Crafting Humans： From Genesis to Eugenics and Beyond

　　Crafting humans'--and its corollary human enhancement-- is a contested topic, both in medical sciences and the humanities. With continuing advances in science and technology, scientists and the general public alike are aware that the basic foundations of the human condition are now at stake. This volume contributes to this growing body of work. It offers insights into some of the reflections and imaginaries that have inspired and legitimated both theoretical and practical programmes for 'crafting' humans, ranging from the religious/spiritualist and the philosophical/cultural to the secular and the scientific/scientistic; from the mystical quest for human perfection to the biopolitical eugenic state of the twentieth century, and current genetic theories of human enhancement. This volume discusses these topics in a synchronized way, as interrelated variants of the most central story in history, that of human perfectibility.

作者簡介

Marius Turda

　　Marius Turda is Reader in Central and Eastern European Biomedicine, Oxford Brookes University, and irector of the Cantemir Institute, at the University of Oxford. His current areas of research are mainly history of ideas and medicine, with a particular focus on eugenics, biopolitics, and race. Recent publications include Modernism and Eugenics (Palgrave, 2010), Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (CEU Press, 2011), and Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups (Legenda, 2010). At the moment he is completing a history of Hungarian eugenics to be published by Palgrave and a monograph on race and modernity to be published by Continuum.

Preface and Acknowledgements

Frank Ankersmit
Aftermaths and “Foremaths”: History and Humans

Moshe Idel
Crafting a Golem: the Creation of an Artificial Anthropoid

Antonis Liakos
The End of History as the Liminality of the Human Condition: From Kojeve to Agamben

Roger Griffin
Bio-nomic Man (and Woman): Fantasies of Anthropological Revolution as a Reaction to Modernity’s Nomic Crisis

MerrynEkberg
Eugenics: Past, Present, and Future

Marius Turda
Crafting a Healthy Nation: European Eugenics in Historical Contex

Maria Sophia Quine
Making Italians: Aryanism and Anthropology in Italy during the Risorgimento

Alison Bashford
Julian Huxley’s Transhumanism

List of Contributors

Bibliography

Index of Names