From Survival to Self-Transcendence: The Expanding Arc of Human Aspiration

Abstract

This paper develops a philosophical anthropology of human aspiration structured as an expanding arc. It argues that human development unfolds through successive widening horizons: survival, egoic expansion, meaning, genuine altruism, and self-transcendence. Unlike animals whose cognition remains functionally enclosed within survival and reproduction, human consciousness exhibits structural excess—an intrinsic drive to exceed itself. Drawing on psychology (Maslow, Frankl, Rogers), philosophical anthropology (Scheler, Plessner), ethical philosophy (Levinas, Buber), and developmental theory (Erikson), the paper proposes that altruism functions as the ethical bridge between meaning and transcendence. The culmination of aspiration is not domination but ego-transparency—what may be called self-annulment, understood not as destruction but as the progressive decentering of the self within larger unities of truth, humanity, or Being. The paper engages evolutionary reductionist and psychological debunking critiques, demonstrating that such accounts cannot exhaust the normative and phenomenological depth of aspiration. A staged model of human aspiration is proposed and formally represented as a logarithmic spiral, expressing the non-linear, asymptotic character of horizon-expansion. Four prior theoretical contributions by the author—the M10 architecture of being, graded compatibilism, well-being as meta-aware integration, and radiant ethics—are integrated to provide ontological, freedom-theoretical, psychological, and ethical grounding. Limitations of the model are acknowledged and directions for empirical research are proposed.