Technification of human body as a practice of removing biological restrictions

Abstract

  This article is dedicated to comprehension of the idea of technification of body, as well as practical results and consequences of its implementation. The author examines the emergence of individual dimensionality of body, its relevant perception, as well as goals and meanings of the heightened technoscientific attention toward it. The idea of radical transformation of a human, is acquiring the status of feasible, and the purpose of such transformation consists in elimination of natural principles, and thus, predetermination of a human through gradual technification of body — imposition of high technologies for modification of its external and internal structure. A human is essentially opposed to the natural world, his initial biological “insufficiency” assigns the ability to transcend the givenness, which underlies the establishment and evolution of culture. Such circumstance in a certain way is the cause of instrumental attitude to the body, which is of biological origin. In the process of cultural development, body acquires the status of personal property, which means liberation from its nonhuman determination. In the modern context, the aforementioned trends supported by technological progress and transhumanist expectations, result in the fact that body as a "soma", as a local autopoietic biosystem is being abated. The elimination of the purpose of human body set by nature is interpreted as “self-sovereignty"; however, the abolition of natural determinism implies the emergence of technological determinism.