THE HUMAN BETWEEN GIVENNESS AND PROJECT: THE ETHICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONFLICT OF BIOHACKING

Abstract

The article presents a philosophical-anthropological and ethical analysis of biohacking as a characteristic phenomenon of contemporary culture emerging at the intersection of technological development, the medicalization of everyday life, self-tracking practices, and the ideology of continuous self-improvement. The main approaches to the interpretation of biohacking are examined, its semantic boundaries are clarified, and it is demonstrated that biohacking cannot be reduced merely to a set of health-related or technically instrumental practices, but rather expresses a deeper worldview shift and an anthropological transformation in the understanding of the human being.

The study analyzes biohacking as a form of a new relation of the human being to oneself, in which the body, psychophysical states, attention, sleep, productivity, and cognitive processes increasingly appear as objects of measurement, regulation, control, and optimization. It is shown that within this logic, care of the self gradually shifts from ethical and existential work on oneself toward a regime of self-technologization, while self-knowledge becomes increasingly mediated by data, digital indicators, and practices of continuous self-analysis.

Special attention is paid to the hermeneutic and existential dimensions of the problem. It is substantiated that within the cultural logic of biohacking there arises a risk of a reductive interpretation of the human being, when a person begins to identify oneself with one’s own body, functional parameters, and characteristics available for correction. It is emphasized that such a substitution narrows the understanding of human existence, since the human being is not exhausted by corporeality, biometrics, or cognitive efficiency, but includes freedom, inner opacity, lived experience, anxiety, choice, vulnerability, and finitude.

As a result, it is concluded that biohacking should be understood not as a neutral set of useful practices, but as a symptom of a transformation in the anthropological ideal of modernity. It is determined that its main problem lies not only in technical intervention into human life, but in the gradual substitution of the human being by an optimized functional profile. The article underscores the need for a philosophical reflection on biohacking as a phenomenon that calls into question the limits of self-improvement, the meaning of care of the self, and the preservation of human integrity under the conditions of technogenic culture.