La persona in questione

Following the revolution derived from the fusion of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics, transhumanism states that human beings are destined to transcend their hu- man condition and achieve goals up to now considered impossible, like the unlim- ited expansion of psychomotor performance and the ultimate victory over disease and death. At the root of posthumanist anthropology there is of course the idea that man is only nature, a physical-biological mechanism that can be investigated through empirical sciences. And this applies to both body and mind, considered a product of brain activity. In this naturalistic and mechanistic perspective, technology can make additions and upgrades to mankind. This is clearly a view that ignores the concept of person and the qualitative differences between humans and other living species. In this regard, the author believes it would be appropriate to recover both the Aristotelian concept that recognizes the uniqueness of the individual sub- stance as “composed of material and immaterial,” and the Aristotelian tradition which always refers to the psycho-physical unit of body and soul. In this way, corpo- reality can not be reduced to a pure mechanism and its manipulation is presented as a denial of the person itself. Thus, the author concludes, judgment on technologi- cal interventions on the human body is subject to the ability of these interventions whether to promote or not the integral development of the person.