The Ship of Theseus Paradox: Possibilities and Limits of a Trans-/Posthumanist Interpretation

This chapter begins with a series of definitions of the nature of the human being taken from the entire history of philosophy, with the implicit invitation to relate them with the more or less explicit definitions of human beings typical of transhumanism and posthumanism. I highlight how in trans-/posthumanist conceptions of what is human the substantiality of the subject is reduced to a role of secondary importance. I also draw attention to how some mythological and angelological doctrines of the past anticipate problems that arise today when we consider the different possible cases of those particular subjects called cyborgs. The famous question of the paradox of the ship of Theseus will then allow us to test its limits when applied to the unity of the human being. The discriminating aspect of this applicability revolves around the acceptance of the human being understood as a simple aggregatum or compost. A hypothetical mereology of the human will in fact have a totally different structure depending on whether it is understood as a unitary reality or pure multiplicity. The awareness of this fundamental dichotomy has been present since the ancient Roman jurists, where they spoke of unity as hēnōmenon or of a composite being understood as synēmmenon.