The Journal of Human Rights

The Journal of Human Rights

Cyborg and its Challenges; A Reflection from the Perspective of Human Rights

Document Type : Research Article

Author
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Mazandaran, Iran.
Abstract
Biotechnology with its incredible advances has accelerated the dream of achieving a hyper human depicted in fictional stories and movies by combining human biological organs with various implants and prostheses. The human-machine hybridization known as the cyborg has posed wide-ranging challenges for the humanities. The emergence of rival discourses such as post-humanism, which promise to transcend the concept of human and enter post-humanity, is one of the consequences of such a reality. Meanwhile, the story of human rights, which is to a large extent the story of humanism and the appreciation of the status of the current dominant species in the world, the conscious human, has faced new actors and, consequently, new questions; Can cyborg, as a half-human-half-machine phenomenon, fall under the umbrella of human rights in its current meaning and scope? Does the complex and somewhat unknown nature of cyborgs lead to the abandonment of the human concept and the eventual collapse of human rights? This article tries to answer the previous questions using a descriptive-analytical method. The result of the present paper is the need to reconsider the concept of man and re-articulate the meaning and scope of human rights, as well as explain the phenomenon of the cyborg as a prominent step in the evolution of the human species and not a departure from humanism.
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