Technology as a Product of Human Reason and Freedom

Five ways in which technology has given us freedom, whether from something that once held us back, to allow us to
reach farther or do more.

1. Freedom from Tedious, Repetitive Labor

When the First Industrial Revolution began, it was about automating work to the point of mass production of things. In
the Fourth Industrial Revolution, machines – both real and virtual – are changing the face of labor once again. Robotic
Process Automation (RPA) and advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) now allow us to give boring and tedious repetitive
labor to machines. This in turn gives us humans more time and chances to engage in higher-value and -impact activities.

2. Freedom from Bad Experiences

It’s in the service industry that technology has made some of the biggest impacts. Back then, you were stuck with taxis
for transport (depending on your city, that can be quite the bother) and hotels for lodging. With the advent of Uber and
Airbnb and similar service providers, all powered by digital platforms, we don’t have to bear with stuffy taxicabs driven
by gruff drivers or drab hotel rooms charging exorbitant fees.

Bad service is also now easier to call out because of technology. This mainly involves online reviews and ratings, which
are often aggregated by third parties. TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Kayak dominate the travel industry, while Zomato is
niched in the restaurant business. Elsewhere in the online jungle, customers can air their gripe or delight in blogs and on
social media. These have a large effect because, in the information economy, the opinions of other customers who have
tried the service or product matter more.

3. Freedom from Wasting Time

Modern humans understand the importance of not wasting one’s time. This is why a good deal of apps are designed (or
being designed) to reduce the time needed to complete certain actions and transactions.

From something as simple as looking for parking space to something as important as finding a hospital accredited by
your health card in a medical emergency, we can now find what we’re looking for with but the touch of a button.

4. Freedom from Being Out of Reach

“Long Distance Relationships don’t work” is no longer as applicable as before. Communication is the most broken aspect
of relationships when people are far from one another, but we are free of that concern thanks to messaging and video
conferencing apps. More than any time in human history, we are all connected through our gadgets and the Internet.

Social media links people like never before, allowing someone to easily expand their circles. Meanwhile, mobile devices
ensure that people could not only adjust meetup locations (and even times) on the fly but also monitor the progress of
the people they have to meet with.

5. Freedom from Disability

Prosthetics to help deal with disabilities have been in use since ancient times. But modern cybernetics and prosthetics
allow not only the restoration of lost capability but also give the disabled the chance to do amazing things like running
faster (“blade” prosthetics), even against some of the fastest “normal” humans, like in the case of Oscar Pistorius, the so-
called “Blade Runner.” Some advanced research is looking to allowing direct mental control of machines to help even
those beyond the assistance of our most advanced artificial limbs.
 St. Augustine and Human Freedom

Saint Augustine stands for the idea of a crucial role of God's grace and predestination for a person's path to salvation.
Man is unable to ascend the acme of own deification lacking the Lord's help. According to the theologian, God had
created the City of Earth through His providence and then governed it only by Heavenly will and power.
Consequently, in his major work, The City of God Augustine overemphasized the significance of God's grace which,
in turn, enhances an individual's freedom of will on his path to salvation.

To quote Augustine, the essence of a human being as a moral creature embraces not only spiritual immortality but
also freedom of will and freedom in general, allowing everyone to make a personal choice. Freedom of will is to cause
contradictions in the earthly world, such as righteousness and sinfulness, virtue and vice, a reward for moral life,
and punishment for harm done. Human freedom involves choosing between two polarities. The Creator, possessing
the absolute predestination, had known the first man's selection and his further loss of God's likeness. Yet He had
incorporated freedom and a right of individual challenge between good and evil into the crown of His creation. St.
Augustine wrote: "It is He who made also man himself upright, with the same freedom of will - an earthly animal,
indeed, but fit for heaven if he remained faithful to his Creator, but destined to the misery appropriate to such a
nature if he forsook Him. It is He who when He foreknew that man would in his turn sin by abandoning God and
breaking His law, did not deprive him of the power of free-will" [2].

Thus the basic principle of Augustine's concept of the understanding of will and freedom is antinomianism.
According to the theologian, an individual, having been granted free will, acquires the controversial essence that
never ceases to grow in his lifetime. From the philosophical point of view, the notion of will has been shown as the
most important phenomenon that determines and leads every human being in their personal desire to know God.
Nonetheless, acquiring some irrational and negative meaning, the will in itself can lay the demonic origin of an
individual. It reveals the possibility of will's transition into passionate and sinful willfulness which is completely
different from the initial God-given will.

Augustine emphasizes the Maker's significant role, overarching the individual's intentions and activities on this path.
"And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by
healing and correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved. They will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is
not the slave of vices and sins. Such was it given us by God; this being lost by its own fault, can only be restored by
Him who was able at first to give it" [3].

Technology and the Desire for the Good

What is a human being? What is (personal) identity? Which cultural and/or natural features constitute human
nature? How do human beings differ from (other) animals? In order to find answers to these questions, you have to
be able to understand and conceptualize the human condition. It also requires having investigated it within different
frameworks, such as classical ontology, economy (Marx), phenomenology, existentialism, and psychoanalysis.
In the twentieth century, authors have argued that technology plays an important role in the constitution of human
nature and identity. These authors state that humans have always shaped and extended themselves under technical
tools and artifacts. In our modern era, technology – think of microscopes and MRI scans, for instance - has become
an inherent part of scientific investigation and diagnosis. This means it also has bearings on our view of human
nature.

Good use of technology improves human physical, mental, spiritual, and moral well-being. It helps people become
healthier, more educated, more loving of God and neighbor, and better at making moral decisions. A bad technology
will do the opposite: make us sicker, less educated, less loving of others, and worse at making moral decisions.
Technology often simply makes actions easier - and we want good technology that will facilitate good actions, not
bad technologies that will facilitate bad actions. To quote Peter Maurin, a founder of the Catholic Worker Movement,
we should want to "make the kind of society where people find it easier to be good.” Technology can help do that,
but so far, it could be better directed.
 Martin Heidegger and Technology

Technology, according to Heidegger must be understood as “a way of revealing” (Heidegger 1977, 12). “Revealing”
is one of the terms Heidegger developed himself to make it possible to think what, according to him, is not thought
anymore. It is his translation of the Greek word alètheuein, which means ‘to discover’ – to uncover what was
covered over. Related to this verb is the independent noun alètheia, which is usually translated as “truth,” though
Heidegger insists that a more adequate translation would be “un-concealment.”

According to Heidegger, “Reality” is not something absolute that human beings can ever know once and for all; it is
relative in the most literal sense of the word – it exists only in relations. Reality ‘in itself’, therefore, is inaccessible
for human beings. As soon as we perceive or try to understand it, it is not ‘in itself’ anymore, but ‘reality for us.’
This means that everything we perceive or think of or interact with “emerges out of concealment into
unconcealment,” in Heidegger’s words. By entering into a particular relation with reality, the reality is ‘revealed’ in
a specific way. And this is where technology comes in since technology is the way of revealing that characterizes
our time. Technology embodies a specific way of revealing the world, a revealing in which humans take power over
reality. While the ancient Greeks experienced the ‘making’ of something as ‘helping something to come into being’ –
as Heidegger explains by analyzing classical texts and words – modern technology is rather a ‘forcing into being’.
Technology reveals the world as raw material, available for production and manipulation.

Moreover, according to Heidegger, there is something wrong with the modern technological culture we live in
today. In our ‘age of technology,’ reality can only be present as a raw material (as a ‘standing reserve’). This state of
affairs has not been brought about by humans; the technological way of revealing was not chosen by humans.
Rather, our understanding of the world – our understanding of ‘being’, of what it means ‘to be’ – develops through
the ages. In our time ‘being’ has the character of a technological ‘framework’, from which humans approach the
world in a controlling and dominating way.

This technological understanding of ‘being’, according to Heidegger, is to be seen as the ultimate danger. First of all,
there is the danger that humans will also interpret themselves as raw materials. Note that we are already speaking
about “human resources”! But most importantly, the technological will to power leaves no escape. If we want to
move towards a new interpretation of being, this would itself be a technological intervention: we would
manipulate our manipulation, exerting power over our way of exerting power. And this would only reconfirm the
technological interpretation of being. Every attempt to climb out of technology throws us back in. The only way out
for Heidegger is “the will not to will”. We need to open up the possibility of relying on technologies while not
becoming enslaved to them and seeing them as manifestations of an understanding of being.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on Art

Great art offers us a way of conceptualizing our lives as meaningful if we consider ourselves as the artist who creates our
own life’s meaning by taking into consideration both reason and emotion.
In contemporary terms, we may think of emotions as the motivating power behind our ideas. If we intellectually choose
a career, we also need to enjoy it or have some kind of passion for the work we do if it is going to feel meaningful.
This idea culminates in Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power, whereby, following the existentialist mandate, we take
responsibility for our choices and we act – we create – and we alone bear the full responsibility for the choices we have
made. In this way, we create a unique and subjectively beautiful life.

The concern here is that the life we create for ourselves, our own actions will to power, may be selfish and not consider
anyone else. The criticism of Nietzsche is that he is a nihilist, and his subjectivism kills any sense of morality as for each
it is up to them what they like, what they will, and what they create. It certainly doesn’t help that Nietzsche’s later works
were said to have influenced right-wing German militarism.

Yet, the life-affirming or beautiful life lived must not restrict the freedoms of others, who are also free-willed subjects
trying to create their own beautiful lives. I would argue that an authentic life fails to be beautiful if it denies the freedom
of other people. Nietzsche is a vocal protester against any form of enslavement, but it is also up to the individual to
realize that they are free.
The naming of the two creative energies that Nietzsche terms Apollonian and Dionysian is inspired by the gods: Apollo,
God of the Sun (representing light and truth) who inspires sculpture and structure, and Dionysus, God of the Earth
(representing Spring and renewal) who inspires music and drunkenness: a feeling of intoxication with the beauty of life.
It is in the coupling of the rational and the irrational that great Art is born. These artistic energies, Nietzsche claims, stem
from nature herself, “without the mediation of the human artist” and are expressed in pictorial form through our dreams
that create a “mystic feeling of Oneness”.

We are not used to hearing Nietzsche sound so spiritual. It is feelings of awe and pain that unite all human beings. Our
challenge is to continue striving to create our beautiful lives even in the face of hardship. Nietzsche’s ultimate creative
principle sees us all as Artists, creating the best life we can for ourselves. Nietzsche also refers to the importance of
cultural health whereby it is not only individuals but also cultures that require a balance of the Apollonian and the
Dionysian.

“In spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living beings, not as individuals, but as one living being, with whose creative
joy we are united.”

Through Art and in life we witness the power of emotions, the transformative power of “the intoxications of passion”.
Such passion can be either constructive or destructive and therefore needs to be supported by rationality. In this way
the fusion between the Apollonian and the Dionysian can transform the self, creating an artist and a lover of life.

Immanuel Kant on Disinterested Pleasure and Aesthetics

Immanuel Kant is an 18th-century German philosopher whose work initiated dramatic changes in the fields of
epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and teleology. Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgment, often called the
Third Critique, sets about examining our faculty of judgment, which leads him down several divergent paths. While the
Critique of Judgment deals with matters related to science and teleology, it is most remembered for what Kant has to say
about aesthetics.

Kant calls aesthetic judgments “judgments of taste” and remarks that, though they are based on an individual’s
subjective feelings, they also claim universal validity. The initial issue is: what kind of judgment is it that results in our
saying, for example, ‘That is a beautiful sunset’. Kant argues that such aesthetic judgments (or ‘judgments of taste’) must
have four key distinguishing features.

First, they are disinterested, meaning that we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than
judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable. The latter type of judgment would be more like a judgment of the
‘agreeable’, as when I say ‘I like doughnuts’.

Second and third, such judgments are both universal and necessary. This means roughly that it is an intrinsic part of the
activity of such a judgment to expect others to agree with us. Although we may say ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
that is not how we act. Instead, we debate and argue about our aesthetic judgments – and especially about works of art -
and we tend to believe that such debates and arguments can achieve something. Indeed, for many purposes, ‘beauty’
behaves as if it were a real property of an object, like its weight or chemical composition. But Kant insists that
universality and necessity are in fact a product of features of the human mind (Kant calls these features ‘common sense)
and that there is no objective property of a thing that makes it beautiful.

Fourth, through aesthetic judgments, beautiful objects appear to be ‘purposive without purpose’ (sometimes translated
as ‘final without end’). An object’s purpose is the concept according to which it was made (the concept of a vegetable
soup in the mind of the cook, for example); an object is purposive if it appears to have such a purpose; if, in other words,
it appears to have been made or designed. But it is part of the experience of beautiful objects, Kant argues, that they
should affect us as if they had a purpose, although no particular purpose can be found.

Having identified the major features of aesthetic judgments, Kant then needs to ask the question of how such judgments
are possible and are such judgments in any way valid (that is, are they really universal and necessary). Moreover, Kant
argues that our judgment of beauty is a subjective feeling, even though it possesses universal validity, in part because
arguing that beauty is objective would play into the hands of those who make the Argument from Design. If beauty were
an objective property of certain objects in nature, the question would naturally arise of how these objects were
bestowed with beauty.