consciously as we wish to believe, but might be
influenced more on the basis of our unconscious organic setup than we wish to
acknowledge. It might even be the case, that the standards for choosing a partner
and for choosing a fertilized egg might both be strongly influenced by our organic
makeup and evolutionary heritage such that both are extremely similar.
6 The following three paragraphs were adapted from section 8 of the following of my
articles: Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz (2011b): Zarathustra 2.0 and Beyond: Further Remarks
on the Complex Relationship between Nietzsche and Transhumanism. In: The Agonist,
Vol. IV, Issue II, Fall 2011, 1–46.
A difference between these two selection procedures is surely that in the one
case, one selects a specific entity, a fertilized egg, but in the other case a partner
and therefore only a certain range of genetic possibilities. However, given the latest
epigenetic research, we know that genes can get switched on and off which makes an
enormous difference on the phenomenological level. Hence, it is also the case that
by choosing a fertilized egg, we only choose a certain range of phenomenological
possibilities of the later adult, as is the case by choosing a partner for procreative
purposes.
As it is the case that by choosing a partner with whom one wishes to have off-
spring, one thereby implicitly also determines the genetic makeup of ones kids, it
is not a categorically different act to choosing a fertilized egg after IVF and PGD.
However, Sandel makes this judgment which seems to me as implausible. Further-
more, he stresses that the telos of parenthood is connected to the “openness to the
unbidden”. I wonder why there is supposed to be any value in the “unbidden”. It
seems as if the unconditional love of parents which Sandel mentions in the same
paragraph implies the “openness to the unbidden”.
In addition, the aforementioned arguments, Sandel refers to the domain of
social challenges related to genetic enhancement. (Sandel 2007, 92), whereby he
stresses the following two arguments in particular: 1. If we give up the notion of
giftedness, we will be on the way towards a totalitarian social structure; 2. If we
give up the notion of giftedness, the strong will reject the norm of equality. Yet,
both dangers are not necessary ones, as I argue in my article “Zarathustra 2.0 and
Beyond”. (2011b, section 5)
So far, I merely provided some specific reasons against Sandel’s line of thought.
In the following third part of the article, I focus on the virtue ethical communitar-
ian basis of his argument which rests mainly on the claim that unconditional love
ought to be the dominant virtue concerning parenting.
3. A Nietzschean Critique of Sandel’s Criticism of

Genetic Enhancement
In this part of the paper, I draw upon selected central insights of Nietzsche’s
thinking to argue against Sandel’s communitarian views on genetic enhancement.
Thereby, it becomes clear that even though Nietzsche argues in favor of a commu-
nitarian ideal which is founded in his views concerning human evolution towards
the overhuman, it is possible to draw upon selected insights of his philosophy to
argue against contemporary communitarian views on genetic enhancement, in
this case the views defended by Michael Sandel.
Sandel’s central virtue concerning parenting is that of “unconditional love”.

Thereby, he belongs to a long tradition of philosophers who uphold love as central
virtue which goes back to Augustine and St. Paul. St. Augustine stresses to love and
do what you will in his seventh homily on the First Epistle of John (paragraph 8).
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians also point out the central importance of love:
“But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
(1st Corinthians 13:13)
However, you do not have to be a Christian in order to uphold the central impor-
tance of the virtue of “love”. Feuerbach, and by developing further Feuerbach’s
position, Richard Wagner also agree upon the immense relevance of love. The
complex interplay between power and love in Wagner’s Rheingold is particularly
fascinating (Sorgner 2008, 194–217) and it is this aspect of Wagner’s works which
makes his works interesting and relevant for our times (Sorgner 2013b, 193–200) –
even though it has to be interpreted in a weakened form in order to make his
positions plausible concerning todays reception (Sorgner 2014). Wagner’s theory
of the music drama, on the other hand, is too romantic and overtly integrates the
perfect music drama in an idealized state in which a community is present which
is being unified by agreeing concerning a stronger ideal of the good. I regard this
theory of a community as a highly problematic ideal (2011a, 152–172). This doubt
concerns not only Wagner’s understanding of a community, but applies also Ni-
etzsche’s and Sandel’s communitarian visions. However, concerning the interplay
between love and power which Wagner presents the issue is different, and I regard
it to be an important contribution for contemporary discussions, too. Sandel and
Nietzsche focus on one aspect solely: Sandel on love and Nietzsche on power. By
specifically analyzing Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement by selection
in the following sections, I point out why it is problematic and why it is important
to also take Nietzsche’s thoughts concerning virtue theory into consideration.
Against the use of genetic enhancement by selection Sandel argues as follows:
The central virtue concerning parenting is unconditional love. The parental vir-
tue of unconditional love leads to the appreciation of children as gifts which is
also supposed to imply “to accept them as they come” which is being contained
in the attitude of the ‘openness to the unbidden’. Hence, a virtuous parent does
not select and reject a fertilized egg after IVF and PGD, because such an action
is inconsistent with the ‘openness to the unbidden’ and hence the parental virtue
of unconditional love.
Let us assume that this is a valid argument. Firstly, it can be asked whether
unconditional love is actually the sole virtue concerning parenting. Secondly, his
position can be challenged by questioning whether it is consistent to hold that
“unconditional love” is consistent with “transforming love” and Sandel himself

stresses that during the process of education both “accepting love and transform-
ing love” are important. If transforming love aims at the alteration of a child, then
there are reasons for claiming that this type of love is not unconditional, because it
aims for an alteration of the child and does not accept it as it is. Thirdly, I already
hinted at the possibility that transforming love can find its expression in educa-
tive measures, but given that there is a structural analogy between education and
genetic enhancement, there is no reason why transforming love should not be able
to manifest itself in genetic enhancement by modification. Given the structural
analogy I hold is correct, then there is no reason to reject that transforming love
can manifest itself in genetic enhancement by modification. As education does
not have to be morally objectionable, genetic enhancement by modification does
not have to be morally objectionable either, because there are reasons for holding
that it is not necessary that genetic enhancement by modification has to be seen
as an expression of hyperparenting.
As I pointed out before, there are several reasons for doubting the plausibility
of Sandel’s argument, now I focus on the central question whether unconditional
love is actually the sole virtue concerning parenting. Thereby, the consequences
of parenting on the basis solely of unconditional love can be considered. I am not
claiming that it is impossible to lead a good life, if one’s parents are solely deter-
mined by unconditional love, but I think that there is a high likelihood that the
child of such parents will be spoiled, incapable to deal with many real life problems
and not responsible for taking care of his own future. The following argument
specifies this position further: The narcissist personality disorder argument. I
will draw upon “The Oblomov case” to explain the challenge in question further.
The narcissist personality disorder argument takes psychological research into
personality disorders seriously. According to Millon (2011, 375–422), the narcis-
sist personality disorder can have two reasons: 1. A lack of love during childhood;
2. Too much unconditional love during childhood. The second reason implies that
parents always praise their children, hold the child’s talents in high esteem and
try to fulfill all of the child’s wishes. According to Millon, it is likely that children
who were brought up in this way have an overly high understanding or picture
of their own selves. As a consequence of the immense admiration of his parents,
the child fears that he is unable to fulfill the claims or demands of others, because
it thinks that everyone has such high expectations of him.
This attitude can lead to various states. Millon (2011, 375–422) distinguishes
six types of narcissism. Often, a narcissist personality disorder leads to depression,
because of the tension between his high self-picture, the pressure connected to
the fear of not being able to fulfill the supposedly high expectations of others and
as a consequence the unwillingness to participate in any situation in which his

capacities can be tested. However, besides depression, autoaggression, aggression
in general, hyperactivity and suicidal tendencies are often associated as symptoms
with narcissist personality disorder. Without being able to spell out in detail the
various facets of narcissism from a psychological perspective, this short descrip-
tion is sufficient for having a reason to argue that solely unconditional love might
not be the sole proper virtue for parenting.
It might be interesting to note further that Nietzsche’s analysis of human be-
ings being determined by the will to power can also be seen as a symptom for
him having suffered from a narcissist personality disorder (2010b, 233–238). He
permanently analyses that there is a gap between his ideal and his real self which
he is trying to fill. Hence, the will to power, the will to gain further capacities and
to move beyond his current state is permanently dominant in him. However, as
Millon mentioned, too, this type of personality disorder can also express itself in
different forms. A literary example which exemplifies a case of too much love can
be found in the novel “Oblomov” by Ivan Goncharov. In this case, Oblomov’s par-
ents are being described as being full of love for his son and dedicating themselves
completely to his education. In this case too much parental love brings about his
enormous passivity without him wishing to take on any responsibility whereby
his main focus is on his daily sleep in the afternoon. As he never learned to fulfill
any duties, he tries to postpone any work to another day.
Reflections on narcissism are particularly relevant for doubting Sandel’s sug-
gestion that unconditional love ought to be the sole virtue concerning parenting.
In the cases, mentioned here, this attitude leads to a severe personality disorder in
the child which made it difficult if not impossible for him to lead a flourishing life.
The virtue of unconditional love fails to respect the fact that we are living in
a competitive, naturalist world, in which we need to become strong and fight
for ourselves to be able to flourish and to find and defend our own position in
it. It is the naturalist, evolutionary world full of power driven organisms which
Nietzsche describes when he analyses the various psychological structures of
human beings, and the relevance of the will to power for all of our acts and even
our values and virtues.
It is this naturalist and evolutionary world view which after Darwin and
Nietzsche has gained wider acceptance in Western societies in the 20th and 21st
century. Naturalist thinking has only gradually entered the various fields of
Academic disciplines, e.g. evolutionary epistemology, psychology, ethics and
in particular aesthetics are fairly new Academic disciplines which steadily gain
more and more acceptance. Due to the disrespect for the relevance of naturalist
processes which is implicit in the virtue of unconditional love as defended by
Sandel, it is advisable to turn to Nietzsche’s ethics whose main aim was to natu-
ralize traditional values and virtues and hence to provide a more plausible basis
for them. As a consequence of this goal, he suggested that the traditional slavish
virtues are highly dangerous, because they do not support and promote one’s
self interest but instead they are in the interest of the people who do not have
those virtues or do not stick to them (KSA, FW, 3, 391). Unconditional love for
which Sandel argues is such a slavish virtue, and in the above three examples it
becomes clear that this virtue is neither in the necessarily interest of the parents
nor in that of the child to whom it is directed.
It might be advisable to turn to Nietzsche’s virtue of truthfulness which is of
value according to him because it allows and promoted the immediate realiza-
tion of his actual will to power. By considering and accepting the immediate
expression his will to power does not imply that everyone strives for the same
goals and simply desires to be politically dominant (far from it; Sorgner 2007,
58–61). As shown in various other places, his will to power implies a perspectival
theory of power whereby power is not solely based on one single criterion but
the criterion for power is dependent on the psychophysiology of each individual
human being. Hence, power can be connected with a great plurality of criteria,
and consequently parenting can be linked to a wide range of goals. However, what
is important in this respect is that not solely the virtue of unconditional love is
dominant during the process of parenting but also the virtue of truthfulness and
thereby a certain consideration of the importance of power. Parents ought not
to solely affirm every action of their child but also demand something whereby
it depends on the parent’s truthful analysis of their own self understanding what
they demand. This is what Nietzsche’s virtue ethics can teach us concerning par-
enting and what also needs to be considered concerning the question of genetic
enhancement by selection.
Sandel argues due to the central importance of the virtue of unconditional love,
parents ought to be open to the unbidden and decide not to select a fertilized egg
after IVF and PGD. However, given psychological research it seems likely to hold
that there is the great danger that the sole attitude of unconditional love can lead to
severe personality disorders in one’s child. Instead, it might be advisable to accept
the importance of power and to consider Nietzsche’s insight concerning the rela-
tionship between the will to power and his virtue ethics which leads to the advice
that we ought to be truthful to ourselves to make the decision whether we wish to
select a fertilized egg after IVF and PGD or not. However, we have several reasons
for stressing against Sandel’s position that it does not have to be vicious to use the
option of selecting a fertilized egg after IVF and PGD. With Nietzsche it seems
more plausible to stress the importance in truthfulness concerning this decision.
4. Conclusion
As Nietzsche’s reflections are of central relevance for reflections concerning genetic
enhancement and like Sandel he argues in favor of a virtue ethical version of com-
munitarianism which is relevant concerning the question of the future of human
evolution, I apply selected aspects of his position to contemporary discourses. It
is important for me to solely refer to some of his insights, as I reject the political
visions of both Nietzsche and Sandel due to their potentially paternalistic implica-
tions which I dealt with in more detail elsewhere (Sorgner 2010b, 240).
According to Sandel, the parental use of genetic enhancement by modification
or by selection represents their vicious personality, because it shows that their
parenting is not solely determined by the virtue of unconditional love. By draw-
ing upon Nietzsche’s virtue ethics which is closely connected to his will to power
ontology and selected insights from psychological research I provided reasons for
holding that Sandel’s suggestion is implausible because there is a strong risk that
the virtue of unconditional love towards their child leads to a severe case of per-
sonality disorder. Sandel’s attitude does not consider sufficiently that we are part
of a naturalistic world in which it is important for the child to also take respon-
sibility for himself, work at his own capacities and promote his own flourishing.
Nietzsche’s virtue ethics takes this aspect seriously because it is closely linked with
his evolutionary and naturalistic understanding of human beings. Consequently,
there some reasons for holding that the virtue of truthfulness which Nietzsche
affirmed can also be seen as an important virtue concerning parenting. Given this
virtue, it follows that it does not have to be the case that the option of selecting a
fertilized egg after IVF and PGD has to be seen as a choice made by a vicious par-
ent. Hence, genetic enhancement does not have to be seen as morally problematic.
Furthermore, it can be asked whether unconditional love or truthfulness ought
be seen as the better parental virtue. From Sandel’s and Nietzsche’s perspective
the replies are clear. However, maybe Richard Wagner’s position (Sorgner 2008,
194–214; 2013b, 193–200) is even more plausible, because both in his theoretical
writings as well as in his music dramas it becomes clear that an interplay which takes
into consideration an appropriate consideration of both love and power is the most
plausible solution. Yet, another study is needed to investigate this question further.
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The relationship between humanism, metahumanism, posthumanism and transhu-
manism is one of the most pressing topics concerning many current cultural, social,
political, ethical and individual challenges. There have been a great number of uses
of the various terms in history. Meta-, post- and transhumanism have in common
that they reject the categorically dualist understanding of human beings inherent
in humanism.
The essays in this volume consider the relevant historical discourses, important
contemporary philosophical reflections and artistic perspectives on this subject-
matter. The goal is to obtain a multifaceted survey of the concepts, the relationship
of the various concepts and their advantages as well as their disadvantages. Leading
scholars of many different traditions, countries and disciplines have contributed to
this collection.
Irina Deretić is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Department of Philosophy, Fac-

ulty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. She is head of the project “History of Ser-
bian Philosophy”, supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological
Development of the Republic of Serbia.
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is Associate Professor of Philosophy at John Cabot University
in Rome, director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network and Fellow at
the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).
www.peterlang.com

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BEYOND HUMANISM: TRANS- AND POSTHUMANISM

JENSEITS DES HUMANISMUS: TRANS- UND POSTHUMANISMUS

From Humanism to Meta-,

From Humanism to Meta-, Post-

Humanism has dominated Western culture for many centuries. It is character-

den Metahumanismus oder den Naturalismus, die in diesem Kontext untersucht

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University, Rome

Irina Deretić & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Irina Deretić, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

Rafael Ferber, University of Luzern

Christos Y. Panayides, University of Nicosia

Pauliina Remes, University of Uppsala

Hans Otto Seitschek, LMU Munich

Ivan Vuković, University of Belgrade

Drago Đurić, University of Belgrade

Una Popović, University of Novi Sad

Nenad Cekić, University of Belgrade

Evanghelos Moutsopoulos, Academy of Athens

Boris Bratina, University of Priština, Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia

Mikhail Epstein, Emory University, Atlanta

Regine Kather, University of Freiburg

Marija Bogdanović, University of Belgrade

Karen Gloy, Universität of Luzern

Evangelos D. Protopapadakis, National and Kapodistrian University of

J. Hendrik Heinrichs, University of Erfurt

Mirjana Pavlović, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade

Biljana Dojčinović, University of Belgrade

Marina Milivojević-Mađarev, Yugoslav Drama Theater, Belgrade

Evi D. Sampanikou, University of the Aegean

Predrag Milidrag, University of Belgrade

Yvonne Förster, Leuphana University Lüneburg

Goran Gocić, Belgrade

Jaime del Val, Institute Reverso

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University, Rome

Irina Deretić and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, October 2015

The relationship between humanism, metahumanism, posthumanism and tran-

found in posthumanism. Some postmodern philosophers like Deleuze and Fou-

been particularly influential in forming the currently dominant understanding of

his perspectivism, a disrespect of paternalistic structures and a high evaluation

he deals with important aspects of Christian humanism and its understanding of

field of humanism to seriously consider the technohuman of transhumanism or

article “One Genealogy of De-centering” compares and contrasts reflections by

On the Origin and Genesis of Humans and

1 In the interpretative commentaries of the myth in Plato’s Protagoras, the much-dis-

3 See Prot. 322a.

2. Progress and Evolution

3. The First Phase of the Creation of Mortals and

8 See Democritus DK 68 B5.

4. Epimetheus and Biological Explanatory Model

16 See Prot. 320d4.

been finished. The work of Epimetheus was not exhausted in the distribution of

5. The Weakest Animal as a Cultural Being

that by using them, humans essentially distinguish themselves from the rest of

6. Religiousness and Political Excellence

of human socialization. Consequently, humans had not been completely “created”

25 See Cairns 1993, 1.

28 In Plato’s Chamedes, the connection between αἰδώς and σωφροσύνη is emphasized.

This myth provides us with both a multifaceted and sophisticated account of

Hummel, D. B. (2009): Empedocles. In: H. James Birx (ed.). Encyclopedia of

Plato’s “Side Suns”: Beauty, Symmetry and

“Three suns I saw stay on the heaven”

5 Translations were done by me (modelled sometimes on Schleiermacher’s translations)

23 See Dillon et al. 2007, 250–5.

3. The First Phase of the Creation of Mortals and