Re: Posthumous and posthuman dignity

From: E. Shaun Russell (e_shaun@extropy.org)
Date: Wed Jun 27 2001 - 11:00:05 MDT


Anders wrote:

>http://www.koerperwelten.com/
>
>This Saturday I, like many of the other participants of the TransVision
>conference here in Berlin, attended the exhibition Körperwelten.

<snip>

Anders, I truly enjoyed this e-mail you have written, and I would love to
see it modified into an article for publication. I think that you have
touched on an issue that we don't talk about much on this list --that of
human dignity. Like "justice," dignity is a general term with no
quantifier, yet almost everyone seems to have a feeling of human
dignity. In the case of the plasticized woman holding her liver, she
obviously chose (via anatomical gift or the German equivalent) to have her
body displayed in the way it was. In other words, she had no problem with
looking "undignified" and perhaps felt quite the opposite.

Unfortunately, due to the subjectivity of the "dignity" concept, you would
be hard pressed to form a posthuman dignity that actually has any effect on
society in general. However, pointing out this very subjectivity (which I
believe you have done) virtually implies the existence of a posthuman dignity.

It is indeed an interesting point you make, though. You really ought to
remodel it into magazine article form, as I think it makes enough good
sense that few will be able to read it without actually checking their
premises.

                                                 Best,

                                                         E. Shaun Russell

_______________________________________________________
E. Shaun Russell Operations Officer, Extropy Institute
e_shaun@extropy.org http://www.extropy.org
                                 COO and Director, Kryos Biomedical
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  ~K i n e t i c i z e Y o u r P o t e n t i a l~



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