Human Flourishing in

Science and Technology

Flourishing

-a state where people

experience positive
emotions, positive
psychological functioning
and positive social
functioning
POSITIVITY
Human Flourishing
• an effort to achieve self-
actualization and
fulfilment
• Each has the rights to
pursue efforts on self.
Human Flourishing
• Human potentialities,
including talents,
abilities, and virtues in
the pursuit of his freely
and rationally chosen
values and goals.
Human civilizations and the
development of
science and technology
Bearer

• a person or thing that carries or holds something.

• Human flourishes and finds meaning in the world
that he/she builds.
• Human may unconsciously acquire, consume or
destroy what the world has to offer.
Science and Technology
• must be treated as part
of human life that needs
reflective and meditative
thinking.
• must be examined for
their greater impact on
humanity as a whole.
Reflective Thinking
Reflective Questions

How are you

What did I doing it?
learn?

What was
hard?
Meditative thinking

A kind of thinking that

thinks the truth of being,
that belongs to being and
listens to it.
TECHNOLOGY AS A MODE OF
REVEALING
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
• a German philosopher and
a seminal thinker in the
Continental tradition of
philosophy.
• Important philosophers of
the 20th century.
HEIDEGGER’S VIEW ON
TECHNOLOGY
- Opposes the “a means to an end” or “a human
activity.”
- instrumental
- anthropological
What is technology if it is
neither a means to an end nor a
human activity?
HEIDEGGER’S VIEW ON
TECHNOLOGY
- Technology, according to Heidegger must be
understood as “a way of revealing” (Heidegger 1977,
12).
- Revealing is alètheuein means “to discover”
- Related verb is alètheia means “truth”
How can technology be a way
of revealing?
How can technology be a way
of revealing?
• by entering into a particular relation with
reality, reality is ‘revealed’ in a specific way.
• technology embodies a specific way of revealing the
world, a revealing in which humans take power over
reality.
• Technology reveals the world.
Example:
• Ancient discovery (fossils, places, artifacts).
• Cultures, traditions and beliefs.
• The state of the health.
• Informations
Ancient discovery
Cultures, traditions and beliefs
The state of the health
Informations
What is reality?
• according to Heidegger, it is not given the same way
in all times and all cultures (Seubold 1986, 35-6).
• not something absolute that human beings can ever
know once and for all
• Sometimes inaccessible for human beings.
WHY IS TECHNOLOGY NOT
A HUMAN ACTIVITY?
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.
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.
Reference
• https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/philosophyof-
technology/0/steps/26314
• Heidegger, Martin. “The question concerning
technology (W. Lovitt, Trans.) The question
concerning technology: and other essays (pp. 3-
35).” (1977).
• Seubold, Günter. Heideggers Analyse der
neuzeitlichen Technik. Freiburg-München: Alber,
1986.