Transhumanism and human rights: some philosophical and legal questions

Abstract

The article examines the philosophical and legal issues arising in connection with the development of transhumanism - an intellectual and socio-political movement that advocates the radical improvement of human abilities through technology. The rapid technological progress of the 21st century actualizes the problem of the immutability of man as a subject of law and calls into question the traditional principles of legal regulation of fundamental human rights in conditions when the boundary between man and machine is becoming increasingly conditional. This article offers a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of transhumanism in the context of the contemporary human rights framework. Transhumanism, understood as an intellectual and socio-political movement advocating the radical enhancement of human physical and cognitive capacities through technology, poses fundamentally new challenges for legal science: whether the concept of human dignity is preserved when an individual voluntarily transcends the boundaries of biological human nature; how constitutional rights, formed within an anthropocentric paradigm, can regulate relations between technologically enhanced and non-enhanced persons; and whether the right to morphological freedom constitutes a form of constitutional liberty. The article investigates the debate between transhumanists and bioconservatives regarding the permissibility of biotechnological intervention in human nature, as well as the natural law position in these disputes. Particular attention is devoted to the emergence of new human rights in response to neurotechnology-related threats and the critical evaluation of the neurorights concept. A key new dimension of the study is the analysis of the relationship between transhumanism and the principle of equality: technological human enhancement may generate a «technological inequality» that differs fundamentally from traditional forms of inequality, as it entrenches advantages not only in the social but also in the biological dimension. The article demonstrates that transhumanism does not negate human rights but rather transforms their content, requiring constitutional law to update its normative framework to account for new anthropological realities.