Chapter 4

• A German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote an essay entitled “The Question Concerning Technology” which addresses modern technology and its essence as an instrumental way of revealing the world
• Martin Heidegger


  that modern technology is conceived as means to achieve ends
• a mode of being or revealing


  to consider technology essentially is to see it as an event to which we belong: the structuring, ordering, and “requisitioning” of everything around us, and of ourselves
• even holds over beings


  technology even holds sway over beings that we do not normally think of as technological, such as gods and history. It influences and shapes perspectives .
• a matter of modern and industrial technology


  the essence of technology is revealed in factories and industrial processes, not in hammers and plows
• Characteristics of Modern Technology as a REVEALING PROCESS 1. Challenging 2. Expediting
• not the practical application of natural science


  modern natural science can understand nature in the characteristically scientific manner only because nature has already, in advance, come to light as a set of calculable, orderable forces — that is to say, technologically. Science can understand nature scientifically because it operates in a predictable and orderly way.
• Characteristic 1: Challenging


  Things are revealed or brought forth by challenging or demanding them. It is putting to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored.
• expediting means to hasten the movement of something
• expediting is also a process of revealing in as much as it “unlocks” and “exposes” something
• For Heidegger enframing is the “essence” of modern technology
• Enframing simply means putting into the frame of modern technology everything in nature.
• In simple terms, enframing turns everything in nature into resources for human, centered around our desires and needs”.
• Human flourishing is said to be the best translation for the Greek word Eudaimonia, which for both Plato and Aristotle, means not only good fortune and material prosperity but a situation achieved through virtue, knowledge and excellence
• 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.
• HUMAN FLOURISHING: PLATO


  The affirmation that human flourishing implies development of the individual in his intellectual, affective, moral and spiritual dimensions obviously needs elaboration.
• Plato in the Republic, contends that the soul, or mind, has three motivating parts: rational, spirited or emotional and appetitive.
• 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 judgment, as well as mutually beneficial friendships and scientific knowledge, particularly of things that are fundamental and unchanging
• In Aristotle’s schema, there are four aspects of human nature

  Physical, emotional, social, rational
• physical


  nourishment, exercise, rest and all the other things that it takes to keep our bodies functioning properly
• emotional


  wants, desires, urges and reactions
• social


  life and function in a society
• rational


  creative, expressive, knowledge -seeking and obey reason
• Human Flourishing


  personal flourishing
• Human Flourishing

  a moral accomplished and a fulfillment of human capacities
• Human Flourishing


  rational use of one’s individual potentialities in the pursuit of freely and rationally chosen values and goals
• To flourish, a man must pursue goals that are both rational for him individually and also as a human being
• Human Flourishing


  Rational man’s attempts to externalize values and actualize internal values
• Heidegger’s understanding of Technology based on essence

  1. a mode of being or revealing
  2. even holds over beings
  3. a matter of modern and industrial technology
  4. not the practical application of natural science