Transhumanism As a Thin-Centred Ideology
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Transhumanism as a Thin-centred Ideology By Krisztián Szabados Submitted to: Corvinus University of Budapest Doctoral School of Political Science In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Zoltán Balázs, DSc Budapest, Hungary December 2020 Abstract As a product of the ongoing scientific and technological revolution, transhumanism has grown into a worldwide movement and its ideas penetrated the public discourse and popular culture. The transhumanist movement has recently grown political branches that exert influence on policy-making by inviting topics such as human enhancement, robot rights, post-Anthropocene or morphological freedom into the political arena. The latest development is the emergence of transhumanist political proto-parties worldwide. These changes signal an ideational thickening of transhumanism. This paper presents the first ideological analysis of political transhumanism applying Michael Freeden’s morphological approach. Its hypothesis is that transhumanism is a thin ideology. To test this hypothesis, this paper conducts the morphological analysis of key transhumanist political texts. It investigates whether transhumanism can be described as having ideological coherency, what core ideas, key values, and claims (decontestation chains) make up its ideational architect, how, if at all, the conceptual structure of transhumanism can best be described, to what extent these transhumanist concepts and claims are distinct from those of other ideologies. To start with, three arguments will be suggested to support the choice of Freeden’s morphological approach to be the right methodology for the ideological analysis of transhumanism. The subsequent section will present the selected transhumanist literature and other texts that the ideological analysis was conducted on explaining the criteria of selection. Next, a concise argument will be put forward to underpin the relevance of transhumanism as the subject of political science. Then, attention will, turn to the social and cultural context. The dissertation will summarise briefly the intellectual and organisational history of transhumanism. After that, the ideological analysis will be presented. The main issue to settle is whether transhumanism can be a subject of ideological analysis at all. For this purpose, its ideological attributes will be investigated building on Freeden’s definition and characterisation of political ideologies. It will explore six main attributes and their components in connection with transhumanism. The definition of transhumanism applied in consensus by proponents of transhumanism will also be presented together with the typology of transhumanism and the variants of current transhumanist theories. The ideological analysis is divided into four main sections. The first three sections examine the major decontestations within the transhumanist conceptual architecture revealing the core, 2 adjacent, and peripheral concepts of the transhumanist ideology and their positions within the ideational structure in accordance with the morphological approach. The development and various articulations of five core and six adjacent concepts will be presented and explained together with a number of peripheral concepts and their role in spawning ideological mutants within transhumanism. Special attention will be given to two critical accounts of transhumanism: the bioconservative critique presented by Francis Fukuyama and the moral philosophical critique put forward by Jürgen Habermas. Additionally, the dissertation will unveil how transhumanism acquires unique issue ownership over a variety of social issues as well as its attempt at creating a novel semantic field to frame and interpret the perceived consequences of techno-scientific progress. Next, the dissertation will present, based on Freeden’s sketch, a conceptual map of transhumanism to underpin and visualize the key findings of the conceptual analysis and hopefully providing new insights to the study of transhumanism. The inferences from these chapters will allow us to test the main hypothesis and to foreground a new account of the transhumanist thought system. A three-part argument will be offered to justify the idea that transhumanism is indeed a thin-centred ideology. Then, a detailed account of James Hughes’ innovative spatial theory of 21st century politics will be presented to test the potential of transhumanism to become a full-fledged ideology and to acquire a dominant status among mainstream ideologies in the near future. To conclude the dissertation will draw these theoretical, methodological and analytical strands together to appraise the main findings of the ideological analysis. It will offer a new account of transhumanism based on its existing conceptual architecture, its power to interpret social reality and its capacity to contest other dominant and emerging ideologies. Then, two distinct scenarios will be outlined that detail the directions of transhumanism’s future in the ideological space. 3 Content List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. 7 List of Tables .................................................................................................................................... 8 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 10 1.1. Research Questions and Hypothesis ................................................................................ 12 1.2. Structure of the Dissertation ............................................................................................ 14 1.3. Ideology, the Semantic Troublemaker ............................................................................. 17 1.4. Methodology: Michael Freeden’s Morphological Approach .......................................... 23 1.4.1. The Benefits of the Morphological Approach .......................................................... 34 1.4.2. Selection of Literature and Texts ............................................................................. 37 1.4.3. Transhumanism as a Subject of Ideological Investigation ....................................... 38 2. A Brief History of the Transhumanist Movement .................................................................. 39 2.1. The Early Years ............................................................................................................... 41 2.2. Growing Global ............................................................................................................... 43 2.3. The Rise of Political Transhumanism ............................................................................. 46 2.4. Globalist Proto-parties ..................................................................................................... 50 3. The Ideological Attributes of Transhumanism ....................................................................... 53 4. The Ideological Edifice of Transhumanism ............................................................................ 65 4.1. From Liberty to Morphological Freedom ........................................................................ 67 4 4.1.1. Freedom of Experimentation .................................................................................... 73 4.1.2. Procreative Beneficence or Procreative Freedom .................................................... 76 4.2. From Welfare to Human Enhancement ........................................................................... 83 4.3. From Welfare to Longevity ............................................................................................. 89 4.4. Progress Driven by the Proactionary Principle ................................................................ 93 4.5. From Individuality to Post-Anthropocentric Rights ........................................................ 98 4.6. Adjacent Concepts ......................................................................................................... 104 4.6.1. Rationality .............................................................................................................. 104 4.6.2. Abundance .............................................................................................................. 107 4.6.3. Democracy ............................................................................................................. 111 4.6.4. Equality .................................................................................................................. 114 4.6.5. Diversity ................................................................................................................. 117 4.6.6. The Role of the State .............................................................................................. 118 4.7. Peripheral Concepts ....................................................................................................... 119 5. An Ideological Map of Transhumanism ............................................................................... 122 6. The Thin-centredness of Transhumanism ............................................................................. 127 6.1. Three Arguments ........................................................................................................... 128 6.2. A Brief Comparison ......................................................................................................