Porter Allen
Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.
J Med Philos. 2017 Jun 1;42(3):237-260. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhx001.
Transhumanism is a "technoprogressive" socio-political and intellectual movement that advocates for the use of technology in order to transform the human organism radically, with the ultimate goal of becoming "posthuman." To this end, transhumanists focus on and encourage the use of new and emerging technologies, such as genetic engineering and brain-machine interfaces. In support of their vision for humanity, and as a way of reassuring those "bioconservatives" who may balk at the radical nature of that vision, transhumanists claim common ground with a number of esteemed thinkers and traditions, from the ancient philosophy of Plato and Aristotle to the postmodern philosophy of Nietzsche. It is crucially important to give proper scholarly attention to transhumanism now, not only because of its recent and ongoing rise as a cultural and political force (and the concomitant potential ramifications for bioethical discourse and public policy), but because of the imminence of major breakthroughs in the kinds of technologies that transhumanism focuses on. Thus, the articles in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy are either explicitly about transhumanism or are on topics, such as the ethics of germline engineering and criteria for personhood, that are directly relevant to the debate between transhumanists (and technoprogressives more broadly) and bioconservatives.
超人类主义是一场“技术进步主义”的社会政治和思想运动，主张利用技术从根本上改变人类有机体，最终目标是成为“后人类”。为此，超人类主义者关注并鼓励使用新兴技术，如基因工程和脑机接口。为了支持他们对人类的愿景，并作为安抚那些可能对该愿景的激进性质望而却步的“生物保守主义者”的一种方式，超人类主义者声称与许多杰出的思想家和传统有共同立场，从柏拉图和亚里士多德的古代哲学到尼采的后现代哲学。现在对超人类主义给予适当的学术关注至关重要，这不仅是因为它最近作为一种文化和政治力量正在兴起（以及随之而来的对生物伦理话语和公共政策的潜在影响），还因为超人类主义所关注的技术即将取得重大突破。因此，本期《医学与哲学杂志》上的文章要么明确是关于超人类主义的，要么是关于诸如生殖系工程伦理和人格标准等与超人类主义者（以及更广泛的技术进步主义者）和生物保守主义者之间的辩论直接相关的主题。
