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  • Florian Maiwald
  • Sep 17
  • 5 min read

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The Negation of Discontent

Florian Maiwald

September 17 2025


It is often claimed that the impossibility of utopian visions of society lies in the limitations of human nature itself. Yet it is precisely in the moment of limitation that we find the foundation for a more just society.


Recently, psychologist Paul Bloom pointed out in the context of a public debate that utopias are characterized by an inherent element of impossibility—true to the etymological roots of the term utopia, which denotes a “non-place”. According to Bloom, we human beings are simply too fallible, too prone to self-sabotage and too marked by defects in our own behavior for the serious realization of a utopian society to be conceivable[1].


Even though Bloom does not lapse into a form of hopeless pessimism—his position could rather be summed up as: we ought to engage with the limitations of human nature through reformist action and accept them as a basic fact of our condition—this intellectual topos is hardly unfamiliar. A society characterized by complete justice, so the argument goes, is simply not feasible, as it is fundamentally incompatible with the inherent limitations that define human nature.


This very notion can already be found in Freud, who held that the principle of happiness was never included in the design of human existence to begin with. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud develops this idea primarily in light of the unavoidable conflict between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, a tension that, he argues, is inscribed into the very fabric of cultural development itself[2].


Thus, Freud makes it unmistakably clear—to return to the line of thought introduced at the outset—that the fact of human limitation is already being deployed as a justification for the alleged impossibility of realizing social models grounded in a higher degree of justice. Freud himself takes this conceptual step quite explicitly in his own text and argues that it is precisely the socialists who deny the limitations of human nature:


“It seems to me beyond doubt that a real change in human relations to property would do more to relieve suffering than any ethical command; yet this insight is compromised and rendered ineffective in socialists by a renewed, idealistic misrecognition of human nature[3]."


A crucial question that arises at this point is whether Freud’s conception of human nature—contrary to the argument he advances in Civilization and Its Discontents—might in fact serve as a foundational resource for envisioning a form of society that transcends the present order.


This seems all the more plausible in light of the fact that one of the fundamental premises underlying capitalist structural dynamics is the presupposition of a supposed boundlessness—a refusal to acknowledge either the limitations of human nature or the boundaries of our ecological conditions. Notably, Nancy Fraser has insightfully drawn attention to the cannibalistic logic of capitalism, a system that is defined by a constitutive form of limitlessness: its relentless drive to expand into every sphere of life, and its ideology of perpetual growth, ultimately serve to erode the very foundations upon which it depends[4].


Transhumanism, by contrast, offers a striking example of the extent to which the fact of finitude and limitation is now being subjected to outright negation. Sociologist Steve Fuller has pointed out that the transhumanist project may in fact serve to radically intensify the very inequalities that are already characteristic of capitalism.


According to Fuller, the principle of equality—central to both liberal and socialist traditions—rests on the fundamental assumption that there exists a natural, shared equality among human beings. In other words: it is precisely our diverse capacities as well as our inherent limitations that constitute our shared humanity.


Transhumanism, by contrast, posits what its advocates call “morphological freedom”: the idea that freedom does not merely mean striving to do what one would like, within the boundaries of human limitation, but rather the aspiration to be what one wants—even if this entails the negation of one’s own humanity.


As Fuller puts it:


“The state of humanity in such a state of transhumanised capitalism – ‘Capitalism 2.0’, if you will – is one of morphological freedom, as transhumanists themselves put it: It is the freedom not only to do what you want but also to be what you want. It is worth observing that this sense of freedom violates a key metaphysical assumption shared by liberals and socialists, namely, that humans are rough natural equals, not in the sense that everyone is naturally the same but that everyone has roughly the same mix of assets and liabilities, which in turn justifies a harmonious division of labour in society. The violation of this assumption implies that whatever problems of social justice relating to material inequality have emerged over the history of capitalism are potentially amplified by transhumanism, as the prospect of morphological freedom explodes stopgap liberal intuitions about the ‘natural equality’ of humans[5].”


Fuller’s reflections likewise make clear that the capitalist ideology of boundlessness finds its ultimate expression in transhumanism. The expansionist dynamics of capitalism stop at nothing—not at the ecological limits of the planet, and not at the boundaries that are constitutive of human nature itself.


To phrase it even more precisely: contrary to the oft-repeated conservative argument that human nature is simply too limited to ever allow for the realization of utopian social forms, the transhumanist premise reveals that it is capitalism itself that refuses to recognize the limitations of human existence. And it is, paradoxically, precisely these limitations—including the cruel, narcissistic, and darker aspects of our existence—that could serve as the normative basis for a society grounded in greater equality.


Ernest Becker’s famous observation that we human beings are “gods with an anus[6]” can be read in this context as perhaps the most meaningful anthropological axiom upon which utopian aspirations might be founded. For Becker, the anal—the excremental—is not only symbolic of human finitude but also reflects a deeper condition of human equality.


It is precisely in this lack—in the contradictions that unavoidably shape the human subject—that the true possibility of utopia emerges. Utopia arises when we, as human beings, recognize our limitations as our own, and on this basis, enter into solidary relations with one another.


The constant tension between transgression and taboo, excess and discipline, egoism and solidarity is not only constitutive of human existence itself—it also serves as a catalyst for the turn toward utopia, which, in accordance with its etymological meaning as a non-place, already bears within itself the negation inherent to the human condition.

Footnotes

Florian Maiwald is a German philosopher and research associate at the University of Bonn. He holds a PhD in Philosophy. In addition to numerous academic articles, also with thinkers like Slavoj Zizek, he published political articles and philosophical essays in popular media such as Sublation Magazine, Jacobin or ABC Australia. His PhD thesis has been about the relationship between Liberalism and Socialism exemplified in the thinking of J.S. Mill (published by Nomos-Publishing).

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