Is Barbarism the Specific Essence of the Human Kind?

Abstract

The main scope of the paper is to analyse the concept of barbarism as a key feature of humankind regardless of historical evolution. The approach we propose is a theoretical philosophical analytical one. We will start by discussing barbarism as the specific essence of mankind since ancient times and then move to the deconstruction of the concept under the pressure of human rights in the context of human bio-enhancement. The discussions focus on the fact that freedom becomes a sum of freedoms in the context of law, but while the law comes defends individual and the collective freedoms, it must also be interpreted in the context of the Kantian categorical imperative. However, freedoms viewed through the lens of the natural law and the social contracts presuppose two completely different paradigms. The conclusions are that, if for the current human individual, the meaning of freedom is given by civil and political rights, because of the bio-enhancement technology, the human species could talk about a greater freedom of action or, on the contrary, about a form of large-scale social control.