Our technological capacity to transform biology linked to advances in genetic engineering, pharmacology, cybernetics and nanotechnology has generated a wide variety of devices for manipulating human characteristics and functions, raising key ethical questions. New (bio)technologies create and modify the foods and drugs we consume, the devices implanted within our body, and the prostheses that improve the body. While we are witnessing a proliferation and democratization of body manipulation technologies, these interventions have always been present during human history in different forms and intensities depending on the context. This essay presents a critical rethinking of our current understanding of the ‘human being’ and the ethical, aesthetic and political dimensions of human self-determination.
Keywords
Human improvement; Post-humanism; Technology; Bodily interventions