MODULE 4: The Human Person Flourishing in Terms of Science and Technology

Q: What is Human Flourishing?

A:

PART 1: Technology as a way of revealing

Martin Heidegger

• A German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition of philosophy

• Widely acknowledged to be the most original and important philosophers of the 20th
century
• He strongly opposes the view that technology is “a means to an end” or “a human
activity.”
• Heidegger points out, technological objects are means for ends, and are built and
operated by human beings, but the essence of technology is something else entirely.
• Since the essence of a tree is not itself a tree, he points out, so the essence of
technology is not anything technological.
• Technology, according to Heidegger must be understood as “a way of revealing”
(Heidegger 1977, 12).

1. The Essence of Technology - The essence of technology is not anything

technological.
o Definition of Technology
▪ Instrumental – Technology as a means to an end.
▪ Anthropological – Technology as a human activity.
o Both definitions are correct. However, neither touches on the true essence of
technology.

2. Technology as a mode of revealing

Q: How can a technology be a way of Revealing?
➢ Revealing is his translation of the Greek word alethiea, which means ‘to
discover’ – to uncover what was. Heidegger insists that a more adequate
translation would be “unconcealment.”
➢ Heidegger stressed that the true can only be pursued through the correct.
Simply what is correct leads to what is true. In this sense, he envisioned
technology (techne) as a way of revealing – a mode of bringing forth.
➢ Bringing forth can be understood through the Ancient Greek philosophical
concept, Poiesis, which refers to the act of bringing something out of
 concealment. By bringing something out of concealment, the truth of that
something is revealed.
➢ The truth is understood through another Ancient Greek concept of
Aletheia, which is translated as unclosedness, unconcealedness, disclosure,
or truth.
➢ In philosophy, techne resembles the term episteme that refer to the human
ability to make and perform. Techne also encompasses knowledge and
understanding.
➢ In art, it refers to tangible and intangible aspects of life. The Greek
understood techne in the way that it encompasses not only craft, but other
acts of the mind, and poetry.

3. Technology as Poiesis

Q: Does modern technology bring forth or Challenge forth?

➢ Heidegger, in The Question Concerning Technology, postulated that both
primitive crafts and modern technology are revealing. However, he
explained that modern technology is revealing not in the sense of bringing
forth.
➢ Revealing of modern technology is not a bringing-forth, but a challenging-
forth
➢ Modern technology challenges nature by extracting something from it and
transforming, storing and distributing it. It makes people think how to do
things faster, more effectively, and with less effort.
➢ Challenging forth reduces objects as standing-reserve or something to be
disposed of by those who enframe them- humans.
o This is evident in the way people exploit natural resources with very
little concern for the ecological consequences that come with it.
o In the information age- greater control of information to profit from
its value gives rise to concerns about privacy and the protection of
human rights.
o Rise and depletion of petroleum as a strategic resource
o Introduction and use of synthetic dyes, artificial flavorings, and toxic
materials into the consumer stream that bring about adverse effects
on human health.
o Use of ripening agents in agriculture that poses threats to food safety
and health security.
Bringing Forth (Poiesis) Challenging Forth (Gestell)
Harmonious with nature, allowing natural Forcing nature into a resource, treating it
processes to reveal themselves. as a standing reserve

Bringing forth refers to the natural, Heidegger uses the term Gestell
revealing process through which things (enframing)to describe how modern
come into being. This idea is connected technology "challenges forth" the world,
to art, craftsmanship, and the ancient treating nature as a resource to be
Greek concept of poiesis (creative controlled, exploited, and ordered for
bringing into existence). It’s a more human use. Unlike bringing forth, which
harmonious and respectful relationship respects nature's essence, challenging
with nature, where humans work with the forth reduces the world to a "standing
natural world to allow things to emerge reserve" of resources, to be extracted and
into presence. manipulated.

1. Organic Farming - Organic farming 1. Factory Farming - Industrial agriculture,

works with the natural ecosystem, especially factory farming, exemplifies
using crop rotation, compost, and the challenging forth of nature.
biological pest control. Farmers work in Livestock is treated as a resource to be
harmony with the land, seasons, and maximized through artificial growth
natural cycles, allowing the soil hormones, confined spaces, and
to reveal its fertility without heavy mechanized feeding, reducing
industrial intervention. animals to mere units of production.

2. Sustainable Forestry - A sustainable 2. Fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing) -

forestry practice involves selective Fracking is a process that drills deep
logging, where only certain trees are into the earth and injects high-pressure
harvested, and others are left to fluid to extract oil or natural gas.
maintain the health of the forest. The This forces natural underground
forest’s growth cycle is respected, resources into the open, treating the
allowing it to regenerate naturally. earth as a standing reserve to be
exploited, often without regard for
3. Handcrafted Furniture - A carpenter environmental consequences like
crafting furniture from locally sourced, groundwater contamination or seismic
naturally fallen trees can be seen as activity.
bringing forth. The carpenter works
with the wood’s natural grain and 3. Genetic Modification in Agriculture -
shape, allowing the material to reveal Large-scale use of genetically
its potential beauty and function. modified organisms (GMOs) in
agriculture treats plants and seeds as
4. Small-Scale Solar Water Heating - A mere tools for maximizing yields and
simple solar water heating system, controlling nature. The natural process
such as a rooftop collector used to of growth is subordinated to human
heat water for a household, harnesses design, transforming crops into
the sun’s energy without engineered resources for human
dominating or exploiting it. The sun’s consumption.
 natural heat is allowed to reveal itself 4. Deep-sea Mining - The practice of
in a harmonious way. extracting minerals from the ocean
floor is a clear example of challenging
5. Traditional crafts (pottery) - the potter forth. It seeks to exploit previously
brings forth a clay pot by working in untouched ecosystems, turning deep-
concert with the material, revealing sea habitats into standing reserves for
the pot’s shape and form. The potter rare metals and materials, disrupting
doesn’t force the clay into an marine life and ecosystems.
unnatural state, but rather guides its
transformation. This is an example of 5. Artificial Intelligence in Surveillance -
humans working alongside nature, AI-powered surveillance systems
allowing the essence of the clay to analyze massive amounts of data,
emerge through a respectful process treating personal information,
of creation. It reflects a cooperative, behavior, and even human interaction
less aggressive approach to as resources to be extracted,
technology or creation. categorized, and used for control.
People's movements and decisions are
reduced to data points in a process
that challenges forth the natural
spontaneity of human life.

6. Strip Mining - challenges forth the earth

by extracting coal, minerals, or other
resources with brute force, without
regard for the land's natural state. The
land is treated as a resource to be
exploited, not something to work with
in a balanced relationship. This is
emblematic of modern technology’s
domineering approach to the world.
Rather than allowing something to
reveal itself, challenging forth imposes
human will upon nature, treating it
purely as a means to an end.

7. Massive Hydropower Plants -

Hydropower plants clearly fall into
Heidegger’s notion of challenging
forth. Dams and modern hydropower
systems drastically alter natural water
flows by controlling and regulating
rivers, treating water as a resource to
be extracted for energy production

4. Enframing as Modern Technology’s Ways of Revealing

➢ Nature is framed and controlled
 ➢ Heidegger distinguished the way of revealing of modern technology by
considering it as a process of enframing.

➢ Calculative thinking
o Humans desire to put an order to nature to better understand and
control it.
o Tends to be more commonly utilized, primarily because humans’
desire to control due to their fear of irregularity.
o Calculative thinking is the more technical kind of human thought, in
which people gather information and put it together in order to put
it to some specific use.
➢ Meditative thinking
o Humans allow nature to reveal itself to them without the use of force
or violence.

➢ Enframing, is a way of ordering (or framing) nature to better manipulate it.

Enframing happens because of how humans desire for security, even it pulls
all of nature as a standing reserve and an instrument of technology, to be
exploited in the ordering of nature.

5. Human Person Swallowed by Technology

Q: Why Technology is not a human Activity?
➢ According to Heidegger, there is something wrong with the modern,
technological culture we live in today. In our ‘age of technology’ reality
can only be present as a raw material (as a ‘standing reserve’). This state
of affairs has not been brought about by humans; the technological way
of revealing was not chosen by humans.
➢ Rather, our understanding of the world - our understanding of ‘being’, of
what it means ‘to be’ – develops through the ages. In our time ‘being’ has
the character of a technological ‘framework’, from which humans
approach the world in a controlling and dominating way.
➢ Every attempt to climb out of technology throws us back in. The only way
out for Heidegger is “the will not to will”.
➢ We need to open up the possibility of relying on technologies while not
becoming enslaved to them and seeing them as manifestations of an
understanding of being.

6. The Dangers of Technology

➢ As a mere tenant on Earth, people must not allow themselves to be
consumed by technology lest they lose the essence of who they are as
human beings. In this sense, humans are in danger of becoming merely part
of the standing reserve or, alternatively, may find themselves in nature.
7. Art as a Way Out (Saving Power)
➢ Art as a saving Power
➢ Necessary reflection upon and confrontation with technology are required
in order to proactively address the dangers of technology.
➢ Art encourages human to think less from calculative standpoint where
nature is viewed as an ordered system. Instead, it inspires meditative
thinking where nature is seen as an art and that without any force and
violence.