Human rights in the context of technological improvement: transhumanism, neurolaw, and morphological freedom as challenges to modern legal doctrine

Abstract

The article examines the principal philosophical and legal questions arising in connection with the development of the transhumanist movement. It is established that transhumanism, as an intellectual and socio-political movement advocating the radical expansion of human capabilities through technology, poses a qualitatively new challenge to legal science, calling into question the immutability of the human being as a subject of law and undermining the traditional understanding of human nature as the common foundation of equality. The article analyses four new human rights proposed in the context of neurotechnological development – the right to cognitive liberty, the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity and the right to psychological continuity – and critically evaluates their dual nature: while designed to protect the freedom and privacy of the human mind, they must not become an instrument for legitimising compulsory enhancement. The legal concept of morphological freedom is examined as an independent construct encompassing both the right to restore bodily functions and the right to enhance cognitive and physical capabilities, and it is argued that this right, though a legitimate subject of constitutional and civil law protection, cannot be absolute and requires a clear balance between individual self-determination and the interests of public safety and equality. Special attention is devoted to the phenomenon of «technological inequality» – a new form of inequality rooted not in social conditions but in biological capabilities acquired through technological choice – and its legal implications in the fields of labour law, the right to education and electoral rights. It is concluded that an effective legal response to transhumanism requires the development of a fundamentally new regulatory paradigm based on recognition of morphological freedom combined with the inviolable core of human dignity, prohibition of discrimination against non-enhanced persons, equal access to basic enhancement technologies, and a special legal regime for technologies directly interfering with neural processes.