The value of human life in terms of eugenics

Tagunova Tatyana Viktorovna

The conflict between the desire to improve human population (an individual or the human race as a whole) and the consequent risk of dehumanization, as a result of which human life, on the contrary, loses its value. As a utopian social project, eugenics is a rather dangerous theoretical basis, the implementation of which may lead to irreparable consequences, as the experience of Nazi Germany has shown. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the substantiation of the hypothesis about the incompatibility of attention to human individuality and its inherent value with the desire to make the human race perfect. The author demonstrates the continuity between racially-oriented fascist concepts, radical Bolshevism, as well as modern transhumanism, and the basic ideas of eugenics. However, the author reaches the conclusion that transhumanism is more humane and promising than completely failed eugenic projects and that the issue of transhumanism relevance to modern biopolitical trends remains open.

Keywords:utopia, eugenics, transhumanism, genetics, life, selection, natural selection, artificial selection.