*Originally published pre-2020 and preserved as part of our archive project. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

The subject of inequality is rightly at the centre of many debates regarding domestic and international politics. Some of the political shocks destabilizing the Western world, and responsible for the quick surge of populism, are due to rising perceptions of economic inequality and injustice. To this aspect, issues related to racial inequality, particularly in some countries, add to a bleak image of persistent inequalities and disempowerment. Further, as also demonstrated by the 2008 financial crash, extreme inequality has dramatically intensified rather than dissipated. These considerations offer powerful evidence that even liberal democracies remain insufficiently attentive to the dignity needs of individuals: indeed, while they enshrine liberties and rights for all, they also tolerate obscene levels of inequality and marginalization to persist, and a blatant assault on human dignity.

Less frequently discussed in this connection are the unfamiliar forms that inequality has begun to take. Given our growing capacities for physical and cognitive enhancement, enabled by neuroscience and advances in other disciplines, the notion of inequality is bound to acquire new connotations in the coming decades, beyond the problem of economic disparity – although there is an economic component to it insofar as access to enhancements are more readily available to the wealthy. Technological convergence leads us on the path to trans- or post-humanism, whereby humans could transcend their natural limitations and acquire physical and/or cognitive abilities beyond those that define their species. Enhancement, if it is not carefully regulated, will be developed and applied unevenly, resulting in far greater social and political inequalities. Were this to occur, the potential destabilizing........

© E-International