THE HUMAN PERSON
FLOURISHING IN
TERMS OF SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY AS A
WAY OF REVEALING
Module 5
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Science and Technology
The goal of science The goal of Technology is - Ayush Raj
is the pursuit of technology is to the practical
knowledge for its create products application of
own sake. that solve science.
problems and
improve human
life.
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Analysis:
Technological products
as extension of the
contemporary human’s
life.
ACTIVITY
• Picture(What have you done in your
life?)
• Do you think the technology used by
the person helped him achieve what
he/she is expected to do in life? Why
or why not?
• What do you think is the role of
science and technology in your life?
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Human Person
as a Being Who
is Rational and
Free
The Vitruvian Man
Technology as a Product of
Human Reason and Freedom
❖Man is rational and with this
rationality comes also his
creativity.
❖This creativity means man has the
capacity to innovate whatever are
those available and “create” new
things which other animals cannot.
St. Augustine and Human
Freedom
▪ Freedom is the capacity of choosing what is good
and of performing good deeds, because freedom
is fixated on the good things, to choose the good
things and to reject those which are bad.
▪ All material things are to be used but we have to
be free enough to recognize that the only person
for whom we have to be slaves is God, in whom we
find our rest and our final goal.
Technology and the
Desire for the Good
AUGUSTINE ACKNOWLEDGES THAT THE SUPREME
GOOD MUST BE THE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS.
EVERYONE WANTS TO BE HAPPY AND TO LIVE A
GOOD LIFE.
THE DESIRE FOR HAPPINESS AND SATISFACTION MAY
BE EXPRESSED IN THE WAY HUMANS WANT
COMFORT, EFFICIENCY, SECURITY, AND PEACE OF
MIND.
Technology and the Desire for the Good
Our intelligence, freedom, and creativity is We are then reminded that in order for
our inner desire to attain what is good; hence technology to serve its purpose, our intent
our inclination to do good is what guides our in the practice of it must be to do good.
freedom.
Activity: What are these things for?
Commonly Used Main Purpose of the Accessory Reasons
Things Making of the Thing that Go with the Main
Purpose of the Thing
1. Cellular Phones
2. Cars
3. Watches
4. Light Bulbs
5. Paper
• The things we desire for a specific purpose
may contain other elements that might
make us forget their real purpose.
• The same with the Highest Good; we can
even question if we are making progress
in attaining it because of the distraction
caused by the lesser goods.
• Technology has combined the
camera, phone, internet browser,
flashlight, calculator, and a library
into one powerful device. The real
purpose of having a phone has
been drowned by other features.
• Technology as a way for us to
ascend towards the Highest Good
has now become a distraction that
may hinder from reaching the
Good.
Augustine thinks that we cannot be happy unless we attain
the object of our desire but it is not a guarantee either that
we can really be happy if we get what we desire.
Not all our desires guarantee happiness. Certain desires
and certain things may even bring us to misery if we desire
what is not really the Good.
This can happen to technology too. Some technologies distract us from
reaching the real Good, they may even lead us away from what really
matters.
Technology as a Way of Revealing
Martin Heidegger and Technology
❖For Heidegger, presently, we tend
to be chained to technology.
❖There is also a pervasive
instrumentalist interpretation of
technology as a human activity that
provides the means to our ends.
❖But this interpretation opens up to a
deeper question, namely, what is
the essence of technology? And if
it is instrumental then what is its
end?
• Heidegger considers that
technology involves the
bringing-forth (poiesis)
Martin and suggests that with
Heidegger technology comes a
and distinctive mode of
Technology disclosiveness, or
revealedness, that is, a
kind of ontological truth
(aletheia).
Martin Heidegger
and Technology
• Our activities, the things we
encounter and deal with, and
even we ourselves all seem to
happen together in a “world”
where everything is set up and
“enframed” as part of a stockpile
of available materials and
personnel – “standing-reserve”
(Bestand), always ready for
technologically determined
purposes.
Enframing (Gestell), then, is the “essence” of the technological – essence,
not in the traditional sense of a permanent and unchangeable character or
set of properties, but in the sense of a predominant way of disclosing
meaning which “gives” the instrumentally useful its familiar “instrumental”
sense.
Everything is seen as calculable and just mere
instruments in order to attain what is intended as an end.
This is the danger of the age.
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Martin Heidegger and Technology
But where the danger is, there is also the
“saving power”.
This saving power is still through enframing but in another
way, namely, the possibility of opening up a “FREE relation
with technology.” Free here means not conditioned by
measure and the rigid ways of science and calculations.
A free relation with technology would thus have to
happen “in a realm that is, on the one hand, a kin to
the essence of technology and, on the other,
fundamentally different from it.”
• Calculative thinking is seemed
favored in the modern world because
of its efficiency and exact or definite
answers to questions.
Calculative • Meditative thinking, on the other
and hand, is a very important type of
Meditative thinking for Heidegger than the
Thinking calculative; it helps us to understand
our life’s meaning, placing
significance on the individual rather
than the collective.
Calculative and Meditative
Thinking
• Calculative thinking makes our individual lives
less important. It implies that there is a way to
categorize everyone and everything in the world,
taking away any real free will.
• Calculative thinking, then—if taken as the entire
truth—makes us entirely mechanistic. It suggests
that there is complete, objective truth and order
in the world. There would be no free will, because
every action would fit into a greater structure.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on Art
Aside from the We have art so
use of reason, that we may not
arts unveils the perish by the
truth. truth.
Art is not merely an
imitation of the reality Admiration for a
of nature, but in truth quality or an art
a metaphysical
supplement to the can be so strong
reality of nature, that it deters us
placed alongside from striving to
thereof for its possess it.
conquest.
• Therefore, a true judgement of beauty is disinterested;
Immanuel Kant it is not based on any known concept, simply a
sensation of unconstrained, completely
on Disinterested detached pleasure.
Pleasure and • Along these same lines, a beautiful object is purposive,
Aesthetics containing the property or quality of purposefulness,
without actually having a concrete purpose.
The Use of Art • The “pattern” followed by art is not
as a Way Out
of the the rigid pattern that follows much
Enframing of the calculative thinking.
Modern
Technology • Art is spontaneously expressed
and is open.
Thanks!
Any questions?
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