New frontiers of humanity

In the ongoing debate about the transformations of humanity, it is common to hear that transhumanists err by neglecting, if not completely ignoring, limits. They supposedly refuse to consider either the limits that evolution has assigned to our species or those that the planet imposes on the possibilities of our development. They are accused of falling into a solutionism that believes it can find technological remedies for all ills. Finally, they are accused of failing to realize that in doing so, they would be perpetuating the ancient sin of hubris, which Greek wisdom knew to be doomed to failure and to nemesis.

But from a transhumanist perspective, this criticism falls flat. Indeed, our reflection leads us to realize that the very idea of limits, and that of “human nature,” are not exactly valid. Western thought must shift from the notion of “limits” to that of “frontiers.” It is important to understand that, most of the time, what we perceive as limits are merely the result of projections we are capable of making at a given time, based on our relative knowledge. They are therefore fictions.

Ultimately, the foundations for transforming the biological condition of humankind can only rest on a discourse about the values that constitute our humanity and our dignity, and not on any image of a human being that we claim to know and that would be valid for eternity. Real humans are obviously not perfect; they remain indefinitely perfectible.

It is therefore important that humans try to agree on a minimum set of shared values from which they can develop their projects.

I will develop this reflection in fifteen minutes, beginning by clarifying the semantic differences between the notions of “limits” (όρια / πέρα, in Greek) and “frontier” (σύνορα). I will then highlight the importance of threshold and emergence effects in our understanding of reality. I will draw particularly on the example of theories of consciousness. I will show how this leads to adopting a transhumanist philosophy.

Finally, I will share the results of work carried out by the French Transhumanist Association, which aimed to lay the foundations for an exchange about the values and capabilities around which all humans could try to agree, beyond the concepts of dignity and human rights, to say together on what basis they wish to enable the flourishing of humanity of tomorrow, as much through the use of culture as through that of technology.

From this synthesis, the human–AI relationship is reframed. AI participates in knowledge creation, but the irreducibly human contributions are tacit knowing, phronesis (practical wisdom), and kōsō-ryoku — the imaginative, conceptualizing capacity theorized by Miki Kiyoshi. Resilience, accordingly, is not mere systemic robustness but a society’s capacity to keep generating meaning under disruption. A “conscious society” is one that cultivates this capacity deliberately, through institutions and shared places that sustain collective wisdom.

The paper closes on a normative claim: in the posthuman age, meaning is a choice. What distinguishes human flourishing is not computation but the ongoing, value-laden act of choosing what matters. The transformation of the human is therefore not a movement beyond the human, but a recovery of the relational, meaning-creating being we have always been — now in conscious partnership with intelligent machines and the wider web of life. The argument draws on the author’s forthcoming monograph Knowledge Ecology: Understanding Innovation in the Age of AI (Springer), and on three decades of theory and practice in knowledge creation and innovation management.