Human biological insufficiency as limit and as stimulus: Ontological and anthropological dimensions

The article deals with the phenomenon of human biological insufficiency, its essence, consequences and ways of overcoming. Research includes its ontological analysis (concept of bio-ontology is used because it is important to take into account a qualitive specifity of this phenomenon, its connection with biological reality). In modern situation, it is represented primarily by a large-scale epidemic of “diseases of civilization” and a global aging of human population. Due to their multifactorial complex nature, biological insufficiency, indicating the presence of limitations in human organic life, is a challenge for the entire building of biomedicine and, in a broader sense, of the whole technoscience. At the same time, the biological insufficiency of humans is a relative phenomenon in its nature, since it does not imply any fatal flaw in their biology: on the contrary, the latter is optimally developed and representative of the biological as such, and the insufficiency is balanced by its adaptive universality and extreme plasticity. Within the framework of biomedical progress and the broad medicalization of society, there is a gradual convergence of the meanings of “therapy” and “enhancement”, but, due to the relative nature of the insufficiency, the therapeutic vector, the core of which is both normalization and a gradual “evolutionary” expansion of the potential naturally laid down in human biology, should prevail. The radical morphological transformation of humans, advocated by transhumanism, is bio-ontologically not only redundant (due to the relative nature of insufficiency), but also unacceptable, since the biological remains in indissoluble unity with the highest, properly human and social qualities, so that a significant modification of the organic basis would lead to a deformation of the entire essence of a human as a holistic being. The alternative is a gradual, evolutionary improvement of the quality of human biological functioning, the transition of biomedicine to predictive and preventive forms, the rationalization of human lifestyle, the introduction of systems for predicting and planning of biological processes in society. The main conclusion is that the phenomenon of biological insufficiency, being the limit, is relative in its essence. Along with the negative side, it also has the positive one and is a stimulus for further progress. In the course of the progress, humanity will sooner or later move to a rational autopoietic management of its vital foundation without a radical transformation of the latter due to the bio-ontological redundancy and the anthropological danger of this scenario. However, even in the relative format, controlled evolution can create serious risks which will require strong regulators, and a complex anthropological and ontological (including bio-ontological) expertise.

Keywords

Authors

References