Beyond Anti-natalism and Hannah Arendt’s Metaphysics of Natality: Towards a Metahuman vita contemplativa

Abstract

Anti-natalism has drawn the attention of Meta- and Posthumanism. Given the latter’s non-anthropocentric approach and the devastating human impact on the world’s ecosystem, the cessation of the human species seems to be a plausible option. I will therefore outline some ecological, utilitarian, and existentialist arguments, which are indicative of the assumption that humans present a misrouted development of evolution. To account, however, for the ongoing attraction of having children, I will turn to a representant of natality, Hannah Arendt, whose approach is far from ideological or reactionary. Yet, from a metahumanist viewpoint, I have objections against either attitude. Anti-natalism would mean a theoretical surrender, which could forego many of the premises posthumanism/metahumanism is founded on, namely human plasticity, the wisdom of the body (Nietzsche), and other-relationality, the idea of becoming and a fruitful coexistence with the other. Arendt’s humanist combination of natality and a vita activa comes down not only to a metaphysical idealization of birth but also to a furthering of liberal-capitalist growth. Alternatively, I will offer an aesthetic ethics of (active) inactivity and resonant relationality, which may well be compatible with metahumanism.