Human
Flourishing
Module 6
Where are We Now in Terms of Technology?
What are the advancements in the fields of:
Medicine?
Communications?
Robotics?
Education?
Transportation?
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Science and Technology: Avenue for Finding What’s Next
⪢ The search for the best life is a common pursuit among
humans.
⪢ Throughout history, humans look for the best way to live
and to flourish as a society.
⪢ This drive to live and flourish is filled in by technology.
⪢ Technology as the application of science is an important
way humanity uses in order to discover improvements and
to find other means that make human life flourish.
Ways of Being-With Technology
⪢ Carl Mitcham, an American thinker, in his essay Three Ways of
Being-With Technology, proposes that there are different ways
humanity sees and relates with technology.
⪢ This is his way of addressing the issue whether humanity shapes
technology or it is technology that inevitably has a significant
influence on how humanity lives.
⪢ For Mitcham, all living humans are necessarily in events of life
where we are situated. Because of this, we necessarily react to our
situation which means that we are affected by this at the same
time we can also affect the situation.
Ways of Being-With Technology
A. A. Ancient Skepticism
*Humans see any technology as dangerous until it is
proven to be good.
- *Many ancient Greeks were suspicious of technology in the
attainment of human flourishing.
- *They thought that to trust in technology means to turn
away from faith from the gods and instead focus on the
trust to the accuracy of technology.
- *They also believed that personal excellence and societal
care would be weakened through technical affluence and
the inevitable changes it would bring.
- They thought that readily available tools and ways
that make life easy for each would make them less
dependent to each other and would make a society
technologically sophisticated but impersonal.
- They also thought that once technological
knowledge is emphasized there is a danger for a
lesser focus on the transcendence.
- The ancient Greeks were skeptic about technology
for the reason that they consider technical objects
as not the real ones. They considered these
invented objects as less real since there are
already intervention made by man in order to invent
these things.
B. Enlightenment Optimism
- Unlike the ancient skepticism which does not trust
technology, enlightenment optimism sees technology
as inherently good while the evils that go with it are only
accidental in character since they are only effects of the
misuse of technology.
- There is so much suffering in this world and humans
have the ability to stop these sufferings through
technology.
- On the other hand, those who are unproductive are
punishing themselves with a kind of no-good existence
which could have been eradicated had they been
productive through the practice of technology.
C. Romantic Uneasiness
- Technology is viewed as one with nature which is
evolving into something that can be liberated through
the will power of humans.
- However, those who have this uneasiness toward
technology recognize the possibility of the often
negative results when human will liberates technology.
- Those who have this uneasiness believe that there is
a bondage of humans to technology but they have a
hard time grasping on the real situation.
- They do not easily trust to developments
because they feel that something can go wrong
anytime and believe that the human will is not
totally inclined to do what is good.
- They also view the machine as an inferior form of
life and do not want to compare living as like a
machine.
- Imagination is important for them and they
consider science as automatic and boring and
does not direct humans toward the sublime and
the feeling of awe and wonder of the mysterious
and the beyond.
Technology and the Dynamics of the
Western Thought
Eudaimonia
Aristotle understands the good as a specific characteristic of each individual.
The natural end of any existing being is its specific and natural function. Let us take for
example plants, plants are beings which have vegetative soul. Beings with vegetative soul
reproduce and grow. If a plant cannot reproduce and cannot grow then it means that it has not
achieved its potential and has not flourished. The same with animals. For Aristotle, animals
have sensitive soul. Unlike plants, animals have the mobility and capacity to feel physical
pain. That is why in the case of an animal who is chained and imprisoned, for Aristotle this
animal cannot experience its best since its mobility is limited. Its function is limited and so
there’s no flourishing of its being.
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“ Aristotle defines the good
that is suitable for human
as those activities which
make us human.
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⪢We humans are rational and
our rationality is the
function that we need in
order to experience human
flourishing.
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Unlike the plants and
animals, we are
not contented and
happy if we
just grow, move
around and feel pain
and pleasure.
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We need more than these since
we are rational.
Rationality demands that a
human’s life must be a life with
enough material goods but most
especially a life that involves
theoretical inquiry through which
we exercise our being rational.
THANKS!
Any questions?
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