255 ON (NOT) WANTING TO BE HUMAN: MAN AND ROBOT Miglena Nikolchina St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia Abstract: In the wake of the Cartesian equation between animal and automaton the romantics (Kleist, Hoffmann, Mary Shelley) launched the autonomization of the automaton, which from that point on has accrued a formidable fctional and philosophical dossier. The essay explores contemporary imaginative recreations of the “quadrilateral” of the human – the human vis-à-vis the animal, the robot, and the divine – focusing on the shifting perspectives in the Alien flm series. The coincidence of wanting and not wanting to be human is thus argued to be the defnitive characteristic of the human which, hence, is necessarily transhuman. Key words: animal, robot, human, transhumanization, Ridley Scott Trasumanar significar per verba non si poria; però l’essemplo basti a cui esperïenza grazia serba. 1 Dante, La Divina Commedia The utopian projects for transforming the human being which have given new life to Dante’s neologism trasumanar could be summed up in two different and, in fact, contradictory ways. On the one hand, we could say that the human being knows itself to be an animal, but it wants to be human. The divine appears as the horizon of this desire exemplifed by Greek tragedy at the meeting point of the invention of 1 In A. S. Kline’s translation, “To go beyond Humanity is not to be told in words: so let the analogy serve for those to whom grace, alone, may allow the experience.” (Dante, The Divine Comedy)