An ideological movement that seeks the technological overcoming of human nature. Transhumanism holds that the human person’s personhood is deficient and seeks to “improve” it through technology — a form of theoretical oblivion of the person.
Why transhumanism misconstrues personhood
From the standpoint of personal ontology, transhumanism rests on a fundamental error: it treats personhood as though it were a condition that could be optimized. But personhood is first actuality (prote energeia) — not the result of an optimization, but of an act of being. The person is from the very beginning the most perfect thing in the whole of nature (Thomas Aquinas). What transhumanism aims at as “improvement” — the heightening of cognitive faculties, the prolongation of life, fusion with machines — concerns person-behavior (the second actuality), not personhood itself.
Transhumanism and oblivion of the person
Transhumanism is an oblivion of the person in a twofold way:
- Theoretically: It misconstrues the dignity of the person by holding it to be in need of improvement. Yet dignity is grounded in being, not in performance.
- Practically: Technological “improvement” creates new forms of inequality — whoever can afford optimization becomes the “better” human being. Money and power then decide the worth of the human being — an instrumentalization that violates the personalist norm.
The true perfection of the person
Personal ontology does indeed know of a perfection — but it lies in the third dimension: in moral unfolding through cognition, virtue, and love. This perfection comes about not through technology, but through free personal action — through the conscience, which orients the person toward the good. Transhumanism confuses technical heightening with moral perfection.
Transhumanism and artificial intelligence
The vision of a fusion of the human being with artificial intelligence is the most consistent form of the transhumanist error. It presupposes that the difference between person and machine is gradual — that enough technology could therefore abolish the boundary between someone and mere something. Ontology contradicts this: person and AI are essentially different — not differing degrees, but differing modes of being (cf. AI ethics).
Transhumanism and posthumanism
Transhumanism is to be distinguished from posthumanism, even though the two frequently appear together: transhumanism seeks to overcome human nature technologically (it takes it to be present, but deficient); posthumanism denies that there is any specifically human nature at all. The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (Pope Leo XIV, 25 May 2026) rejects both positions together — transhumanism, because it misconstrues finitude as deficiency; posthumanism, because it denies the imago Dei structure of the human being.
Transhumanist enhancement
Transhumanist enhancement denotes the transgression of the natural limits of personhood by technological means. It is morally problematic insofar as it makes the person into an artifact and thereby undermines its ontological self-sufficiency. Transhumanist enhancement stands in a fundamental tension with the dignity of the person as a being that is not produced but received.
In contrast to therapeutic intervention, which restores a damaged dimension, transhumanist enhancement aims to transgress the nature of the person. Both are subforms of enhancement, yet they stand in a disjunct relation to one another. The critical boundary lies where the intervention no longer serves the unfolding of personal being, but rather seeks to reshape that being itself.
See also: Enhancement, Therapeutic intervention, Personhood, Dignity, Nature, Technology
Enhancement
Enhancement denotes a technological intervention upon human being. As an umbrella concept it encompasses two essentially different forms: therapeutic intervention, which restores a damaged dimension of the fundamental form of reality, and transhumanist enhancement, which seeks to transgress the natural limits of personhood.
The moral assessment depends decisively on whether the intervention supports the person in its natural unfolding or seeks to reshape its being itself. Therapeutic intervention is morally legitimate because it stands in the service of personal unfolding; transhumanist enhancement is morally problematic insofar as it threatens to make the person into an artifact.
See also: Therapeutic intervention, Transhumanist enhancement, Personhood, Dignity, Technology, Nature
Ontological classification:
- Superclass: Theoretical oblivion of the person
- violates: Personalist norm
- related: Eugenic selection
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I, q. 29, a. 3 (the person as the most perfect thing in the whole of nature)
- Spaemann, Robert (2006): Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Ontological distinction between someone and something against gradualist overcoming)