BINALBAGAN CATHOLIC COLLEGE

Binalbagan, Negros Occidental

College of Education

COURSE GUIDE

Science, Technology and Society (STS)

Module 4: Human Flourishing and the Good Life

This module will allow you to analyze the human condition in order to deeply reflect and express
philosophical ramifications that are meaningful to you as a part of society and examine shared concerns that
make up the good life in order to come up with innovative, creative solutions to contemporary issues guided
by ethical standards.
OBJECTIVES 1. Recognize that human freedom is ultimately for doing what is good and
practicing what is morally right for each person and for the society;
2. Acknowledge the reality that Science and Technology encompass the
advancements around the globe;
3. Recognize that human flourishing only happens when advancements in
Science and Technology consider each human holistically as a rational being;
4. Critique human flourishing vis-à-vis the progress of Science and Technology
so that the students can define for themselves the meaning of good life, and
5. Examine shared concerns that make up the good life and evaluate what a
good life is.
CONTENT A. The Human Person Flourishing in Terms of Science and Technology
- Technology as a Product of Human Reason and Freedom
- St. Augustine and Human Freedom
- Technology and the Desire for the Good
- Technology as a Way of Revealing
B. The Good Life
- Happiness and the Good Life
- The Golden Mean and the Practice of Virtue
- The Good Life according to Aristotle
- Other Perspectives of Living the Good Life
COURSE MATERIAL References:
1. Ariola, Mariano M. Science, Technology, and Society
2. Contreras, Antonio P. et.al. Science, Technology, and Society A Critical
Approach
3. Gacho, Flordeles A. et.al.Science, Technology, and Society (Global Issues
and Perspective)
4. Serafica, Janice Patria J. et.al. Science, Technology, and Society
TIME FRAME 3 hours
LESSON PROPER
ENGAGE Given the chance to invent something and to contribute to the world and dedicate to
humanity, what will you make? Why?
STUDY Discussion Questions:
1. What is the main goal/purpose of technologies?
2. How has been technology influencing us?
3. How is technology related to the desire to do what is good?
ACTIVATE 1. Articulate the relationship between of human flourishing and the good life
2. Cite the impacts and morals brought about by the advancements of Science
and Technology in the society
3. Critique current situation and realize it’s role/impact for human to continue
flourish and embrace good life amidst challenges.
 EVALUATION Written Test, Oral Recitation
CONSULTATION FB Account: Rye
HOURS AND FB Account Link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009489892975 Email
MENTOR’S LINKS Address: ryantvillasis@gmail.com

Prepared by:

ARGIELENE D. ARDIENTE, LPT

TONY B. LAZAGA, LLB, MAED
RYAN T. VILLASIS, MPM
GE 6 Instructors

NOTES:
Technology as a Product of Human Reason and Freedom
 Man is rational and with this rationality comes also his creativity.
 This creativity means man has the capacity to innovate whatever are those available and “create”
new things which other animals cannot.

St. Augustine and Human Freedom

 Freedom is the capacity of choosing what is good and of performing good deeds, because freedom
is fixated on the good things, to choose the good things and to reject those which are bad.
 Our freedom should make us recognize what appropriate material things that we have to use with
freedom and thanksgiving and what we have to love as a final goal.
 All material things are to be used but we have to be free enough to recognize that the only person
for whom we have to be slaves is God, in whom we find our rest and our final goal.

Technology and the Desire for the Good

 Augustine acknowledges that the Supreme Good must be the source of happiness.
 Everyone wants to be happy and to live a good life.
 The desire for happiness and satisfaction may be expressed in the way humans want comfort,
efficiency, security, and peace of mind.
 Our intelligence, freedom, and creativity is our inner desire to attain what is good; hence our
inclination to do good is what guides our freedom.
 We are then reminded that in order for technology to serve its purpose, our intent in the practice of it
must be to do good.
The things we desire for a specific purpose may contain other elements that might make us forget their
real purpose. The same with the Highest Good; we can even question if we are making progress in
attaining it because of the distraction caused by the lesser goods. Technology has combined the
camera, phone, internet browser, flashlight, calculator, and a library into one powerful device. The real
purpose of having a phone has been drowned by other features. Technology as a way for us to ascend
towards the Highest Good has now become a distraction that may hinder from reaching the Good.
• Augustine thinks that we cannot be happy unless we attain the object of our desire but it is not a
guarantee either that we can really be happy if we get what we desire.
• Not all our desires guarantee happiness. Certain desires and certain things may even bring us to
misery if we desire what is not really the Good.
• This can happen to technology too. Some technologies distract us from reaching the real Good, they
may even lead us away from what really matters.

Technology as a Way of Revealing

Martin Heidegger and Technology
 For Heidegger, presently, we tend to be chained to technology.
 There is also a pervasive instrumentalist interpretation of technology as a human activity that
provides the means to our ends.
 But this interpretation opens up to a deeper question, namely, what is technology essentially? And if
it is instrumental then what is its end?
  Heidegger considers that technology involves the bringing-forth (poiesis) and suggests that with
technology comes a distinctive mode of disclosiveness, or revealedness, that is, a kind of
ontological truth (aletheia).
 Our activities, the things we encounter and deal with, and even we ourselves all seem to happen
together in a “world” where everything is set up and “enframed” as part of a stockpile of available
materials and personnel – “standing-reserve” (Bestand), always ready for technologically
determined purposes.
 Enframing (Gestell), then, is the “essence” of the technological – essence, not in the traditional
sense of a permanent and unchangeable character or set of properties, but in the sense of a
predominant way of disclosing meaning which “gives” the instrumentally useful its familiar
“instrumental” sense.
 Everything is seen as calculable and just mere instruments in order to attain what is intended as an
end.This is the danger of the age. But where the danger is, there is also the “saving power”.
 This saving power is still through enframing but in another way, namely, the possibility of opening up
a
“FREE relation with technology.” Free here means not conditioned by measure and the rigid ways
of science and calculations.
 A free relation with technology would thus have to happen “in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin
to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.”

Calculative and Meditative Thinking

 Calculative thinking is seemed favored in the modern world because of its efficiency and exact or
definite answers to questions.
 Meditative thinking, on the other hand, is a very important type of thinking for Heidegger than the
calculative; it helps us to understand our life’s meaning, placing significance on the individual rather
than the collective.
 Calculative thinking makes our individual lives less important. It implies that there is a way to
categorize everyone and everything in the world, taking away any real free will.
 Calculative thinking, then—if taken as the entire truth—makes us entirely mechanistic. It suggests
that there is complete, objective truth and order in the world. There would be no free will, because
every action would fit into a greater structure.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on Art

Aside from the use of reason, arts unveil the truth.
 We have art so that we may not perish by the truth.
 Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the
reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
 Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

Immanuel Kant on Disinterested Pleasure and Aesthetics

 Therefore, a true judgment of beauty is disinterested; it is not based on any known concept, simply
a sensation of unconstrained, completely detached pleasure. Along these same lines, a beautiful
object is purposive, containing the property or quality of purposefulness, without actually having a
concrete purpose.

The Use of Art as a Way Out of the Enframing of Modern Technology

 The “pattern” followed by art is not the rigid pattern that follows much the calculative thinking. Art is
spontaneously expressed and is open.

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.
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 liberate 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.

Eudaimonia
 Aristotle understands the good as a specific characteristic of each individual.
 For him, each existing being has a certain function and in order for a being to be good, it has to do
or act according to its function.
 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.

Aristotle defines the good that is suitable for human as those activities which make us human. We humans
are rational and our rationality is the function that we need in order to experience human flourishing. We
need to excel in the use of our reason. Together with phronesis (a kind of wisdom which aids in the ability
to choose or act and practice virtues), power, friendship, enough wealth and excellence in the practice of
virtues, human can be happy and flourish. Unlike the plants and animals, we are not contented and happy if
we just grow, move around and feel pain and pleasure. 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.

The Good Life

Happiness and the Good Life
 Human flourishing is always associated with happiness. When Aristotle says that an act becomes
an ultimate end, he means that it should be “self-sufficient and final.” An act would be self-sufficient
and final when it is desirable by itself and not desirable as an instrument for something else that is
desired. Aristotle believes that all people seek for happiness and all people would agree that this is
the ultimate goal or end since all else are desired by men including wealth, pleasure and fame in
order to be happy. With this, Aristotle believes that happiness must just be another term for good,
since happiness, like good, is “the fulfillment of our distinctive function.”
 To attain happiness, it is necessary to act what is in congruence with Right Reason. The rational
part of the soul must take charge of the irrational parts (appetite and passion) since the irrational
parts need guidance. Our appetite and passions like hunger and infatuations if unguided and are
pursued by themselves may lead us to do acts that are evil. Envy and anger if not guided and
managed well can lead a person to do something evil to others.
 That is why there is a need to develop moral virtues through good habits because the practice of
these perfects the rational part of our soul.

The Golden Mean and the Practice of Virtue

 The rational soul must be in control of the humans’ appetite and passion in order for these lower
parts not to control our actions.
 The proper way for the rational soul to intervene is through the effort to practice virtuous ways which
is the middle ground of both the extremes.
 Example is temperance.
It is in between wastage and deprivation.
Temperance is in the middle of indulgence and insensibility. If one practices indulgence through satisfying
and gratifying the self with pleasures and vices then it leads to extravagance, exaggeration and wastage.
On the other hand, insensibility is being apathetic to the needs of the people around or even of the self.
Both are extremes and do not constitute the good. One needs temperance to enjoy the good without
wastage and without deprivation. Just as like in dealing with food, one has to have the temperance to eat
what is enough and not excessive as to cause gluttony but not also deprived as to cause starvation.
• Our body has a certain wisdom to signal us in our intake when is enough, enough.
• However, the mean is different from person to person. Each individual has a relative need with the
consideration of the circumstances.
• In terms of food, the need of a child is less compared to the need of an adult who labors physically
in the farm.
• Moreover, there are acts that are naturally evil not in their excess or deficiency but in themselves.
Acts like stealing, adultery and envy are bad in themselves regardless of the circumstances

The practice of moral virtue is the practice of habits that makes us take the middle ground and the
avoidance of evil acts like adultery and stealing. These acts plus “generosity, good temper, friendship, and
self-respect” lead us to be better and live a good life. The happy man lives a most pleasant life and it is no
wonder that people like to live like the happy man.
• Aristotle reminds us that though we may have the moral capacity but it is not a guarantee that we
cannot go wrong.
• There are so much possibilities in life that even our potential goodness may be set aside.
• He gives an example of a seedling which has the potential to be a tree. Under different
circumstances, the seedling may perish earlier not achieving into a full-grown tree but it can never
be robbed from the seedling the potential to become a tree.
In our case our nature is characterized by being rational. Rationality entails deliberation and choice. Our
potential is achieved in knowing what to do and deliberating about it and choosing to do it.
For Aristotle, it is not enough to know what is right to be right. What is right for him is knowing that it is
right and choosing to do it.

• But Aristotle adds that human nature is not only about rationality.
• We have vegetative and appetitive souls.
• When we practice virtue and exercise our rationality we do not deny the other capacities. We read,
feed our spirit and practice virtues but we do not forget also to eat and sleep and take care of our
body.
• We act as a whole not forgetting that we are both physical and mental beings.
• Still, Aristotle is concerned with the practice of virtue as a mean in order to exercise our mental and
rational side well.
• Our highest nature is our rationality.
• Our physicality is shared with plants and animals but our rationality makes us humans and different
from the other animals
For Aristotle a being can be most happy if this being acts according to its highest nature.
Therefore, it is reasonable to say that we are most happy as human beings if we exercise our rationality.
How? Aristotle emphasizes that the objects of our reason are the best knowable objects we need to
contemplate. He adds that although many times we associate happiness with pleasure but it is in gaining
the truth through philosophical wisdom that we experience the “pleasantest of virtuous activities.”
It is not through the gain of material things in which we gain the ultimate happiness, it is not the satisfaction
of our physical needs but it is through the contemplation of the truth and knowing the truth when human
beings are happiest.

The Good Life According to Aristotle

 The end, goal, purpose (or meaning) of human life is to live well.
 We live a good life by accumulating, over the course of our lives, all the real goods (not just the
apparent) that correspond to our natural needs.
 We increase our chances of having good lives by cultivating good habits and bit of luck.
 The most important moral virtues or habits are moderation, courage, and justice.
 Moderation keeps us from overindulging in pleasure or seeking too much of the limited goods.
 Courage is having the disposition to do what it takes to live a good life.
 Justice is the virtue that allows us to have friends and enjoy the benefits of cooperation.

Other Perspectives of Living the Good Life

1. Epicureanism
2. Stoicism
3. Others find meaning in living through religion and the faith that there is a Creator who plans well the
universe for humans to enjoy. The Creator is the beginning of everything and everything should go back
to the Creator. The good life should be in accordance with the plan of the Creator. It is the duty of
humans to know the ways in which the Creator has planned everything in order to find peace and live
the good life prepared and planned by the good Creator.Others live their life in a deistic way, believing
that there’s a creator who created all things but as humans we need to live our life without depending on
this creator. 4. Another perspective of living the good life is through humanism. Humanism focuses on
“human dignity, beauty, and potential.” The development of this thought came when some people in
Europe tried to get away from religion and from what they thought as ancient superstition. Those who
adhere to humanism focus on reason and have tendency to set aside faith. Knowledge can only be
accepted as fact when it is proven either empirically (through experience) or through reason. Man can
live a good life even without religion and the adherence to faith. For humanists, humans are free to
make laws without consideration of divine commands. Humans can design their destiny without the
thought of grace, without the guidance from God and without the Church.

One thinker who can be associated with humanism and the enlightenment era is Francois-Marie Arouet or
widely known as Voltaire. He asserted that human life and its purpose is not to reach heaven through pious
acts and sacrifices but to attain happiness through the progress of sciences and arts since through
sciences and arts humans can attain what their nature is destined.

Name: _________________________________ Date/Time: __________________ Score: _____

Activity: Module 4

A. What are these things for?

Listed in the first column are things commonly used by people today. It is important to understand the
reason why they were invented. Let us check whether we know what they are really for. The second
column lists their purpose while the last column contains the accessories that come with the device or
equipment.

Commonly Used Things
1.Cellular Phones
Main Purpose of the Existence of the
Thing
Distance Communication
Accessory Reasons that Go with the
Main Purpose
Camera, calculator, internet
browsing, flash light, radio,
applications

2.Cars

3.Watches

4.Light Bulbs

5.Food and Drinks

B. What Has Technology Brought to the Life of the People?

Good Effects Bad Effects

C. The emergence of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has threatened the country’s economy,
stability, and well-being. It’s rapid spread infected many and even death to a lot of Filipino
people. To what extent is it possible to flourish amidst this pandemic?