Nietzschean Transhumanism: A Few Sociological and Pedagogical Remarks

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the release of Stefan Lorenz Sorgner’s article “Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and the Transhuman” in 2009, the debate on Friedrich Nietzsche’s impact on transhumanism has become a thought-provoking opportunity to discuss many important and controversial issues of the technoprogressive agenda. However, despite the great variety of perspectives and arguments made both for and against this analogy, Sorgner’s main argument that the transhumanist movement could benefit by recognizing and embracing the “meaning-giving” function of Nietzsche’s concept of the overhuman has been neglected by most commentators and debaters. The main objectives of this article are to face Sorgner’s challenge of examining the existential dimension of a Nietzschean interpretation of transhumanism and further to present some significant sociological and educational implications of such an approach. The main conclusion will be that, while a Nietzschean transhumanism would successfully resist being analogized to a quasi-religious cult, it might further provoke a redefinition of the role that science plays in establishing educational values. Eventually, a Nietzschean transhumanism could contribute to a qualitatively new understanding of the everyday social lifeworld and thus reorient the technoprogressive agenda toward more down-to-earth tasks and future scenarios.