“Anthropological Challenges in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Analysis through Transcendent Philosophy and Heidegger”

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Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD candidate in Islamic Theology (Kalām), Faculty of Theology, University of Tabriz.

2 Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Islamic Theology (Kalām), Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, University of Tabriz.

Abstract

In the contemporary lifeworld, the emergence and dominance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) constitute more than a merely instrumental transformation; they confront humanity’s ontological foundations and anthropological ends with fundamental and challenging questions. The central problem of the present study is to examine the possibility of “existential reductionism” in the age of AI—an outlook in which the transcendent dimensions of the human being and the non-quantifiable, non-algorithmic aspects of personhood are liable to be reduced to computational data and second-order algorithms. Employing a descriptive–analytical method and a comparative–critical approach, this research investigates the tension between “technological anthropology” and “sapiential/philosophical anthropology.”



The study’s theoretical framework is organized around two axes: first, Ṣadrā’s Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikmah al-Muta‘āliyah), with emphasis on the principles of substantial motion (al-ḥarakah al-jawhariyyah), intensification of being (ishtidād al-wujūd), and the immateriality of the soul (tajarrud al-nafs); and second, Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy, focusing on the concepts of Dasein, Gestell (Enframing), and the relation between truth and technology. The findings suggest that, from the perspective of Transcendent Philosophy, AI—lacking “the simplicity of reality” (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqah) and deprived of “presential knowledge” (al-‘ilm al-ḥuḍūrī)—remains only at the level of an accident (‘araḍ) and is incapable of attaining the rank of imaginal and intellectual immateriality (tajarrud khayālī wa ‘aqlī). From Heidegger’s standpoint, AI represents the ultimate emblem of Enframing, which, by turning human beings and the world into a standing-reserve (Bestand), deprives Dasein of the possibility of authenticity and the experience of being-toward-death.



Finally, by critically assessing claims about the ontological parity of human beings and machines, this paper concludes that a viable response to potential anthropological challenges lies not in the negation of technology, but in a return to “existential self-awareness” and a rearticulation of the human–technology relation on the basis of practical wisdom and spiritual reflection, so as to prevent the human station of Divine vicegerency (khilāfah) from being dissolved into mere technological instrumentality.

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 07 June 2026

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