O, Superman! Or being Towards Transhumanism: Martin Heidegger, Günther Anders, and Media Aesthetics
O, Superman! Or being Towards Transhumanism: Martin Heidegger, Günther Anders, and Media Aesthetics

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the current fantasy of the technological singularity and the humanist vision of transhumanism together with professional philosophy’s enduring resistance to a critical philosophy of technology and action. Drawing upon Martin Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology as much as Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightment Günther Anders’ dissonant insight is that we are born not made. For Anders, we want to be as perfect as only something we have made is meant to be perfect and our vision of that perfection is the machine. This essay reviews machine obedience, military programming, and the audience as commodity, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the mechanical fantasy of labor and the heart (work and sex) as well as Anders’ book on the obsolescence of the human.

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