ABSTRACT
The chapter analyzes from a Thomistic perspective the convergence of postmodernism, secularism, and political liberalism in contemporary transhumanism. First, the postmodern rejection of overarching metanarratives opens the path to the fluidity of personal identity that can take on cyborg or even post-biological expressions. Second, the secular humanist rejection of faith in God in favor of a strictly natural scientific account of physical reality prompts the transhumanist insistence upon finding solutions to the problems of suffering, aging, and death through biomedical enhancement without reference to the transcendent. Third, political liberalism’s rejection of a shared societal comprehensive doctrine in favor of a peaceable coexistence of diverse, individually chosen life projects develops into the transhumanist value of radical autonomy through enhancement-driven morphological freedom. Through a tradition-constituted approach, Thomists can find in transhumanism an admirable and shared desire for constant human improvement. Nonetheless, the same approach also exposes the philosophical limitations of the movement latent in its intellectual pedigree. The chapter thus concludes with a critique of transhumanism’s tendencies toward moral relativism, nihilism, and divisive individualism that together prevent the school from reaching its noble goals of human betterment.
