In this chapter I analyse the most important ethical issues concerning transhumanism. Michael Sandel argues that gene modification and gene selections need to be rejected. However, his main reason is not that they are morally wrong, but that they imply vicious character traits. Parents who employ these technologies do not possess the central parental virtue, namely that of unconditional love. I will argue in the first section of this chapter why neither do I share Sandel's communitarianism nor is it the case that his conclusion is a necessary one, given his own premises. Instead, it is more plausible to hold that using gene technologies can demonstrate a parental virtue.

In all of the aforementioned arguments, the question of the good life is a central one. Is any general judgement concerning the good life possible in a naturalist world, a world without a personal God? Is anything permissible, is nothing forbidden, or can anything be said concerning the good life, given these circumstances? There are various transhumanist takes on this issue. In the second section I will show that all the widely used ways of demonstrating transhumanism in the public media are implausible. Superman on Viagra, or Wonderwoman with Botox, is not what all transhumanists subscribe to as a central goal, and not what they should subscribe to either, given their own initial premises. I show why a radically pluralist concept of the good is more plausible. No non-formal judgement concerning the good is plausible.

Section three will be dedicated to the question of what counts as morally right from a transhumanist perspective. Even though any concept of the right is regarded as fictive, this does not imply that it is arbitrary. We do have criteria for evaluating moralities. These criteria are historically and culturally embedded, but this does not mean that they are meaningless. They are meaningful for our lives. Here, I will present central aspects of what a non-anthropocentric, a non-essentialist, and a non-dualistic concept of personhood would have to consider. Thereby, I also distance myself from Singer's suggestion and present a more inclusive alternative.