Abstract

This essay examines the contemporary transhumanist movement through the lens of Heidegger's later philosophy of technology, arguing that the most ambitious projects of human enhancement, from cybernetic augmentation to mind uploading and Kurzweil's technological singularity, exemplify rather than escape the metaphysical predicament Heidegger diagnoses in "The Question Concerning Technology" (1953). After tracing the intellectual lineage of transhumanism from Huxley and Bostrom to Moravec, I show that its operative anthropology rests on a broadly Cartesian dualism between res cogitans and res extensa, on which the body figures as an external and modifiable product of the autonomous ego. Recovered through Heidegger's analysis, this picture renders the human itself available as Bestand, or standing-reserve. The essay then reconstructs Heidegger's account of the essence of technology as a mode of revealing (Entbergen), distinguishing the bringing-forth of poiesis from the challenging-forth characteristic of Gestell, and considers the ambiguity of locating this distinction strictly within modern technology. I argue that the danger Heidegger identifies, namely the eclipse of aletheia by a single mode of unconcealment and the consequent oblivion of being (Seinsvergessenheit), is intensified rather than mitigated by transhumanist aspirations, since these extend the logic of enframing from external nature to the human itself. Following Heidegger, the appropriate response is neither rejection nor embrace of these technologies but a transformed mode of reflection (Besinnung) capable of holding open the question of their essence.