Transhumanism as a New Techno-Religion and Personal Development: In the Framework of a Future Technological Spirituality
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Perceived as the century with the fastest developments in technology, the 21 st century has imposed a series of paradigm shifts, which implicated both the concepts of religion and spirituality. In this new paradigm, transhumanism represents a mechanism of the relative deterritorialization of religion/spirituality from their traditional-metaphysical system, and of their reterritorialization within the rational-scientific system that characterizes technological progress of the 21 st century. At this level, personal development mechanisms go from the register of traditional methods to the improvements brought by the principles of transhumanist philosophy (the principles of extropy ). The general objective of this paper is to analyze these new mechanisms of the transgression of human limits, and those of the traditional concepts of religion, personal development and spirituality, within the paradigm of transhumanist philosophy—governed by a techno-optimistic ideology. At this level, according to interpretations of Michel Foucault’s theories, we encounter a new technological ‘regime of truth’ regarding the new dimensions of religion and spirituality, both found under the dominance of technology: an aspect that permits us to talk about a ‘techno-religion’ and a ‘technological spirituality’. This theoretical objective follows the process of deterritorialization-reterritorialization (approached within Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy), applied to the philosophical theories of Ray Kurzweil and Max More, in order to emphasize the phenomenon of the fusion of the concept of spirituality with that of technology, forming a new territorial system: that of the rhizomatic post-transcendence technology , generated by technological singularity.
Author: Aura-Elena Schussler
Institution: Babeș-Bolyai University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2963950874