Posthumanism and the Crisis of Social Equality: Reconfiguring Justice through New Humanism
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Abstract
This article examines posthumanism as a conceptual framework for understanding the transformation of social equality and justice under conditions of accelerating technological change. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary conceptual methodology that integrates posthumanism, political philosophy, science and technology studies (STS), bioethics, and ecological ethics, the study critically analyzes how developments in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, neurotechnology, and digital infrastructures challenge the anthropocentric assumptions underlying classical theories of justice.
The analysis demonstrates that technological transformation extends questions of justice beyond distributive equality among autonomous human subjects toward broader concerns involving distributed agency, socio-technical systems, and non-human forms of existence. While posthumanism provides important conceptual resources for interpreting emerging forms of biological, cognitive, digital, and ecological inequality, it also reveals important tensions associated with distributed responsibility and the risk of obscuring persistent structures of political, economic, and social inequality.
Building upon these findings, the study argues that new humanism may serve as a normative framework capable of reconciling the ethical commitments of classical humanism with the relational insights of posthumanism. Rather than rejecting human dignity, new humanism repositions it within broader networks of technological, ecological, and social interdependence while emphasizing inclusivity, ecological responsibility, multispecies ethics, and technological accountability.
The principal contribution of the study lies in its conceptual integration of posthumanist philosophy, political philosophy, and science and technology studies into a coherent analytical framework for examining contemporary transformations of equality and justice. The findings contribute to ongoing debates concerning technological governance, social equality, and the normative foundations of justice in the Anthropocene and the emerging Technocene.
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