The Unconscious Body: Rethinking the Technical Optimization of the ‘Offended’ Human Being

The constant development of new forms of body modification and ideas of intervening in consciousness, as expressions of human striving for optimization, fuels the controversially discussed technification of humans. The article first raises the question of the roots of the desire for optimization. In doing so, the fact of human limitation and vulnerability, which is also decisive for man’s religious self-understanding, is placed into the context of the subconscious and the potential of deprivation to cause offence. This deprivation is tied back to the starting point of all experiences, namely corporeality and being a lived body. Using the example of being ill as a fundamental human experience, it is shown that the recognition of human limitation arises from bodily experience and that the erasure of vulnerability, which is founded in the lived body, cannot be achieved through his progressive optimization or through the technical manipulation of consciousness. In opposition to the utopia of technical omnipotence, it is advocated to pay attention to a hitherto little-noticed ‘physiological insult’, insofar as the thesis is pursued that this ‘insult’ also shapes the current understanding of consciousness.