This book offers a timely intervention in the discourses around transhumanism, posthumanism, and phenomenology, aspiring to inaugurate a turning in Western thought in the direction of a more phenomenologically oriented consideration of what it means to be human and of what it might mean to be “posthuman.” It gathers important contributions from both established and new scholarly voices to each of the literatures on phenomenology, humanism, and posthumanism, as well as to the much scantier literature on phenomenology and posthumanism.

The book treats “posthumanism(s)” primarily in terms of transhumanism and critical posthumanism but also includes consideration of alternative posthumanisms either extant or conceivable, including forms of “phenomenological posthumanism.” By “phenomenology” is primarily meant the tradition of transcendental methodology forged by Edmund Husserl and further developed by such figures as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Emmanuel Levinas, among others. In relation to each of the movements of phenomenology, humanism(s), and posthumanism(s), the chapters in this volume propose new understandings of long-discussed topics, offer alternatives to standard accounts, introduce and explicate neglected figures and movements, provide case studies of exemplary issues, and more.  

The book is divided into four main parts: “Part I: Humanism(s),” “Part II: Posthumanism(s),” “Part III: Transhumanism,” and “Part IV: Humans, Nonhumans, and Posthumans.”

Allen Porter is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Austin, Texas. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida's Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education and a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University's James Madison Program. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rice University. His primary research areas are bioethics, continental philosophy, and political philosophy. His work in bioethics has focused on issues of transhumanism, posthumanism, and postmodernity, and his primary philosophical methodology is existential phenomenology.