The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us

Adam Kirsch

Jan 2023 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Jonathan Todd Ross

About this audiobook

From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Anthropocene antihumanism has been inspired by revulsion at humanity’s destruction of the natural environment, and transhumanism, by contrast, glorifies some of the very things that antihumanism decries—scientific and technological progress, the supremacy of reason. But it believes that the only way forward for humanity is to create new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be Homo sapiens. If rational thought leads to the conclusion that a world without human beings in it is superior to one where we exist, then is doing away with humanity the consummation of humanism?

About the author

Adam Kirsch is a poet and literary critic. He is the author of three collections of poems and several books of criticism and biography, including The Global Novel, published by Columbia Global Reports in 2017. He lives in New York City, where he is an editor at the Wall Street Journal's weekend Review section.