The rise of a culture of life

Abstract

The Enlightenment age celebrated the human ideals of rationality, potential, freedom, equality and justice. These ideals included the belief in science as a means to improve human existence. They lie at the root of the belief in the perfectibility of, and salvation by, society—the moral underpinning of the social sciences. By contrast, what the biological sciences promise is the perfectibility of life in the form of life enhancement and extension. Whereas the concepts of humanity and humanism have inspired intellectual elites and scientific disciplines for centuries, today the notion of life replaces the notion of the human as a concept that bridges developments in several sciences and in practical discourses. > …what the biological sciences promise is the perfectibility of life in the form of life enhancement and extension ‘Life’ stands for an open‐ended series of biological, psychological, economic and even phenomenological significations and processes. What it does not stand for is the further expansion of Enlightenment ideals of human reason and social salvation. I argue that we are experiencing a turn to a ‘culture of life’ in a broad and encompassing sense that is comparable to the way in which human‐centred ideas once dominated our thinking. This development coincides with historical changes through which the culture of the human and of society that was based on Enlightenment ideals empties out into a postsocial era. I also claim that these ideas are deeply rooted in the biological sciences from which they draw motivation. Although a culture of life stems from biology, it is also nourished and sustained by a large number of processes and transitions. I also briefly argue that the concept of a promise that underlies a culture of life entails shifts in responsibility and temporal orientation that need to be discussed. Some of these shifts are already apparent in …