In his recent article, “The Body in the Posthumanist Perspective,” published in the journal Philosophies (2025), Roberto Marchesini offers a profound ontological shift in how we conceptualize the human frame. While traditional humanism has long viewed the body through the lens of deficiency and somatic appropriation, Marchesini argues for a posthumanist reconfiguration that prizes relationality, hybridity, and a radical openness to the world.
The Humanist Trap: “Having-a-Body”
Marchesini begins by dismantling the humanist paradigm, which is built upon the dualistic assumption of “Having-a-Body” (somatic appropriation). In this view, the body is seen as res extensa—a physical vessel or an “incompleteness” that requires external tools to function effectively. Here, technology serves a compensatory role, what Marchesini calls exemption. The tool is merely a crutch or an exoskeleton designed to protect the “purity” of the human subject from the limitations of its own biology.
The Posthumanist Turn: “Being-a-Body”
In contrast, the posthumanist perspective embraces the ontology of “Being-a-Body.” In this framework, the body is not a fixed entity but a process of continuous becoming, a concept Marchesini terms ontopoiesis. Ontopoiesis suggests that the body is inherently virtual and redundant, possessing a capacity for multiple paths of actualization through its interaction with the environment.
Central to this argument is the transition from exemption to exuberance. Rather than using technology to fix a “broken” or “deficient” human, posthumanism views technical apparatuses as drivers of actualization. Technology does not sit outside the body; it hybridizes with it, reorganizing somatic structures and creating what the author calls a technophysiology.
Hybridization and the Technological Sublime
Marchesini argues that the human is not an autarchic or self-contained being. Instead, the human condition is an “introjective relationship with otherness.” By engaging with technical devices, the body undergoes a “technological dissection”—a breakdown of traditional boundaries that allows for new, unpredictable configurations of being. This state of instability and transformation leads to a “technological sublime,” where the body is decentralized from its anthropocentric core and immersed in a fluid network of meaning.
Ultimately, Marchesini’s work challenges the pursuit of “original purity” that has haunted Western philosophy since Descartes. By rejecting the idea that the human is the “measure of all things,” posthumanism presents the human as a work in progress—a transient result of hybridization and ecological situatedness.
For scholars and practitioners in philosophy, bioethics, and technology studies, this article serves as a reminder that our future lies not in “transcending” the body, but in embracing its exuberant capacity for renewal through the world around it.
SOURCE: Marchesini, R. (2025). The Body in the Posthumanist Perspective. Philosophies, 10(6), 135. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10060135
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