From Plato and Derrida to anti-aging treatments, cryogenics, cloning, and whole-brain uploads, the dream of indefinite life is technological and, as Adam Rosenthal shows in Prosthetic Immortalities: a matter of prosthesis, the transformation of the original being. There can be no certainty of immortality and yet, the problem of immortality continues to haunt the soul. Rosenthal engages David Wills and Deborah Goldgaber in a conversation that touches on philosophy, transhumanism, biopolitics, Dolly the sheep and the return of the dire wolf, what it means to extend life or, ultimately, to extend death.

Adam R. Rosenthal is associate professor of French and global studies at Texas A&M University. Rosenthal is author of Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life and Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida.

David Wills is professor of French studies at Brown University and author of Prosthesis. 

Deborah Goldgaber is assistant professor of philosophy at Louisiana State University and author of Speculative Grammatology: Deconstruction and the New Materialism.

REFERENCES:

Plato 

Homer

Descartes

Heidegger (the Dasein)

Derrida

Geoffrey Hinton

Hegel

Nick Bostrum

Dolly the sheep

David Chalmers

Aubrey de Grey

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

“Rigorous, compelling, and beautifully written, Prosthetic Immortalities is at the vanguard of the new wave in Derrida studies.”

—Nicole Anderson, founding editor, Derrida Today Journal

“Adam R. Rosenthal conjures up the ghosts of metaphysics that return today through the promises of indefinite life from medical science and transhumanist speculations, moving brilliantly between science and science fiction.”

—Francesco Vitale, author of Biodeconstruction: Jacques Derrida and the Life Sciences

Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life by Adam R. Rosenthal, with foreword by David Wills, is available from University of Minneota Press. Thank you for listening.