The Heaven of the Transhumanists

Transhumanism champions a view of life that will strike many as strange, disconcerting, and even repugnant. Corpses frozen in liquid nitrogen; devices implanted within the body, promising to enhance capacities or even introduce new ones; and the pursuit of indefinite life extension, both in this world and through the uploading of consciousness—all represent incarnations of the transhumanist ideal. In his insightful overview of the movement in To Be a Machine (2017), Mark O’Connell describes transhumanism as “a liberation movement advocating nothing less than a total emancipation from biology itself.” Once emancipated from the limitations of biology and/or with our biology sufficiently enhanced by technology, human beings will, according to transhumanist thought, be able to realize a potential that is only possible once the defective machinery of our biological bodies is sufficiently remedied.

Yet while concrete expressions of transhumanism will startle most and while the goal of overcoming our humanity so as to merge with technology will be resisted by many, the reality is that transhumanism is a natural outgrowth of basic principles that took shape in modernity. The dualism of Descartes, with his mechanistic view of the human body and the independence of the rational soul, accords well with a movement that thinks of the body as nothing but a machine and which views the massive computational power of technology as human consciousness’ natural, if not inevitable, end. Modernity then culminates with Hegelian philosophy and consciousness’ liberation from materiality by way of absolute consciousness subsuming all of reality within itself. Freed from the constraints of materiality and able to shape reality according to its own internal logic, consciousness thus achieves complete autonomy.

The prominent Catholic philosopher William Desmond has argued that what underlies modernity is humanity and human consciousness's move toward increasing degrees of autonomy. He writes in The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being (2018):

We have witnessed a certain prohibition on the transcendent since Kant. I connect this especially with an ethos of autonomy: our self-transcending is more concerned to keep and guard the circle of its own self-determination as absolute, as absolved as possible from submission to what is superior, as other.

Transhumanism is, if nothing else, an effort to achieve autonomy. As one of the most prominent transhumanists, Max More, puts it, “becoming posthuman means exceeding the limitations that define the less desirable aspects of the ‘human condition.’ Posthuman beings would no longer suffer from disease, aging, and inevitable death.” Ray Kurzweil, another foundational figure in the movement, states the principle even more directly: “[We will] transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality will be in our own hands.” Unfettered autonomy is the promise of transhumanism, and it is achieved by technology developing to the point where human beings are liberated from the constraints of the body.

The liberation of consciousness from death constitutes the fullest fruition of the transhumanist ideal. While overcoming death is an ancient ideal—the Egyptian pyramids, for example—transhumanism is a distinctly modern ideology insofar as it adopts a mechanistic view of matter and insofar as it aspires toward the fullest possible fruition of conscious autonomy. As O’Connell puts it: “I knew that this notion of disembodied mind was central to transhumanism. I knew that this final act of secession from nature was, in fact, the highest ideal of the movement.” The “final act” to which O’Connell refers is the hope of immortality made possible by uploading the mind to a digital substrate.

Turning specifically toward the notion of a digital afterlife, one witnesses visions of autonomous consciousness dancing through transhumanist minds. The prospect of an uploaded mind seems to promise infinite cognitive possibilities. A selection from the transhumanist magazine Extropy notes how “you can be anything you like. . . . You can be big or small; you can be lighter than air, and fly; you can teleport and walk through walls. You can be a lion or an antelope, a frog or a fly, a tree, a pool, the coat of paint on a ceiling.” Once liberated from the constraints of the body and the limitations of a biological brain, the sky, both figuratively and literally, is the limit. Mind would master matter. Such is the ultimate transhumanist ideal and a fitting milieu in which to realize the modern impulse for autonomy.

While it is not my place nor area of expertise to say whether such a future is possible, it is perhaps sufficient to say that there are many who view such a dream as fool’s gold. Others view it as humanity’s inevitable fate. Yet, aside from the unresolvable nature of the debate regarding the project’s feasibility, there is a more pressing question at present. Given the splendor of such visions, one might wonder about the status of a traditional afterlife. For instance, what could draw one back to a traditional form of the afterlife if granted access to the “unbounded possibilities” of a technological beyond? To ask the same question in the opposite direction, what critique might a traditional afterlife offer of this vision of technological utopia?

Gabriel Marcel

To respond, I would like to reflect upon the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. Marcel, a French philosopher in the tradition of Christian Existentialism, is relevant not only because he grounds afterlife belief in incarnate existence but also because, as an Existentialist, he was a successor to and critic of modernity. Yet, unlike many Existentialists who valorized individual freedom, Marcel’s philosophy represents a sustained reflection on the intersubjective nature of human existence. We discover our fullest self in love rather than a project of our making. In this way, Marcel not only questions the pursuit of autonomy championed by modernity and transhumanism but also the individualism associated with existentialist thought. It is worth noting that individualism also finds expression in transhumanist visions of a digital beyond. The emphasis on becoming anything you want to be and doing whatever you wish to do is a vision that merges conscious autonomy with individual desire.    

There is perhaps no greater, or more often referenced, encapsulation of Marcel’s approach to the afterlife than when he wrote: “To love someone is to say to that person: Thou, thou shall not die.” A hope for life beyond death begins with a recognition of the beloved’s immense value. The value of the other, the beloved, rather than one’s self, serves as Marcel’s springboard to the beyond. Marcel’s metaphysics of the afterlife subsequently includes the self insofar as love directs one to recognize the value not simply of the beloved but also of one’s relationship with the beloved.

As a response to the transhumanist vision of the beyond, it is eminently clear that the two approaches possess starkly different attitudes toward humanity’s given existence. Incarnate existence is something to be overcome or mastered in the transhumanist vision. For Marcel, and what could be called a love-based approach to the afterlife, the lived experience of value within humanity’s given reality is the foundation for further life. To adopt the transhumanist vision is to think of incarnate reality as something we need to be saved from, whereas to adopt Marcel’s vision is to recognize that our salvation, or at least hope for our salvation, is already present before us. The transhumanist vision aspires to create a new reality, whereas Marcel’s approach calls for a renewed encounter with present existence.

While the ramifications of these differing attitudes are far-ranging and beyond the scope of the present essay to explore in detail, four consequences are worthy of note. First, the discovery of the beloved’s value as the source of afterlife hope naturally leads to the view of life as a gift or, at the very least, to a gratitude for waking up in a world that possesses a value worthy to contest death. Yet such a view, rather than being nourished, is undermined when thinking from the vantage point of transhumanism. For it goes against the grain of natural impulse to view as a gift that which must be remade in order to obtain what one desires. Rather than being a gift which evokes a feeling of gratitude, the given, incarnate nature of human reality is, in the transhumanist view, an obstacle to be overcome and a source of frustration or even disgust. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear these words from a transhumanist: “[You’re] just a bag of chemicals reacting to shit.” From gift to “shit,” the gulf between these attitudes is wide, yet such a gulf shouldn’t be surprising given that transhumanism takes the modernist ideal of prioritizing autonomy over givenness to its practical extreme.

With the expulsion of value from the given, there arises the prospect, if not the likelihood, of coming to view the self as disposable. At an ontological level, the bond to any particular self becomes voluntary. In a digital beyond, you are offered the promise of being anyone or “anything you like” and, by extension, disposing of anyone or anything you like. Marcel’s love-based approach to the afterlife challenges the prospect of disposability with the irreplaceability of the beloved. The afterlife is not a site where one’s self is looked upon as an option that subsists until it is to be replaced with something different or more exciting. Rather, the afterlife is a domain that preserves that which is of immense, inexhaustible value, namely, the beloved and one’s relationships with those one loves. Furthermore, if one views the relationships with those one loves as central to what it means to live a meaningful life as well as a necessary component of our humanity, then the prospect of the self’s disposability haunts a digital beyond.    

A third ramification of a transhumanist versus Marcelian approach to the afterlife concerns transhumanism’s lack of ethical moorings. A digital beyond not only casts away the anchor of personhood, it casts away foundations of every sort. While there would undoubtedly be conscious entities pursuing moral paths should a digital afterlife be realized, there is no fundamental reason to pursue such paths. Such a worry is more pronounced in a domain in which personhood itself becomes disposable. Perhaps moral directives could be written into the digital code, but, with autonomy as a foundation, it would not seem that any directives, moral or otherwise, could provide a fundamental structure to a digital beyond. A love-based approach to the afterlife challenges the lack of ethical moorings by orienting one to an afterlife structured upon the dictates of love and the value of personhood. What those dictates would consist of requires a separate analysis, but the salient point at present is that a path to the beyond that begins in love is anchored to the ethical in a way that a digital afterlife cannot be.

Finally, we need to consider how the transhumanist beyond requires humanity, or whatever consciousness that follows humanity, to occupy the role of God. Unlike Marcel’s love-based afterlife—where love of the other leads to a recognition of the value of love itself and which ultimately brings one to the ultimate source of love in God—the transhumanist afterlife returns humanity back upon itself. The substitution of humanity’s technological future for God raises the question of whether a digital beyond could ever prove satisfactory. The logic of Augustine’s restless heart is relevant here: “You [God] stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Until we orient our desires and our lives to the divine, Augustine claims, human consciousness is such that we will never find genuine peace and satisfaction. Finite goods will forever prove insufficient if we treat them as gods, as the ultimate ends of life. Yet this is precisely what the transhumanist heaven offers: a world made of our own fantasies. Whether a digital lifetime sifting through such fantasies is able to provide ultimate satisfaction is perhaps one of the most important questions that can be asked of a digital beyond.

Gustave Dore’sThe Empyrean (highest heaven) from the illustrations to Dante’s Paradiso

The heart of the distinction between the transhumanist beyond, the project of modernity that precedes it, and Marcel’s love-based approach to the afterlife is found in the difference between autonomy and givenness. For the former, the given is to be overcome. For the latter, it is the given to which we must return. The ramifications of such a difference are profound, and it is my hope to have highlighted a few of those differences in the effort to think through the nature of an afterlife founded upon modernist principles and transhumanist ideals. 

Geoffrey Karabin is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Neumann University. His work focuses on issues related to death and immortality as well as philosophy of the French Existentialist Gabriel Marcel.