Underway - new issue of Journal of Evolution and Technology

The issue of JET - issue 21(2) - is underway. As usual, articles will be published online as and when they are ready, rather than when the whole issue is full, and the issue will evolve over the next few months during the remainder of 2010. So far we have published a brief editorial and a new article by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, who defends, in some detail, his view of Nietzsche's philosophy  and its significance (and argues that Nietzsche might, in current circumstances, embrace technological interventions to bring about the "overhuman"). Sorgner begins:

I am very grateful for the provocative replies to my article “Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism” (2009), published in the recent “Nietzsche and European Posthumanisms” issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technologyy (January-July 2010). In the following nine sections, I will address the most relevant arguments that have been put forward against some of the points I was raising. As several commentators referred to identical issues, I decided that it would be appropriate not to respond to each of the articles individually, but to focus on the central arguments and to deal with the counterarguments mentioned in the various replies. I will be concerned with each topic in a separate section. The sections will be entitled as follows: 1. Technology and evolution; 2. Overcoming nihilism; 3. Politics and liberalism; 4. Utilitarianism or virtue ethics?; 5. The good life; 6. Creativity and the will to power; 7. Immortality and longevity; 8. Logocentrism; 9. The Third Reich.

Sorgner stresses that Nietzsche is often unfairly associated with the Nazis – despite his clearly-expressed opposition to anti-Semitism – and that he did not favor aristocratic rule in the ordinary sense conveyed by that term. Nietzsche was no egalitarian, but he favored an elite of culture-creators rather than the rule of the hereditary aristocracy.

Later in this issue, we are planning to publish material from Nicholas Agar, Edgar Dahl, and others. I am proposing to contribute a review of The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris, and we have a review in the pipeline, by Jamie Bronstein, of Agar's new book, Humanity's End.