Moraliteit voorbij de mens. Over de mogelijkheden van een posthumanistische ethiek

Abstract

Morally beyond humanity. On the possibility of a posthumanist ethics. Ever since the Enlightenment, ethics has had a humanist character, focusing on the moral decisions of individual persons The technologically mediated character of many human actions and decisions, however, shows that not only humans but artifacts too have moral relevance, and that we need to move beyond the humanist focus of modern ethics. In order to explore the possibilities of such a posthumanist ethics, the article discusses Peter Sloterdijks Rules for the Anthropic Garden. Against Sloterdijks plea for replacing the humanist ‘taming’ of people with the ‘breeding’ of posthuman beings, it elaborates the notion of 'material taming' as the basis of a posthumanist ethics.