We recently explored AI for our Film Club theme, watching Fritz Lang’s seminal Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s already classic Blade Runner, the more modern Her (2013) with the great Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson’s voice, and finally Ex Machina (2014).

The main discussion, besides the fact that the common thread was that everybody wants to have sex with the robot, was the whole Posthumanism debate. This is something I have been pondering for a few years, specifically since I met Professor Francesca Ferrando, a leading voice in the field of Posthumanism, at a conference in 2024.

My main concern is the paradox, or rather, the oxymoron, of Humanism in a Posthuman world. I discussed this in relation to AI and Caravaggio here. This brings me full circle back to our original observation in Film Club that all our films boil down to Humanism.

I am obviously oversimplifying here, but the basic premise of Posthumanism is that humans coexist with non-humans to the point where humans are no longer the driving force on the planet, as it is overtaken by technology and ecology. The tricky bit is how do you define co-exist, and how to define non-human. Maybe, as a Humanist, I struggle with the labeling. Posthumanism just seems too apocalyptic, too alarmist. I know I should worry, but this made me think about the concept of Humanism, which was only made up, as a label, in the 19th century. Greek writers and philosophers did not realize they were humanists; they were just doing their thing. Even Renaissance humanists like Erasmus, Luis Vives, or Dante did not consider themselves humanists. Of course, the word Humanitas and the study of it existed, but the folks who studied it did not call themselves Humanists.

In conclusion, and I realize I am only —at best— scratching the surface of this argument, there is only Humanism, everything else is academic labels (which I wish I had invented: Posthuman, or Transhuman, and then written a book about).