The Obsolescence of the Human (Volume 75) (Posthumanities)

Now available in English—one of the twentieth century’s most important works on the philosophy of technology


With this first English translation of influential German philosopher Günther Anders’s 1956 masterpiece of critical theory, The Obsolescence of the Human, a new generation of readers can now engage with his prescient and haunting vision of a “world without us” dominated by technology.

Looking at technological events such as the detonation of the nuclear bomb and the arrival of televisions in our living rooms, Anders advances a warning of what humanity looks like in a world where it has surrendered all agency. He outlines the new emotional landscapes that shape our relationship to increasingly capable technology, including Promethean shame, the human sense of unease our own superior technological innovations can instill. Confronting the growing gap between what we can collectively create and what we can individually comprehend, Anders speculates on the trajectory of a developing technological world that rapidly exceeds our ability to control or even foresee its negative consequences.

The Obsolescence of the Human prefigures contemporary posthumanist discourse and is eerily predictive of current debates around automation, global warming, and artificial intelligence. Providing new ways to conceptualize the intersection of technology and emotion, it offers groundbreaking frameworks for future-oriented ethics. Radical in both its stylistic experimentation and its theoretical insights, this new translation presents a cautionary tale regarding the human capacity to usher in its own destruction.

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Günther Anders (1902–1992) was one of the twentieth century’s preeminent thinkers. He is author of more than thirty books and wrote extensively on topics spanning from philosophy to politics to art.

Christopher John Müller is senior lecturer in the School of Communication, Society, and Culture at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is author of Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture, and Human Obsolescence.

Christian Dries is head of the Günther Anders Research Centre at the University of Freiburg in Germany and chairman of the International Günther Anders Society.