Transcending the Human

Abstract

I will examine how transhumanist philosophical thought has its own ‘spiritual’ dimension, and I will draw parallels between this concept of philosophy and that of the works of important Muslim thinkers such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Muhammad Iqbal, and Rumi. The key point in this final chapter is that, in the case of transhumanism, human nature is seen as dynamic and changeable: in the same way Ibn Tufayl resorted to fictional narrative through the protagonist Hayy ibn Yaqzan for his bildungsroman, the Indian poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) used poetry primarily to express his conception of Khudi (Selfhood). We look to our scientists to tell us what is technically possible for the human to become, but we—and by ‘we’ I mean scientists too—look to our visionaries, our philosophers, religious thinkers, poets, and so on for what it means to become something other than what we are or how we perceive ourselves. Islamic thought has its visionaries too, and Iqbal presents a paradigm that resonates with the vision of transhumanism. This is all important in respect of the transhumanist debate because Iqbal’s Perfect Being (importantly it is a trope that can be found in other Islamic thought, notably that of Rumi’s Mard-e-Haqq) and Nietzsche’s Übermensch (which greatly influenced Iqbal’s thought) are paradigms of human transformation towards a ‘better human’. In addition, both Nietzsche and Iqbal recognised the ‘religiosity’ of being human and of how our language and understanding of our world are driven and frame-worked by religious ideals. By ‘religion’ and ‘religiosity’ here I mean it in its, for want of a better term, anti-realist sense, or the ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ sense. In the case of both Nietzsche and Iqbal, the self is seen in this fluctuating, fluid, and changing manner. There is an existential quality to the extent that the Self is always in a process of becoming, for to ‘be’ is to cease to be creative and cease to challenge and create. I conclude by returning to my opening references to the Anthropocene in the Introduction and briefly consider James Lovelock’s optimistic call for a new epoch, the Novacene, before making some modest Affirmations for a Muslim Transhumanist Association.