Professor Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Ph.D. is a German metahumanist philosopher, Nietzsche scholar, philosopher of music, and an authority in the field of ethics of emerging technologies.

Stefan teaches philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome and is director and cofounder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, where he was also Visiting Professor during the Summer of 2016. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Posthuman Studies.

In recent years, he taught at the Universities of Jena (Germany), Erfurt (Germany), Klagenfurt (Austria), Ewha Womans University in Seoul (South Korea), and Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). His main fields of research are Nietzsche, the philosophy of music, bioethics and metahumanism, posthumanism, and transhumanism.

Central elements of his philosophy have been summarized in an interview which was published May 2013 in the weekly German newspaper Die Zeit which has a print run of 520,000 copies and about 2 million readers per issue.

In English, an interview was published in the journal FlfF-Kommunikation 2/2016 which provides an introduction to contemporary debates in transhumanism.

On September 2013, Stefan presented some of his ideas on genetic alteration in his first TEDx talk at the Villa Farnesina in Rome. On October 2015, he explained his views on perfection at his second TEDx talk which took place in Stuttgart.

His philosophical reflections have been critically examined both in the English as well as in the German speaking world, e.g. Understanding Nietzscheanism by Ashley Woodward or Umwertung der Menschenwürde — Kontroversen mit und nach Nietzsche edited by Beatrix Vogel.

His exchange of articles on the relationship between Nietzsche and trans-, meta- and posthumanism provides a good survey concerning Stefan’s philosophical attempt to think beyond humanism.

In a one hour live interview on German public radio (WDR 5), further aspects of Stefan’s philosophical approach were presented. Another such interview was conducted January 2017 on WDR5. Twelve central pillars of his philosophical thinking have been highlighted in a public talk.

He was invited to be an Focus-Online expert which enables him to regularly comment upon the latest scientific developments and discussions. Focus is the third largest weekly news magazine in Germany.

On October/November 2014, Stefan was invited plenary speaker at the 3rd World Humanities Forum which was jointly organized by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and Daejeon Metropolitan City.

Central moral challenges concerning Nietzsche, transhumanism, and Stefan’s own position were presented in a public talk at the University of Nijmegen on February 2015.

On August 2015, he was invited to present a wider picture concerning options for Shaping the Future from a posthuman perspective at the ICIST-KAIST conference in Daejeon which is part of the largest Asian annual student-run conference series.

On March 2016, an interview with Stefan was broadcast on German public television (ZDFinfo).

The discussion concerning the relationship between Nietzsche and transhumanism which circles around some of his reflections was recently published in the essay collection Nietzsche and Transhumanism. Here you can access some of its content.

He was invited as a keynote speaker at the 2018 Global Solutions Taipei Workshop on March 2018. The theme of this workshop was “Shaping the Future of an Inclusive Digital Society”. He coauthored Music in German Philosophy: An Introduction.

Stefan studied philosophy at King’s College/University of London where he earned his Bachelor’s of Arts, the University of Durham where he earned his Master’s of Arts, and at the University of Giessen and the University of Jena where he earned his Ph.D.

Read his LinkedIn profile and Wikipedia profile. Visit his personal website. Follow him on Facebook. Read about newly established metahumanism in his A Metahumanist Manifesto. Watch Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism — Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and his talk Posthuman Perspectives.