COL007

Science Technology and Society

Technology as a Way of Revealing

5 Module on Technology
as a Way of Revealing

One's own life is the only life that a person has to live. It follows that, for Aristotle, the "good" is what
is objectively good for a particular man. Aristotle's eudaimonia is formally egoistic in that a person's normative
reason for choosing particular actions stems from the idea that he must pursue his own good or flourishing.
Because self-interest is flourishing, the good in human conduct is connected to the self-interest of the acting
person. Good means "good for" the individual moral agent. Egoism is an integral part of Aristotle's ethics.

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using technology; and
2. examine the purpose and implications of technology according to Martin
Heidegger.

Reading Activity: Carefully examine the images and paragraphs from the YouTube video entitled What is
Happiness? by Sadhguru.

“What is wellbeing? When do you really feel well in your life? When you are happy you are well.
Even if you are physically ill you are well. Fundamentally, being well means a certain level of joyfulness,
certain exuberance of life.
What is happiness? Happiness means your life energy is exuberant. There are many ways of describing
happiness, but only those who are happy know what it means to be happy. There is nobody who has not been
happy. Everybody has been happy but the problem is they are not able to maintain it. Depression means your
life energy has become very low and stayed low. They have been happy but have not been able to maintain it.
When you are young you have a lot of happy moments, somebody has to make you unhappy. Now, somebody
has to make you happy.
All this effort of life, everything that you did, education, career, business, family, whatever you did,
everything was in pursuit of happiness. In the last hundred years, we have done too much on this planet. With
the use of Science and Technology, we have changed the very face of this planet.
Today we have the kind of comforts and conveniences that no other generation could even imagine.
What the royalty could not afford hundreds of years ago, today the average citizens have. But are we any

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happier? We are definitely the most comfortable generation ever on this planet physically. But are we also the
most joyful generation?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAn8t80lclM

Science and technology has brought enormous amount of comfort and convenience to our lives.
Things that we could not even imagine just 25 years ago are a living reality today. But are we any more joyful?
No.
And all these comforts and convenience have not come easy. They have come at a tremendous cost to
every other life on this planet. Every creature from plant to animal to everything including human beings, have
paid an enormous price to create these comforts and conveniences and we are not even happy. What is the
point?
We are literally making a bonfire of this planet. If you are ecstatic, it is okay, burn the planet. It is
alright. We are not even happy. I think it is time to really look at it. Why are we burning it up, if you are not
even happy?”
These are just some of the arguments about the reason for humans using technology to find comfort
with the end means of happiness. These concepts will be further elaborated on this module by Aristotle and
Heidegger.

Human Flourishing in Terms of Science, Technology and Society

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) is one of the most significant thinkers and the most accomplished individuals
who has ever lived. Every person currently living in Western civilization owes an enormous debt to Aristotle
who is the fountainhead behind every achievement of science, technology, political theory, and aesthetics

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(especially Romantic art) in today's world. Aristotle's philosophy has underpinned the achievements of the
Renaissance and all scientific advances and technological progress to this very day.

Aristotle bases the understandability of the good in the idea of what is good for the specific entity
under consideration. For whatever has a natural function, the good is therefore thought to reside in the
function. The natural function of a thing is determined by its natural end. With respect to living things, there
are particular ways of being that constitute the perfection of the living thing's nature.
According to Aristotle, there is an end of all of the actions that we perform which we desire for its own
sake. This is what is known as eudaimonia, flourishing, or happiness, which is desired for its own sake, with
all other things being desired on its account. Eudaimonia is a property of one's life when considered as a
whole. Flourishing is the highest good of human endeavors and that toward which all actions aim. It is success
as a human being. The best life is one of excellent human activity.
For Aristotle, the good is what is good for purposeful, goal-directed entities. He defines the good
proper to human beings as the activities in which the life functions specific to human beings are most fully
realized. For Aristotle, the good of each species is teleologically immanent to that species. A person's nature as
a human being provides him with guidance with respect to how he should live his life. A fundamental fact of
human nature is the existence of individual human beings each with his own rational mind and free will. The
use of one's volitional consciousness is a person's distinctive capacity and means of survival.

Aristotle thought that it was possible to conduct rational research with respect to value. He saw
practical science as an essentially evaluative or moral science. A practical science is ethical to the extent that it
takes into account the ethical aspects of the subject being studied.
Aristotle regarded reality as ordered and taught that order with respect to human affairs is a project or
effort through which people aspire to happiness through the cultivation of virtues. He asserts that the end of
politics is the good for man. According to Aristotle, the virtue of prudence is personal, freely pursued, and
changeable according to situations. A prudent action for one individual may not be a prudent action for another
person. Nevertheless, the integration of freely made prudent and varying actions results in social coordination.
He believed that economic coordination is attainable when persons prudently choose and undertake economic
transactions with others. Aristotle believed that human flourishing requires a life with other people.

Technology as a Way of Revealing

Martin Heidegger’s Definition of Technology

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Heidegger approaches the problem of technology with the purpose of finding its essence. The method
is that of reducing technology to its fundamental being, so that all problems and aspects thereof may be
understood. Heidegger pays special attention to language, frequently referring to the Greek and Latin origins of
the vocabulary he introduces. In this manner, he successively reduces the essence of technology to simpler and
more basic concepts until its relation to humankind is apparent. He is particularly fond of verbs. The essence of
modern technology becomes a type of happening. After laying bare the nature of modern technology,
Heidegger proceeds to identify the danger and saving power contained therein. As the "later Heidegger,"
Heidegger believes truth to be better approachable through poetry, through art, than by logic or science, and art
is the essence of the salvation of technology. The rhetorical form of the article is to carefully characterize
modern technology as a seemingly insoluble problem, then find the solution in the problem's very definition.
Explication of Heidegger's reduction of technology will involve a series of definitions corresponding
to the steps by which he strips technology down to its essence.
1.Instrumentality: technology is an instrument to achieve human ends, specifically those of building up or
arranging.
Technology is slipping out of control and its nature as an instrument causes frustration and
excites the will to re-master it, which is a large factor in the growing discomfort with modern
technology.

2.Causality: instruments are designed for the purpose of causing an end.

A deeper look into causality reveals that the end is the beginning: a cause is that to which
something is indebted and the purpose for which an instrument is designed is the primary cause of its
coming into being. The essence of causality is reduced to an occasioning, that is a bringing forth into
presencing of something which is not presencing., the Greek poiesis.

3.Revealing: something is brought forth only when it passes from concealment into unconcealment; when it
is revealed.
Heidegger claims that revealing is what "truth" really means. The Greek for revealing, aletheia,
is translated into veritas, truth, by the Romans. The equating of revealing with truth is pertinent to
understanding the danger of technology.

The Danger
Heidegger now separates modern technology from previous technology and specifies its peculiar type
of revealing. This he shows to be a danger to humankind. Modern technology is based on modern physics,
which is an exact science. It differs from previous technology in that it does not humble itself to natural forces
like the windmill to wind. Rather, through physics, we can know the energy stored in nature and we can set
upon nature and challenge it to release this energy. We mine coal and dam rivers, thereby controlling

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resources, not merely harvesting them. Objects then become standing-reserve, ready to be ordered about by
humans.
Humans, however, are not the masters. We do not control revealing itself. The "real shows itself or
withdraws". Revealing does not occur beyond humans, but also not decisively or exclusively in us. Thus we
respond to "that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve."
In this way, we ourselves are standing reserve, being challenged to set upon all things, including ourselves, that
they may be ready to be ordered about. This form of revealing is the essence of modern technology and
Heidegger calls it Enframing. Revealing is not only a bringing forth, it is a destining, for that which revealing
brings forth, revealing also starts upon its way. The revealing to us of Enframing destines us into the process of
Enframing, and here lies the danger.
This danger is the danger to the freedom of humankind. For Heidegger, "freedom is the realm of the
destining that at any given time starts a revealing upon its way". Simply put, freedom is that revealing that
destines more revealings. It is the revealing of the veil from under which revealing comes, as a veil. More
simply put, it is the revealing of the fact that more revealings are possible.
Enframing destines us to Enframe. However, we appear to have such a decisive role in Enframing that
we see ourselves as the masters of the world, the orderers of standing-reserve. In fact, we are but one standing-
reserve ordering others because we are employed merely to the purpose of creating standing-reserve. When
this purpose is governing our activity, we are so engrossed in ordering and securing standing-reserve that we
do not recognize Enframing as a revealing. We thus lose awareness of our capacity for revelation. All objects
become forms of standing-reserve, and we feel that we encounter only ourselves, but in fact, we do not
encounter our essence, because this essence is revelation. Recall that freedom is the revealing of the possibility
of more revealings. When we lose all awareness of revealing in general, we lose this also. We continue to
blindly challenge and order standing-reserves.

The Saving Power

The essence of technology contains the extreme danger to humankind by threatening the loss of what
is most essentially human, our capacity for new revealings. The essence of technology is the revealing of
Enframing and in that way, technology's essence is a permanent enduring in the sense of Plato's Ideas (or
Forms). Again, Heidegger returns to language and notes that Goethe once equated to endure (währen) with to
grant (gewähren). He claims "that which endures most primally out of the earliest beginning is what grants".
Enframing, though it presents the extreme danger of making impossible other destining revealings, is also a
granting and as such gives humankind what we need, but cannot make: a part in the "coming-to-pass of truth"
(p.32). Enframing is a type of revealing and seen as such it contains the saving power that is the granting of
revealing. We must pay attention to the coming to presence of technology, as opposed to the material products
of technology, and we may see the process of revealing as opposed to the standing-reserve as which
technology causes things to reveal themselves.
The saving power lies in looking into the extreme danger. We must look past the technological toward
the essence of technology, the destining revealing that endangers our freedom. The arising of the saving power
in this essence is the fact that it shows us that mankind belongs to revealing, to the coming to presence of truth.
The essence of technology is part of the constellation of concealment and unconcealment, in which truth comes
to presence. The sight of the saving power, however, is not the same as being saved. In addition to looking into
the danger, Heidegger suggests a more tangible path to salvation.

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ACTIVITY

Name: _________________________________ Course & Section: __________________

A. Direction: Select a specific technology. Draw a comparative illustration of a scenario using that specific
technology and without it. Explain the pros and cons on each scenario.
With technology Without technology

Pros:
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Cons:
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Pros:
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Cons:
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B. Direction: Answer the following questions according to Martin Heidegger’s concept of technology.

1. What is the essence of technology?

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2. What is being revealed by the use of technology?

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3. What is the danger of using technology?

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4. How can we be saved?

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Name: _________________________________ Course & Section: __________________

Direction: Grive a brief definition of the following words according to the lesson.

1. Eudaimonia - _________________________________________________________________________
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2. Good -________________________________________________________________________________
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3. Happiness - __________________________________________________________________________
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4. Instrumentality - _____________________________________________________________________
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5. Causality - ___________________________________________________________________________
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6. Revealing - ___________________________________________________________________________
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7. Enframing - __________________________________________________________________________
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8. Flourishing - _________________________________________________________________________
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9. Human Flourishing - _________________________________________________________________
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10. Technology - _________________________________________________________________________
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Name: _________________________________ Course & Section: __________________

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Direction: Paste the type of picture asked in each box. Below each picture, provide a description of what

A happy picture of your self

A picture of how you see

yourself 20 years from now

A picture of a group people

(you may also be included in
the picture) that makes you
happy looking at it

makes you happy about it. Then, answer the question below.

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____________________________ ___________________________
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Based on the descriptions of the images above, what is happiness for you? Elaborate on your answer.
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Module on
Technology as a Way of
Revealing

Instruction: Encircle the letter of the correct answer.

Name:_____________________________________ Course & Section: __________________ Date:
1. Who is known as one of the most significant thinkers and the fountainhead behind every achievement of
__________________
science, technology, political theory, and aesthetics in today's world?
A. Heidegger
B. Socrates
C. Plato
D. Aristotle

2. Who approached the problem of technology with the purpose of finding its essence?
A. Plato
B. Heidegger
C. Socrates
D. Aristotle

3. According to Aristotle, what is personal, freely pursued, and changeable according to situations?
A. Virtue of prudence

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B. Prudent action
C. Fundamental fact
D. Human flourishing

4. What fundamental fact is the existence of individual human beings each with his own rational mind and
free will?
A. Person's nature
B. Human nature
C. Human beings
D. Human affairs

5. What did Aristotle believe that human flourishing requires?

A. Accomplishing personal goals
B. A life of your own
C. A life with other people
D. Accomplishing goals set to self

6. What is the highest good of human endeavors and that toward which all actions aim?
A. Purpose
B. Flourishing
C. Economic coordination
D. Prudent action

7. What is an end of all of the actions that we perform which we desire for itself?
A. Eudaimonia
B. Flourishing
C. Survival
D. Purpose

8. What is a type of revealing that contains the saving power that is the granting of revealing?
A. Eudaimonia
B. Enframing
C. Revealing
D. Flourishing

9. Which of these is to carefully characterize modern technology as a seemingly insoluble problem, then
find the solution in the problem's very definition?
A. Standing form
B. Modern technology
C. Form of Enframing
D. Rhetorical form

10. In explication of Heidegger's reduction of technology, what is designed to for the purpose of causing
an end?
A. Causality
B. Instrumentality
C. Revealing
D. Enframing

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