Human

Flourishing
Module 6
 Where are We Now in Terms of Technology?
What are the advancements in the fields of:

Medicine?

Communications?

Robotics?

Education?

Transportation?

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Science and Technology: Avenue for Finding What’s Next

⪢ The search for the best life is a common pursuit

among humans.

⪢ Throughout history, humans look for the best way

to live and to flourish as a society.

⪢ This drive to live and flourish is filled in by

technology.

⪢ Technology as the application of science is an

important way humanity uses in order to discover
improvements and to find other means that make
human life flourish.
 Ways of Being-With Technology
⪢ Carl Mitcham, an American thinker, in his essay Three
Ways of Being-With Technology, proposes that there are
different ways humanity sees and relates with
technology.

⪢ This is his way of addressing the issue whether

humanity shapes technology or it is technology that
inevitably has a significant influence on how humanity
lives.

⪢ For Mitcham, all living humans are necessarily in

events of life where we are situated. Because of this, we
necessarily react to our situation which means that we
are affected by this at the same time we can also affect
the situation.
 Ways of Being-With Technology
A. A. Ancient Skepticism
▪ *Humans see any technology as dangerous until it
is proven to be good.
- *Many ancient Greeks were suspicious of
technology in the attainment of human
flourishing.
- *They thought that to trust in technology means
to turn away from faith from the gods and instead
focus on the trust to the accuracy of technology.
- *They also believed that personal excellence and
societal care would be weakened through
technical affluence and the inevitable changes it
would bring.
- They thought that readily available tools and ways
that make life easy for each would make them less
dependent to each other and would make a society
technologically sophisticated but impersonal.

- They also thought that once technological

knowledge is emphasized there is a danger for a
lesser focus on the transcendence.

- The ancient Greeks were skeptic about technology

for the reason that they consider technical objects
as not the real ones. They considered these
invented objects as less real since there are
already intervention made by man in order to invent
these things.
B. Enlightenment Optimism
- Unlike the ancient skepticism which does not trust
technology, enlightenment optimism sees technology as
inherently good while the evils that go with it are only
accidental in character since they are only effects of the
misuse of technology.

- There is so much suffering in this world and humans

have the ability to stop these sufferings through
technology.

- On the other hand, those who are unproductive are

punishing themselves with a kind of no-good existence
which could have been eradicated had they been
productive through the practice of technology.
C. Romantic Uneasiness
- Technology is viewed as one with nature which is
evolving into something that can be liberated through
the will power of humans.

- However, those who have this uneasiness toward

technology recognize the possibility of the often
negative results when human will liberates technology.

- Those who have this uneasiness believe that there is

a bondage of humans to technology but they have a
hard time grasping on the real situation.
- They do not easily trust to developments
because they feel that something can go wrong
anytime and believe that the human will is not
totally inclined to do what is good.

- They also view the machine as an inferior form of

life and do not want to compare living as like a
machine.

- Imagination is important for them and they

consider science as automatic and boring and
does not direct humans toward the sublime and
the feeling of awe and wonder of the mysterious
and the beyond.
Technology and the Dynamics of
the Western Thought
 Eudaimonia
Aristotle understands the good as a specific characteristic of each
individual.

The natural end of any existing being is its specific and natural
function. Let us take for example plants, plants are beings which have
vegetative soul. Beings with vegetative soul reproduce and grow. If a plant
cannot reproduce and cannot grow then it means that it has not achieved its
potential and has not flourished. The same with animals. For Aristotle,
animals have sensitive soul. Unlike plants, animals have the mobility and
capacity to feel physical pain. That is why in the case of an animal who is
chained and imprisoned, for Aristotle this animal cannot experience its best
since its mobility is limited. Its function is limited and so there’s no
flourishing of its being.
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 “ Aristotle defines the
good that is suitable for
human as those
activities which make us
human.

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 ⪢ We humans are
rational and our
rationality is the
function that we need
in order to experience
human flourishing.

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 Unlike the plants and
animals, we are
not contented and
happy if we
just grow, move
around and feel pain
and pleasure.

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We need more than these since
we are rational.
Rationality demands that a
human’s life must be a life
with enough material goods but
most especially a life that
involves theoretical inquiry
through which we exercise our
being rational.
 THANKS!
Any questions?

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