This article critically examines the complex and contested relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy and the transhumanist movement. Two primary theses guide the inquiry: first, that transhumanist thinkers who claim close links between the philosopher of Röcken and transhumanism interpret Nietzsche in strikingly different and, at times, mutually incompatible ways; second, that Nietzsche should not be regarded as a coherent philosophical progenitor of transhumanism. The argument first deconstructs the meta-analytical framework proposed by Riccardo Campa (2019), exposing the methodological and categorical limitations of his taxonomy. It then distinguishes two divergent hermeneutic strategies within Campa’s “Nietzschean transhumanists” category: a “soft” reading that sanitizes Nietzsche to fit liberal and democratic ideals at substantial cost to textual fidelity; and a “hard” reading that, while descriptively far more faithful, recovers him as the philosopher of a radical organicist, hierarchical, and caste-based worldview. A systematic analysis of master morality, the Übermensch, and Nietzsche’s explicit political vision argues that this second reading, however prescriptively troubling, is interpretively warranted, and that the core of Nietzschean thought is therefore fundamentally incompatible with the ideals of mainstream transhumanism—an incompatibility articulated here primarily on the socio-political plane, within the broader opposition between Nietzsche’s radical ethical naturalism and the transhumanist project’s ethical anti-naturalism. An anthropological excursus advances a conjectural genealogy that situates Nietzsche’s Übermensch ideal closer to archaic dominance patterns than to a progressive vision of human evolution. The article concludes that the decisive problem for transhumanism is not appropriation but equivocation: readings that share Nietzsche’s name while pointing toward opposed futures. It therefore underscores the necessity for transhumanism to critically and consciously choose its philosophical roots if it aspires to an ethically grounded project of self-directed evolution.
Nietzsche and Transhumanism. Incompatible Readings, Irreconcilable Futures
STILE, Giovanni
2026
Abstract
This article critically examines the complex and contested relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy and the transhumanist movement. Two primary theses guide the inquiry: first, that transhumanist thinkers who claim close links between the philosopher of Röcken and transhumanism interpret Nietzsche in strikingly different and, at times, mutually incompatible ways; second, that Nietzsche should not be regarded as a coherent philosophical progenitor of transhumanism. The argument first deconstructs the meta-analytical framework proposed by Riccardo Campa (2019), exposing the methodological and categorical limitations of his taxonomy. It then distinguishes two divergent hermeneutic strategies within Campa’s “Nietzschean transhumanists” category: a “soft” reading that sanitizes Nietzsche to fit liberal and democratic ideals at substantial cost to textual fidelity; and a “hard” reading that, while descriptively far more faithful, recovers him as the philosopher of a radical organicist, hierarchical, and caste-based worldview. A systematic analysis of master morality, the Übermensch, and Nietzsche’s explicit political vision argues that this second reading, however prescriptively troubling, is interpretively warranted, and that the core of Nietzschean thought is therefore fundamentally incompatible with the ideals of mainstream transhumanism—an incompatibility articulated here primarily on the socio-political plane, within the broader opposition between Nietzsche’s radical ethical naturalism and the transhumanist project’s ethical anti-naturalism. An anthropological excursus advances a conjectural genealogy that situates Nietzsche’s Übermensch ideal closer to archaic dominance patterns than to a progressive vision of human evolution. The article concludes that the decisive problem for transhumanism is not appropriation but equivocation: readings that share Nietzsche’s name while pointing toward opposed futures. It therefore underscores the necessity for transhumanism to critically and consciously choose its philosophical roots if it aspires to an ethically grounded project of self-directed evolution.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
