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The Twelfth Spinoza Center Series

Under the direction of Prof. Pini Ifergan and Dr. Dror Yinon

Over the past two decades the terms posthumanism and transhumanism have moved to center stage in the intellectual discourse. The aim of these terms is to express from diverse perspectives the end of the era in which humanism was central to understanding it and to herald the beginning of a new era. The twelfth series of the Spinoza Lectures will be devoted to an attempt to understand the relationship between humanism and posthumanism. We will try to understand what humanism is, when it appeared, and whether it is still possible to see it as a suitable description of human experience. Does posthumanism characterize the next stage in the history of humanism, or does it describe an era that is totally different from the humanist era? And what is the positive content of this new human experience, which, as yet, lacks a suitable conceptual term beyond its being that which comes after humanism? In this varied series we will try to understand the content of these terms, to examine the reasons for their creation, and mainly to think about the historical moment in which we are living.

Participants

Prof. Pini Ifergan, Bar-Ilan University; the Spinoza Center at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute