Philosophical Seminar: PD Dr. Gerald Hartung

Image of Human Nature and Science

Our current image of human nature is mutable in a dual sense. On the one hand we recognize in a historical and cultural-anthropological perspective that a wide range of self images of human nature did exist and still does, even though human nature is relatively constant itself. One needs little imagination to tell that this matter of fact will not change in the future. On the other hand we are in possession of sufficient technological means to adjust the nature of humanity to our actual or particular image of human nature. The interplay between the ambivalent aspects of man in general, who defines himself as “creatum” and “creator” at the same time, is taken to a new level. It is exactly this better knowledge of human nature that requires further consideration.

The scholarly discussion takes place within the range of the traditional variety of images of human nature or its actual standardization with technological intent. In this context Michael Landman supports the thesis that not in the unification but within the variety of potential determinations of human being and in competition to the science of human being “the last sense of anthropology exposes itself” insofar as it is the same being “that has to create itself and that for this reason requires a certain image on which his self-creation is founded”.

But this variety of perspective is absolutely not firmed. Particularly the development in the history of the research of life and of the possibilities of technical (re)producibility of life command, that scientific approaches are reduced to the benefit of progress to one reality of life. The so-called life sciences became a conglomeration of all anthropological researches, in which all interest lies in the optimization of human life from its beginning, in its centre and at its end. The main objective here is the possible maximum of control, i.e. an elimination of all risks that come from the natural side of human being: the coincidence of genetic origin shall be deactivated by studiously selected gene poles, the risk jeopardy of disease shall be diminished by preselection and well-aimed diagnosis, the process of aging shall be stopped and the most harmful insult to man, the unpredictable death, shall be foreseeable. When these goals are reached, second nature will become the first one. Nature will be substituted by culture.

At the sight of the various technological possibilities of intervention into the physical and mental reality of human being, which is subsumed under the generic name of ‘Human Enhancement’, a lot of arguments these days are spinning around the question of its post-humanistic future. Indeed are the chances and risks for man, which will come around with the development of ‘Human Enhancement’ (HET), hitherto not adequately been researched. One may venture a guess that the transition from the neuro-technology to the “technology of consciousness” (Metzinger) will erase the last mythical content of the human self-portrait. Should the possibility arise that not alone physical features but even the mental capacity be intentionally and selectively manipulated or created, we will face the logical consequence that our self-image is dependent on a historical and mutable index.

The price of that development could be that we might unlearn to even understand the problem in the near future by reducing it to the distinction between a successful and unsuccessful adaptation of our physical presence to our environment. If this should be the case then traditionally essential questions (about disease and suffering, life and death and so forth) might be limited to those exceptional situations when an existential gap on account of corrupted physical and psychical programming occurs.

From this endpoint considered one can shape the argument that man is the remaining void in a technologically optimized environment. Those malfunctions can only be eliminated when the human organism is adapted to the requirements of his second nature, i.e. the artificially created cultural environment. This happens when man disconnects himself by means of ‘Human Enhancement’ from his own biogenesis and when the sources of error in his natural life – such as the structures of needs, disease, death etc. – are ignored. Might this scenario appear bizarre at first sight, these abstract considerations can be traced back to the origins of human culture. When key questions of human existence concerning the fulfilment of all needs are asked, the elimination of physical pain and the acquirement of immortality will become a popular and current wishful thinking.

Today, philosophical anthropology is the forum in which the controversial issue about our self-images are articulated. In the discussion with the life sciences it is important to avoid any kind of methodological or conceptual reductionism in order to preserve a variety of options and possibilities in the future. According to Hans Blumenberg we should keep an open sense for questions like “What is the human being?” and “Which image of human nature guides us?” in such an extent that we once again question our history of origin in retrospect and in anticipation of our human future: What did we want to explore and what can it be that we are about to experience?

The question about the images of human nature and their function for human self- understanding and action could be directed at the arguments “Borderlines between Nature and Culture of Human Nature”, towards the eventual convergence of “Morality and Nature”, “Development of Human Being as Process of Adaptation and Perfection?”, “Sense of Life in Pain or beyond Pain?” as well as “Reality and Possibility of Human-Being".

Philosophical Seminar: PD Dr. Gerald Hartung

Image of Human Nature and Science

Participants