This book looks to the rich and varied Islamic tradition for insights into what it means to be human and, by implication, what this can tell us about the future human. The transhumanist movement, in its more radical expression, sees Homo sapiens as the cousin, perhaps the poorer cousin, of a new Humanity 2.0: 'Man' is replaced by 'Superman'. The contribution that Islam can make to this movement concerns the central question of what this 'Superman' - or 'Supermuslim' - would actually entail. To look at what Islam can contribute we need not restrict ourselves to the Qur'an and the legal tradition, but also reach out to its philosophical and literary corpus. Roy Jackson focuses on such contributions from Muslim philosophy, science, and literature to see how Islam can confront and respond to the challenges raised by the growing movement of transhumanism.
Introduction: The Future of the Human.- Chapter 1. Blurring the Boundaries.- Chapter 2. Secular Transhumansim as Scientism?.- Chapter 3. The reification of Islam and the rise of tele-techno-scientific reason.- Chapter 4. The Perennial Human and Beyond.- Chapter 5. Beyond the Empirical Agent.- Chapter 6. Transcending the Human.
Roy Jackson is a Reader in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of numerous books on topics such as Islamic Philosophy, Nietzsche and Islam, political Islam, philosophy of religion, and the interaction between Islamic and western philosophy.
