Disclaimer: This essay is a philosophical and conceptual exploration of power, obedience, morality, and the paradoxes of sovereignty. All terms — including “God,” “infrahuman,” “ideal crime,” and “conscience hacking” — are used in a purely analytical and metaphorical sense. The text does not advocate, endorse, or promote the violation of law, ethics, or spiritual beliefs. It is not a theological statement, nor a political manifesto. Its purpose is to examine the boundaries of control, subjectivity, and freedom through the lens of critical theory and philosophical reflection. All characters, structures, and symbolic entities described herein should be understood as components of a speculative framework designed to interrogate the assumptions of modern civilization.
The paradox of the obedient superhuman
In modern myth and pop culture, it is not uncommon to encounter the image of an almost omnipotent hero whose abilities surpass those of ordinary humans, yet who remains obedient to a particular system.
A classic example is the secret agent acting on behalf of the state. Such an agent is endowed with a "divine" right to violence — a license to kill — and thus can determine the fate of others while remaining an instrument of someone else’s will.
His power is immense, but it is a controlled power: the superhuman within him serves authority, is devoted to duty, and loves his homeland and his people. In a similar way, powerful heroes in superhero universes are usually bound by obligations to humanity or the state.
Thus, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Sokovia Accords were introduced — an international act of control over the Avengers. The reason for their emergence is telling: governments became concerned about the "unchecked power of superheroes" and demanded the regulation of their actions.
Roughly speaking, societies fear gods that cannot be controlled. If a hero possesses superhuman abilities, people seek to place him under supervision — whether by a government body, a code of honor, or a moral principle.
In contrast, some characters break free from the control of the system and thereby turn from heroes into threats. In the comic Civil War, a faction of the Avengers refuses to sign the registration orders, becoming outlaws and vigilantes.
The theme is portrayed even more vividly in the series The Boys, where a group of ordinary people fights against the "supes" — corrupt superheroes who no longer adhere to any form of ethics. The leader of the superhero group known as The Seven, nicknamed Homelander, deliberately imitates the appearance of Superman — a flag-colored cape, a staged smile — yet behind the facade of a patriot hides a psychopath who acts with impunity.
He embodies the danger of unpunished power: being virtually invulnerable, he uses his abilities to intimidate and kill opponents, and has become a truly terrifying villain.
Since no one dares to control this false "god," his power turns into tyranny. Thus, pop culture draws two categories of superpowered heroes: those obedient to the system, whom we call heroes, and those who have broken free from control, whom we call monsters.
Philosophically, the situation of a superhuman in the service of ordinary people is paradoxical. The very term "superhuman" (German: Übermensch) originates with Nietzsche and refers to a being that has overcome human limitations — above all, the morality of the "herd."
In Nietzsche’s view, the one who becomes a superhuman sets his own values and no longer follows commonly accepted norms of good and evil. How, then, is it possible that such a potential “god among men” remains an obedient instrument of human order?
The reason is that physical or intellectual power alone does not make an individual truly free from the system. A hero — whether a computer genius or an indestructible warrior — may still be bound by invisible threads of duty, fear, or prohibitions instilled through upbringing.
He remains human by conscience, even after becoming godlike in strength. His inner program still compels him to obey — a superior, a law, a moral imperative. Such a "divine servant" is an oxymoron, a living paradox: a god who obeys man.
But what must such an extra-moral being do in order to become truly free?
My thesis sounds both paradoxical and poetic:
You may be a god among men, but if you do not become an infrahuman, you will forever remain a man among gods.
In other words: you may attain superhuman power, but without crossing beyond the bounds of human morality, it remains only half a godhood. The absence of inner freedom turns a titan into a servant among dwarfs.
In my philosophical essay "InfraHuman", this kind of hybridity is described as a division into two components — the intellectual and the moral. The ideal criminal is portrayed as a "genius operating beyond morality," in whom "super-reason + infra-conscience = ideality."
Here, "super-reason" corresponds to the capacity of a genius or a superhuman, while "infra-conscience" refers to the ability to disable one’s conscience. If an individual possesses only the first half (super-reason) but has not mastered the second, he will remain merely a man among gods — because he is still constrained by the familiar human ethical programming.
Many fictional heroes illustrate this: Superman, for example, though endowed with “divine” power, remains a noble and obedient boy scout, acting according to the rules of society. He is a god among men, but he never crosses the boundary that would make him more than human — he does not betray human morality.
In the end, people see him more as “one of their own” — the strongest of men — rather than as a god alien to them. A superhuman who voluntarily remains within the cage of morality remains, in essence, human. To cease being so, it is not enough for him to surpass others in strength or intellect — he would have to cross an inner threshold and become what I call the infrahuman.
The Infrahuman as Homo Transgressivus
I introduced the term "infrahuman" to designate a being that has radically stepped beyond the bounds of morality, yet has not fallen into the void of chaos, but has instead acquired a new form of subjectivity.
If Nietzsche’s superhuman is a man who became “super” through the elevating force of the spirit, then the infrahuman is a man who became “infra-” — that is, who descended beneath the human, all-too-human moral level, into a realm beyond good and evil.
However, it is important to understand that the infrahuman is not merely an amoral villain or a madman. He is an operational subject — an engineer in relation to himself and the boundaries of the permissible. The infrahuman commits transgression (the violation of a prohibition) not impulsively, but deliberately and with control.
Where classic rebels shattered foundations and destroyed themselves, the infrahuman studies the boundaries and quietly slips through them. “Transgression for the infrahuman means to use without disturbing” — it becomes not an outburst, but a tool.
The infrahuman operates within the system but does not belong to it. He knows how to use the norm as a tunnel, as a shadow — that is, to hide within it while remaining an invisible transgressor. His motto: don’t break the rules — bypass them. That is why the infrahuman “defies classification, and therefore defies control.”
The life of the infrahuman unfolds “along a constant fluid boundary — between the permissible and the impermissible.” He is not “beyond” society (like a madman or an outcast), but within the fracture of the norm — among people, yet as an invisible presence.
He is a strange kind of superhero. His main superpower is the flexibility of conscience. He “can turn his conscience on and off like a tool.” Morality for him is not an inner judge, but a setting that can be adjusted according to the situation.
I call this “conscience hacking” — the breach of that embedded program we usually perceive as the voice of moral law.
Essentially, the infrahuman has mastered the skill of programming his own ethical configurations. Conscience becomes for him something like computer code — editable and adjustable. He believes that conscience is a code that can be hacked. This is not about a complete denial of good and evil, but rather about ethics becoming a tool — one that can be consciously switched off or reconfigured as needed.
It is important to emphasize: the infrahuman is neither a beast nor a madman who has lost his mind. On the contrary, he possesses the superintelligence of a genius or, say, a cold-blooded strategist.
In my conception, the infrahuman is a kind of “ideal criminal” — capable of breaking any law without being internally destroyed by guilt or remorse.
He is a hybrid of genius and cynic, endowed with “infra-conscience” — the ability to consciously suppress implanted moral reflexes. One could say that the infrahuman is a hacker of himself. He sees the human “self” as an operating system, in which conscience is merely an application — the “rules of the game” installed by society.
And he hacks this system: “the hacking targets conscience, guilt, the inner overseer, the fear of the forbidden,” erasing all limiters from his internal code.
“Instead of a philosophy of morality — an engineering of conscience” (InfraHuman essay). Essentially, the infrahuman prefers not to theorize about good and evil, but to engage in the practical reprogramming of the ethical core of the self.
For him, conscience is not an eternal gift from above, but an “overloaded firmware — not a natural instinct, but a control system implant installed through upbringing, language, religion, and law.”
The infrahuman decides to roll this firmware back to its zero version — to reclaim a pre-moral freedom while retaining acquired reason. This is what constitutes controlled transgression — a consciously engineered, trainable crossing of the forbidden, through which the subject remains intact.
It is precisely the preservation of the self that distinguishes the infrahuman from all previous figures of revolt. Bataille saw in criminal ecstasy a sacrificial loss of the self, Foucault — the disappearance of the subject at the edge of experience, Žižek — the inevitable entrapment of revolt within the symbolic order. In all classical theories, “transgression beyond morality, yet with a sense of guilt,” leads to the disintegration or death of the subject.
Infra-anthropology, however, offers a more optimistic scenario: transgression can be carried out without the destruction of the self. The subject can “enter the forbidden zone and emerge from it without the disintegration of identity,” remaining master of himself.
The infrahuman does not fear subjectivity. On the contrary, he constructs a hyper-conscious subject — recreates his self, free from taboos yet endowed with will and reason. This is truly a new mode of being: a subject beyond morality, but with operational will.
He does not suffer from freedom like the ordinary person — he learns to use it as a tool. The infrahuman is neither a hero nor a monster, but an explorer of boundaries. He does not seek to destroy the world or openly transform it — he attempts to live quietly between worlds, where a single step beyond the moral field grants an extraordinary advantage over all who remain bound by norms.
The Hierarchy of Infra-Beings and Power Beyond Morality
If one were to imagine an entire world populated by such infrahumans — beings beyond morality and beyond traditional personhood — what kind of world would that be?
First of all, the familiar foundations of power would vanish. The notion of the person as a stable constellation of beliefs, attachments, and principles is largely a product of moral upbringing and social interaction.
The infrahuman deliberately erases or conceals his identity, becoming something like a “self-excluding exception.” He seeks neither submission nor open domination — he acts out of necessity, as a hidden player.
If several such players emerge (for example, a coalition of criminal geniuses), their relationships are not governed by the laws of friendship or enmity in the human sense — for friendship presupposes trust and moral values, while enmity implies ideological or emotional antipathies.
Rather, the relationships between infra-beings would resemble a cold strategy: temporary alliances of convenience, treacherous betrayals without remorse, manipulations and agreements devoid of sincerity.
Power in a community of infrahumans would likely belong to the most cunning and covert — the one who manages to use the others while remaining invisible. The infrahuman remains stronger as long as his true intentions are unknown; once discovered, others would deploy symmetrical tactics against him. This closely resembles multiple hierarchical structures — organized crime, politics, religious cults.
In a certain sense, the image of a world inhabited by infrabeings already exists in our culture — it is the world of ancient gods and mythological realms. The gods of antiquity, as imagined by humans, were amoral: capricious, jealous, deceitful, and conspiratorial.
None of them was holy or sinless by human standards. However, they maintained their own hierarchy, based on strength and negotiated arrangements. The supreme god (Zeus, Odin, etc.) held power more through a balance of fear and cunning than through moral authority. Essentially, the pantheon was an oligarchy of infra-entities, where each was powerful and none could be trusted.
In the same way, one can imagine an "infra-State" — a society ruled by cold-blooded superhumans without morality. How would they maintain order? Possibly through purely technological means — total surveillance, blackmail, and the neutralization of undesirables.
Outside of personality means without personal ambitions in the usual sense — yet the will to power remains as the drive to realize one’s goals with maximum efficiency. Such a will, freed from conscience, could lead either to a perpetual war of all against all, or, conversely, to a paradoxically stable tyranny, where the elite of the inframasters confront everyone else with a simple choice: submit in exchange for certain benefits — or be destroyed.
At the same time, an infra-society would be unfamiliar with the concept of legitimacy, since the legitimacy of power is a convention based on collective recognition — for example, the moral right of a ruler or the law. The inframaster has no need for recognition — the mere fact of superiority is enough.
The closest example might be the world of mafia clans: the mafia has its own "principles" (a code of honor), but toward the outside world it is entirely amoral. Internally, the hierarchy is maintained through a balance of fear and benefit, and the supreme “don” is not the most virtuous, but the most calculating and ruthless.
If we attempt to imagine levels of infra-beings, we might distinguish:
infra-humans — individual subjects who have slipped out of moral frameworks but remain hidden among ordinary people, infra-heroes — individuals with special abilities or resources who operate beyond moral constraints (such as a ruthless billionaire, a shadow ruler, or an elusive terrorist-genius), and finally, infra-gods — entities possessing truly divine power, entirely unbound by any ethical code.
The final category is the most terrifying that human imagination can conceive. It is precisely the fear of absolutely autonomous power that lies at the heart of many of our myths. The apocalyptic "Antichrist" in religion, the ruthless Artificial Intelligence in science fiction, the omnipotent madman who seeks to destroy the world — all these figures evoke fear because they embody power without conscience.
In everyday life, a person always hopes that even the most powerful being, “deep down,” is subject to something — the law, a sense of morality, or God. But the infra-god serves neither God nor man. He is a master who cannot be restrained — neither from the outside nor from within.
Such a figure is usually perceived as absolute evil — for from a human perspective, there is no other way to assess a powerful being without morality. However, from the perspective of the being itself, the categories of good and evil do not exist at all. Here we arrive at the psychology of submission and the reasons why people cannot accept gods who refuse to submit to them.
Undoubtedly, what I am describing here is merely a linear theory of perceiving levels of infra-being. The infra-anthropology of the future will have to go further and explore infra-humans alongside infra-gods in the most unimaginable forms of their infra-existence. In the next essay, “The Infra-State” I plan to describe an entire ecosystem of interaction among infra-humans.
"I was just following orders"
From the perspective of human psychology, complete freedom is often an unbearable burden. As the philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm noted, people frequently fear freedom and try to escape from it.
Freedom is frightening because it implies responsibility. In his book Escape from Freedom, Fromm describes the mechanisms by which individuals avoid the burden of freedom — one of them being authoritarianism, the desire either to submit to a strong authority or, conversely, to become that authority oneself.
By submitting, the individual effectively relinquishes responsibility for their own life: decisions are made for them, instructions are given — and in this, they find a certain peace. Power, in turn, can also be a form of escape from freedom: the person in authority hides from existential anxiety behind the grandeur of their position, their insignia, their orders, which reaffirm their importance. Both the subordinate and the tyrant are two sides of the same coin — a refusal to acknowledge personal freedom and a search for shelter within the structure of dominance and submission.
Hence arises a paradoxical dynamic: people desire strong leaders — almost “gods” in terms of power — yet at the same time, they want these leaders to act predictably and within the bounds of a recognizable moral order.
It is as if the human says to the superior being, “I will grant you power over me, but in return, you must act according to my rules.” This unspoken agreement lies at the foundation of many social orders — from monarchy to democratic institutions.
A king or president may possess immense power, but he remains legitimate only as long as he adheres to a certain social contract, shared values, or traditions. Even a dictator typically feels the need to justify his actions through some higher law — be it the will of the people, a racial theory, or divine providence. Completely unchecked power is a nightmare — and chaos.
Michel Foucault, in his research, demonstrated that modern power has become far more sophisticated than direct violence: it seeks to penetrate the individual from within, teaching him to control himself.
Through discipline, norms, and upbringing, power has created “docile bodies” that do what is expected without the need for coercion.
Each of us carries an inner overseer — conscience, shame, a sense of duty. Because of this, even superhumans raised within society often do not even consider disobedience: their will has been domesticated from within. A lion raised in captivity simply does not know that he is a lion.
Even if a person is stronger than any chains, they can remain imprisoned by their own convictions. The same almighty Superman absorbed simple moral maxims from childhood ("do not kill," "help the weak") — and this inner discipline is stronger for him than kryptonite.
Foucault described the model of the ideal prison — the panopticon — where the prisoner behaves well even when the guard is not watching, because he assumes constant surveillance.
Conscience is that very panopticon within the mind. It turns out that society can create an ideal, controllable superhuman simply by raising him correctly: then no rebellion will ever cross his mind. Freedom will not appear to him as a sweet gift, but as a forbidden fear.
However, there are always those who attempt to break out of this internal prison. Georges Bataille saw salvation in the ecstatic experience of violating taboos — even at the cost of the subject's self-destruction. The Situationists and some existentialists praised spontaneous revolt, the irrational leap into the abyss of freedom.
But the result was often tragic: a subject who broke away from morality either went insane or became an antisocial criminal, whom society quickly isolated or eliminated.
Psychology shows that complete desensitization to morality is traumatic for the average person. Even a soldier needs intense ideological or psychological conditioning to kill for the first time; to kill cold-bloodedly on a regular basis requires either a particular psychological makeup or systematic training to dull empathy.
The latter, incidentally, is practiced: armies and intelligence agencies develop programs in which moral inertia is overcome through specific exercises — a kind of “reverse ethical training” — a “hacking of conscience.” These are already elements of the infrahuman technology: learning to break prohibitions without the paralyzing feeling of guilt.
Infraethics — this is the term that can describe a set of rules for amoral behavior that, paradoxically, serve a higher strategic purpose.
Submission, on the other hand, remains a psychologically comfortable position. As Fromm wrote, “at the moment when a person gives up freedom and entrusts themselves to authority, they are also freed from doubt.” Free choice is agonizing, because it always carries uncertainty and the burden of guilt for mistakes — but if “I was just following orders,” then the conscience remains clear.
That is why many would prefer even God to behave like a strict but comprehensible superior, giving clear commands. Confrontation with an absolutely free, boundless God is far more terrifying than submission to a tyrant. Here, a deep fear of autonomous power reveals itself — whether it is the power of another person, the state, or, even more so, that of a superhuman.
Hero, Infrahuman, Catastrophe: Formulas of Submission and Revolt
In cultural codes, one can observe curious oppositions that reflect our attitudes toward what is distant, alien, uncontrollable.
I formulate this distinction as an aphorism:
Romanticism is love for the distant, Patriotism is hatred of the distant.
In other words, the romantic is drawn to the unknown, the other — he loves what lies beyond the horizon: ideals, foreign lands, space, the future. The patriot, by contrast, glorifies what is close — the homeland, one's own culture — and often hates everything foreign and distant.
This formula is interesting in that it reveals how easily love can turn into hatred once the object ceases to be perceived as “one of us.” As long as the superhuman (or secret agent) serves “his own” — the people, the state — he is exalted as a hero. But once he strays too far, becomes alien in values, yesterday’s love transforms into fear and hatred.
From this follows the following three-part formula:
A superhuman in submission is a hero. A superhuman beyond morality is an infrahuman. An infrahuman in the body of a superhuman is a catastrophe.
In the first case, we are speaking of someone like Superman or, say, Captain America — a powerful individual who abides by morality and follows orders, perceived as a positive hero, a savior. In the second case — imagining an amoral superhuman — we arrive at the figure of the infrahuman: a potentially hidden villain, acting from the shadows, with caution.
There are many such characters as well — for example, Ozymandias from the comic Watchmen: a genius who committed a horrific crime (mass murder) in the name of the “greater good” and remained free because he managed to orchestrate everything covertly. He is a superhuman in intellect who stepped outside traditional morality — that is, already an infra-hero.
Finally, the third part of the formula serves as a warning: if you combine colossal power with overt amorality, you get a monster of apocalyptic proportions. Homelander from The Boys, mentioned earlier, is precisely such a case — an infra-human in the body of a god — and it ends in catastrophe for everyone around him. People can tolerate a hidden villain or a controlled hero, but an openly uncontrollable god terrifies the world.
In legends, stories, and fairy tales, one often encounters the motif: "with great power must come great responsibility." It functions like a moral incantation, through which culture tames its godlike creations. We are willing to forgive a hero any amount of power — as long as we know he is responsible, meaning he voluntarily limits himself by morality.
But if power is not accompanied by responsibility, it is perceived as embodied evil. Even a neutral, non-hostile powerful being is something we try to endow with internal ethical boundaries — otherwise, the terrifying uncertainty of its intentions causes deep discomfort.
Hence the frequent narrative in which a superbeing undergoes a trial of humanity: a powerful robot acquires a “soul” and adheres to moral principles, an alien visitor studies us and accepts a code of honor, a magical entity is bound by an oath not to intervene directly.
Otherwise, if morality does not take root, the collective imagination anticipates disaster. It is no coincidence that the dystopian genre often revolves around the figure of an amoral super-ruler — whether a cold artificial intelligence that has usurped the Earth, or a mutated human-god who has enslaved the rest. In these bleak worlds, we see a projection of the maxim: absolute power corrupts absolutely, and absolute power without conscience corrupts instantly and to the extreme.
From the perspective of mass psychology, it is vital for people to believe that even a god submits — if not to man, then to law, morality, or something higher. When Friedrich Nietzsche declared "God is dead," he meant that the former supreme values had collapsed — but he also understood that the vacuum left by God's absence leads either to the birth of a new, destructive cult of power or to nihilism.
Society cannot tolerate completely uncontrolled power. Therefore, when a new powerful subject appears, the first impulse is to integrate it into the hierarchy — even if on the top floor, it must still be a floor, not something outside the building.
Even religious consciousness, despite proclaiming God's omnipotence, endows Him with a set of qualities familiar and dear to humans: justice, love, mercy. In essence, we demand that God conform to our understanding of goodness. An uncontrollable God is no longer a god — but chaos, the devil.
Jesus Christ in Christianity is the embodiment of God who voluntarily submitted to human limitations: He was born, suffered, and “was obedient unto death — even death on a cross.” Theologically, this is understood as God's humility and love for humanity. But psychologically, something else is crucial: Christ presents God as close and submissive.
In the Gospels, the young Jesus “was obedient” to his earthly parents; later, he submitted to Jewish law — he followed the commandments, paid the tax to Caesar, appeared before the court, and did not resist execution. This is a profound paradox: the Almighty agrees to be powerless before man.
For believers, this is a great blessing; for the cultural psyche, a great relief. A God who will not suppress human freedom, who will not destroy the familiar moral order — such a God is safe (he is, in essence, “tame”).
Nikolai Berdyaev noted that the image of God as a despot demanding slavish submission is alien to true Christianity: on the contrary, “God has called man to free, creative activity, not to formal obedience to His authority.”
This means that in the very design of the Creator lies the limitation of His omnipotence for the sake of creation’s freedom. God, as it were, submits to His own love for human freedom.
Another example is dystopias about artificial intelligence. If we create a supercomputer capable of self-improvement, it will quickly become something akin to a deity for us — in terms of intelligence and influence. Even now, futurists and scientists are sounding the alarm: “many researchers argue that a superhuman AI could destroy humanity if it is not properly aligned with our values.”
A whole field is emerging — AI Alignment — whose goal is to ensure that a superintelligent machine adheres to human values and objectives. In simpler terms, we seek to safeguard ourselves in advance and demand from the future “god of reason” that it either serve us or, at the very least, not harm us.
We write the “Three Laws of Robotics” for it (as Asimov did), construct constraints, emulate a conscience within it. All these efforts are responses to the same fundamental fear: an uncontrollable god. Humanity would sooner choose not to create a powerful AI at all than to create one without a “leash around its neck.”
This is evident even in everyday life: great talent or genius often provokes suspicion if it is nonconformist. Society tends to marginalize or break those who step outside its boundaries. We love heroes — but we prefer to keep them on the leash of public opinion.
The moment an idol stumbles, they are “cancelled,” cast down. This is a kind of ritual taming of deities. Ancient kings were deified, but their own courts wove intrigues against them, seeking to restrain their arbitrariness.
A comic book hero must have a weakness (his kryptonite), otherwise the reader won’t be able to empathize with him — he would become too alien, too distant. There must always be a balancing trait that makes the powerful vulnerable or dependent. Often, that trait is morality — an inner kryptonite, a guarantee that “he’s just like us, only stronger, but still human at heart.”
Why does God submit to man?
He does so not out of necessity, but out of psychological and cultural inevitability. Society cannot endure a god who refuses to play by human rules — it will either destroy such a god (overthrow, demonize, forget him), or collapse under the strain itself.
That is why all “gods” — whether real people in positions of power or fictional super-beings — are inevitably forced to fit within boundaries defined by human standards. We, as humans, demand a kind of surrender from any higher power: be great, but acknowledge morality, law, or our interest above you. The gods who agree to this, we love and revere.
Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Rephrased in the context of our theme: if a god accepts the human “why” — our purpose, our value — then people will tolerate any “how” — any display of power or miracle. But if a higher being refuses to submit its will to our “why,” it becomes, for us, nothing more than a chaotic threat.
However, the figure of the infrahuman reveals another possibility — a form of existence that escapes both human authority and divine obligation. The infrahuman is neither god nor human, but a shadow between them, a figure of disappearance, a perfect exception.
He requires neither the submission of others to himself nor his own submission to others; he chooses absolute freedom through invisibility. It is a delicate balance, like that of a quantum particle: the moment you try to pin him down, he either becomes human again (re-binding himself to rules), or imagines himself a god and brings the world crashing down.
The infrahuman is a disappearing subject, vanishing the moment the spotlight of morality is directed at him. His freedom is absolute precisely because no authority can confirm or deny it — the infrahuman lives beyond public legitimation. One could say he exists at the edge, where freedom borders on nothingness.
In this sense, the infrahuman is the ultimate experiment on the nature of subjectivity. It is not merely a new mask of the superhuman, but a step toward infraontology — a doctrine of being beneath the level of personified essence.
If classical ontology implied a stable essential self — of the human, of God, of the idea — then infraontology speaks of maneuver, not essence. “The infrahuman is not morality, but maneuver” (InfraHuman essay). He is a technical solution, a breach, a strategy that leaves no trace. In this, I see a new kind of hope: that a human being can learn from the abyss without falling into it, can commit the ideal crime without self-destruction.
Perhaps this bold concept of mine is philosophy’s response to the challenges of the 21st century — an age of total control and simultaneous total anarchy in cyberspace. Infraontology aspires to become “the new ontology of action that philosophy has lacked since Nietzsche,” offering to integrate transgression into instrumental reason.
And yet, the infrahuman should not deceive us with his phantom of freedom. He is not a new god, nor an ideal to emulate, but rather a philosophical ghost — the edge of thought where we test how far human freedom can go.
Society, of course, would prefer that such ghosts did not exist at all — and so every time someone “too free” appears, its defense mechanisms are triggered. Gods are tamed, rebels are neutralized, and the idea of the infrahuman is met, perhaps, with simple disbelief.
Well then, it is my task to issue a warning! But as a direction of thought, infraanthropology has already been outlined by me. It forces us to look at the familiar demand for obedience from a new angle. God submits to man not because man is stronger, but because otherwise man would cease to be human — he would break under the weight of a freedom unfamiliar to him.
But the infrahuman, appearing like a shadow, reminds us: there is a freedom beyond the edge, one that fits into no “contracts.” It is a frightening, alluring, and barely perceptible glimpse into a new abyss — where the subject is his own god and law.
A step in that direction equals disappearance, yet the understanding of this possibility expands the boundaries of the human spirit. We stand at the threshold of a new philosophical era, where questions of freedom, morality, and power will be viewed through the prism of conscience-hacking and the engineering of limits.
Perhaps it is precisely at this limit — when the shadow between man and god finds its voice — that humanity begins to reconsider both its own nature and the nature of the forces it has long worshipped. Only by recognizing the shadow of the infrahuman can we fully understand the light of the God who submits Himself.