chapter 4

• Technology


  A way of revealing the world
• Martin Heidegger


  • German philosopher
  • Wrote "The Question Concerning Technology"
• Modern technology


  Conceived as a means to achieve ends
• Essence of technology


  • Not something we make
  • A mode of being, or of revealing
  • Holds sway over beings like gods and history
  • Primarily a matter of modern and industrial technology
  • Not simply the practical application of natural science
• Modern technology as a revealing process


  • Puts an unreasonable demand on nature to supply energy that can be extracted and stored
  • Mining technology is an example where land is revealed as something to be challenged for coal and ore
• Physis


  Arising of something from itself, a bringing-forth or poiesis
• Modern technology as a revealing process


  • Challenging that brings forth the energy of nature is an "expediting" that is 100% accomplished
  • What is exposed is still directed towards the maximum yield at the minimum expense
  • Things revealed in an expedited manner are brought forth as resources that must be used efficiently
• Standing in reserve


  • Term used by Heidegger to name the things that are revealed in modern technology
  • Things as standing in reserve are not "objects" but are called to come forth in challenging and expediting
• Enframing


  • The "essence" of modern technology
  • The "frame" of modern technology is the network or interlocking things standing in reserve
  • World centered on man's caprices and demands
  • As if nature is put in a box or in a frame so that it can be better understood and controlled according to people's desire
  • The process of truth will revert back into the realm of erring
• Eudaimonia


  • Good fortune, material prosperity
  • A situation achieved through virtue, knowledge and excellence
• Confucian humanism


  • Learning to be human is central
  • Creative transformation of the self through an ever-expanding network of relationships encompassing the family, community, nation, world and beyond
• Motivating parts of the soul/mind


  • Rational
  • Spirited or emotional
  • Appetitive
• Eudaimonia or human flourishing


  Requires an ordering of the tripartite structure of the soul
• Aristotle's view of eudaimonia

  • Constituted not by honor, wealth or power but by rational activity in the virtues of character, the intellectual virtues, mutual beneficial friendships and scientific knowledge particularly of things that are fundamental and unchanging
• All humans seek to flourish - the proper and desired end of all of our actions