Darren Medeiros, Philosophy Department
March 5, 2025, 1pm
Hoffman Room, Swan Hall and Livestreamed

Weight loss drugs like Ozempic, which can be understood as transhuman enhancements, are touted as improving the lives of people taking it, but Medeiros argues that these drugs significantly undermine human wellbeing. Against proponents of transhuman enhancement who argue there is no difference between traditional forms of enhancement like education and training and newer forms of technological enhancement like weight loss drugs and cyborg implants, Medeiros argues that these technological “enhancements” deprive us of opportunities for self-development and deprive us of the wellbeing we feel from achievement. Medeiros draws on the work of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to show how self-development through time is an essential structure of human experience, and he shows how transhuman enhancements like Ozempic rupture the temporality of human personhood. In this way, Ozempic is the first fully posthuman drug.