IPT Talk Series 2024-25

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

(John Cabot University)

17 October 2024, 20:00–21:00 (Athens Time, GMT+3) – Online (MS Teams)

Classical Transhumanism versus Euro-Transhumanism

Many critics of transhumanism conceptualize transhumanists as blood-sucking Silicon Valley vampires who want to become immortal by downloading their personalities onto hard drives. I wish to highlight that this widely shared prejudice concerning transhumanism does not consider the enormous variety of transhumanist approaches. A significant distinction exists between classical transhumanism and Euro-Transhumanism, which I will present in my talk. In doing so, I will highlight twelve fundamental tensions between these two approaches.

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a philosophy professor at John Cabot University in Rome, Director and Co-Founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, academic Advisor of Humanity+, and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. He is editor of more than 10 essay collections, and author of the following monographs: Metaphysics without Truth (Marquette University Press 2007), Menschenwürde nach Nietzsche (WBG 2010), Transhumanismus (Herder 2016), Schöner neuer Mensch (Nicolai, 2018), Übermensch (Schwabe 2019), On Transhumanism (Penn State University Press 2020), We have always been cyborgs (Bristol University Press 2022), Philosophy of Posthuman Art (Schwabe 2022), Transhumanismus (mit Philip von Becker, Westendverlag 2023), Homo ex Machina  (together with Bernd Kleine-Gunk, Goldmann 2023, in German), Homo ex Machina  (together with Bernd Kleine-Gunk, Mirae N Co, Ltd 2024, in Korean translation). In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor of the “Journal of Posthuman Studies” (a double-blind peer review journal, published by Penn State University Press since 2017). Furthermore, he is in great demand as a speaker in all parts of the world (World Humanities Forum, Global Solutions Taipei Workshop, Biennale Arte Venezia, TEDx, Colours of Ostrava) and a regular contact person of national and international journalists and media representatives (Die Zeit, Cicero, Der Standard; Die Presse am Sonntag, Philosophy Now, Il Sole 24 Ore).

 

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