1. Philosophy of the Human and the Posthuman
Class 4

2. Last class: Rights (Locke; Wollstonecraft) Liberty J.S.Mill
Primacy of the individual – autonomous; ‘entitled’; self-sufficient; free;
Morality as the sphere of the private

3. Class 4 Triumph and decline of humanism;
Michel Foucault: “death of man”;
Meanings of the posthuman

4. Renaissance – summed up as “art, science, genius, money”
Enlightenment – secularism, reason, autonomy, …
Modernism – freedom, money, progress, optimism ….

6. Jeremy Bentham

7. Utilitarianism
...The creed which holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness. By ‘happiness’ is intended pleasure, the absence of pain; by ‘unhappiness’ pain, and the privation of pleasure...
(John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism 1863, Chapter 2)

8. the ethically right choice in a given situation is the one that produces the most happiness and the least unhappiness for the largest number of people.

9. utilitarian ethics Consequentialist Hedonist Instrumentalist
Quantitative
Jeremy Bentham; John Stuart Mill; Peter Singer
Utilitarianism - an important tool in social engineering; emergence of the iea of the ‘welfare state’

10. Panopticon

11. Progress Scientific: knowledge, discovery, method
Technological: instrumentation – navigation - trade – consumerism
Social: freedom; equality; democracy
Moral: abolition of slavery; education; social welfare; universal rights
Values: progress; optimism; human exceptionalism - - arrogance; triumphalism; material wealth

12. Reason: moral and social progress
Reason/Knowledge when tied to moral progress is seen as a secular value rather than virtue (godliness)
Pursuit of happiness – achieved by reason i.e., science liberates us from toil, ignorance, superstition, etc.
Reason; freedom; happiness – basis of enlightenment virtues

13. Modernism pursuit of happiness and progress
are added to the Enlightenment vision

14. Modernism

15. Manifestations of humanist values in
art
architecture
institutions (law, education, commerce),
urban planning,
literature
film
media
science and technology
sport

16. Ayn Rand

18. Decline War and violence Social inequality Political corruption
Domination of weak by the powerful
Oppression of minorities
Environmental degradation
Disintegration of institutions
Psychological malaise: ‘age of nothing’

19. Steven Pinker

20. Michel Foucault (1926-1984): “death of man”

21. Man de-centred Copernicus – the heliocentric universe
Darwin (1859) – man/animal
Marx – man at the mercy of class
Freud – man at the mercy of the unconscious
Postmodernism “death of the author”
post-secularism
the post-human

22. Foucault – Key themes: (for next class)
Power and Knowledge
Technology (cf Heidegger)
History of Madness
Discipline and Punish
Panopticon, panopticism and surveillance
Sexuality and Biopower

23. The posthuman
Contesting the boundaries (of human/non- human) Interrogating the values – individualism, rationality etc., What is excluded? Being ‘other’