Chap 4 : Flourishing

• Martin Heidegger - a german philosopher wrote an essay entitled “The Question Concerning Technology”
• The Question Concerning Technology - addresses modern technology and its essence as an instrumental way of revealing the world.
• Two characteristics of modern technology as a revealing process

  • The mode of revealing of modern technology is a challenging
  • The challenging that brings forth the energy of nature is an expediting
• the mode of revealing of modern technology is challenging - it is putting to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored.
• physis - arising of something from itself, a bringing-forth or poiesis
• standing in reverse - term used by Heidegger to name the things that are revealed in modern technology
• Things as standing in reserve are not objects
• enframing - is the essence of modern technology
• the frame of modern technology is the network or interlocking thins standing in reserve
• human flourishing - aird to be the best translation for the Greek Word Eudaimonia
• eudaimonia - is the other term for human flourishing
• Three Motivating Parts of the Soul or Mind

  • Rational
  • Spirited or Emotional
  • Appetitive
• Nicomachean Ethics - states that Eudaimonia is constituted not by honor, or wealth power, but by rational activity.
• In accordance with excellence in the virtues of character including

  • courage
  • honesty
  • pride
  • friendliness
  • wittiness
• the intellectual virtues notably

  • rationality
  • judgement
• Aristotle's view - all humans seek to flourish
• Four Aspects of Human Nature

  • physical
  • social
  • emotional
  • rational
• physical - require nourishment, exercise, rest and all the other things that it takes to keep our bodies functioning properly
• social - live and function in particular societies
• emotional - we have wants, desires, urges, and reactions
• Rational - creative, expressive, knowledge seeking, and able to obey reason
• human flourishing - also known as personal flourishing involves the rational use of one’s individual potentialities, including talents, abilities and virtues in the pursuit of his freely and rationally chosen values and goals.
• the idea of human flourishing is inclusive and can encompass a wide variety of constitutive ends such as knowledge, the development of character traits, productive works, religious pursuits
• to flourish, a man must pursue goals that are both rational for him individually and also as a human being

  • living rationally
  • living consciously
• living rationally - means dealing with the world conceptually, implies respect for the facts of reality
• Martin Heidegger - a german philosopher
• For Heidegger enframing is the “essence” of modern technology.
• Plato in the Republic, contends that the soul, or mind, has three motivating parts:

  • rational
  • spirited or emotional
  • appetitive
• In the same vein, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, states that Eudaimonia is constituted not by honor, or wealth power, but by rational activity in accordance with excellence in the virtues of character including courage, honesty, pride, friendliness, and wittiness, the intellectual virtues notably rationality and judgement.
• Living consciously implies respect for the facts of reality.
• In the modern use of word, expediting means to hasten the movement of something.
• This frame of modern technology is the network or interlocking things standing in reserve.
• Learning to be human is central to Confucian humanism and its “creative transformation” of the self through an “ever-expanding network of relationships encompassing the family, community, nation, world and beyond.”
• Self-actualization is moral growth and vice-versa