Toward a Philosophy of Technology Author(s): Hans Jonas Source: The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Feb., 1979), pp. 34-43 Published by: The Hastings Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3561700 . Accessed: 26/10/2011 18:53 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Hastings Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Hastings Center Report. http://www.jstor.org KNOWLEDGE,POWER & THE BIOLOGICALREVOLUTION Toward a Philosophy of Technology by HANS JONAS the world furnishedwith them looks. A third, overarching themeis the moralside of technologyas a burdenon human A re there philosophicalaspects to technology?Of responsibility,especially its long-termeffects on the global course there are, as there are to all things of importancein conditionof man and environment.This-my own mainpre- humanendeavor and destiny.Modern technology touches on occupation over the past years-will only be touched upon. almost everythingvital to man's existence-material, men- tal, and spiritual.Indeed, what of man is not involved?The I. The FormalDynamics of Technology way he lives his life and looks at objects,his intercoursewith the worldand with his peers,his powersand modes of action, First some observationsabout technology'sform as an kinds of goals, states and changesof society, objectivesand abstractwhole of movement.We are concernedwith char- forms of politics (includingwarfare no less than welfare), acteristicsof moderntechnology and thereforeask firstwhat the sense and qualityof life, even man'sfate and that of his distinguishesit formallyfrom all previoustechnology. One environment:all these are involvedin the technologicalen- majordistinction is that moderntechnology is an enterprise terprise as it extends in magnitudeand depth. The mere and process, whereas earlier technology was a possession enumerationsuggests a staggeringhost of potentiallyphilo- and a state. If we roughlydescribe technology as comprising sophic themes. the use of artificialimplements for the business of life, to- To put it bluntly: if there is a philosophyof science,lan- getherwith theiroriginal invention, improvement, and occa- guage,history, and art;if thereis social, political,and moral sional additions,such a tranquildescription will do for most philosophy;philosophy of thoughtand of action, of reason of technology throughmankind's career (with which it is and passion,of decision and value-all facets of the inclu- coeval), but not for moderntechnology. In the past, gener- sive philosophyof man-how then could there not be a ally speaking,a given inventoryof tools and proceduresused philosophyof technology,the focal fact of modernlife? And to be fairly constant,tending toward a mutuallyadjusting, at that a philosophyso spaciousthat it can house portions stable equilibriumof ends and means, which-once estab- from all the other branchesof philosophy?It is almost a lished-represented for lengthy periods an unchallenged truism,but at the same time so immensea propositionthat optimumof technicalcompetence. its challenge staggersthe mind. Economy and modesty re- To be sure, revolutionsoccurred, but more by accident quirethat we select, for a beginning,the most obviousfrom thanby design.The agriculturalrevolution, the metallurgical the multitudeof aspectsthat invite philosophicalattention. revolutionthat led fromthe neolithicto the iron age, the rise The old but useful distinctionof "form"and "matter"al- of cities, and such developments,happened rather than were lows us to distinguishbetween these two majorthemes: (1) consciouslycreated. Their pace was so slow that only in the the formaldynamics of technologyas a continuingcollective time-contractionof historicalretrospect do they appearto enterprise,which advancesby its own "lawsof motion";and be "revolutions"(with the misleadingconnotation that their (2) the substantivecontent of technologyin terms of the contemporariesexperienced them as such). Even where the thingsit putsinto humanuse, the powersit confers,the novel changewas sudden,as with the introductionfirst of the cha- objectivesit opens up or dictates,and the alteredmanner of riot, then of armed horsemen into warfare-a violent, if humanaction by which these objectivesare realized. short-lived,revolution indeed-the innovationdid not orig- The firsttheme considers technology as an abstractwhole inate from within the militaryart of the advancedsocieties of movement;the secondconsiders its concreteuses andtheir that it affected,but was thrust on it from outside by the impacton our worldand our lives. The formalapproach will (much less civilized) peoples of Central Asia. Instead of try to grasp the pervasive "process properties"by which spreadingthrough the technologicaluniverse of their time, moderntechnology propels itself-through our agency, to othertechnical breakthroughs, like Phoenicianpurple-dying, be sure-into ever-succeedingand supercedingnovelty. The Byzantine"greek fire," Chinese porcelain and silk, and Da- materialapproach will look at the speciesof noveltiesthem- mascenesteel-tempering, remained jealously guardedmon- selves, their taxonomy,as it were, and try to make out how opolies of the inventor communities.Still others, like the hydraulicand steam playthingsof Alexandrianmechanics, HANS JONAS, PH.D., is Alvin JohnsonProfessor of Philosophy or compass and gunpowderof the Chinese, passed unno- Emeritus, GraduateFaculty, New School for Social Research. ticed in their serioustechnological potentials.1 This article is adaptedfrom his presentationaccepting the Insti- On the whole rare the tute's second Knowles Beecher Award con- (not counting upheavals), great Henry for lifetime a tributionsto ethics and the life sciences made at The Hastings classical civilizations had comparativelyearly reached Center's General Meeting, June 23-24, 1978, which was sup- point of technologicalsaturation-the aforementioned"op- ported by a grant from the RockefellerFoundation. timum"in equilibriumof means with acknowledgedneeds 34 HastingsCenter Report, February 1979 _ __ and goals-and had little cause later to go beyond it. From its speed) guaranteed by the universal intercommunication there on, convention reigned supreme. From pottery to that is itself part of the technological complex, the second monumental architecture, from food growing to shipbuild- enforced by the pressure of competition. ing, from textiles to engines of war, from time measuring to 3. The relation of means to ends is not unilinear but cir- stargazing: tools, techniques, and objectives remained essen- cular. Familiar ends of long standing may find better satis- tially the same over long times; improvements were sporadic faction by new technologies whose genesis they had inspired. and unplanned. Progress therefore-if it occurred at all*- But equally-and increasingly typical-new technologies was by inconspicuous increments to a universally high level may suggest, create, even impose new ends, never before that still excites our admiration and, in historical-fact, was conceived, simply by offering their feasibility. (Who had ever more liable to regression than to surpassing. The former at wished to have in his living room the Philharmonic orches- least was the more noted phenomenon, deplored by the epi- tra, or open heart surgery, or a helicopter defoliating a Viet- gones with a nostalgic remembrance of a better past (as in nam forest? or to drink his coffee from a disposable plastic the declining Roman world). More important, there was, cup? or to have artificial insemination, test-tube babies, and even in the best and most vigorous times, no proclaimed idea host pregnancies? or to see clones of himself and others of a future of constant progress in the arts. Most important, walking about?) Technology thus adds to the very objectives there was never a deliberate method of going about it like of human desires, including objectives for technology itself. "research," the willingness to undergo the risks of trying The last point indicates the dialectics or circularity of the unorthodox paths, exchanging information widely about the case: once incorporated into the socioeconomic demand experience, and so on. Least of all was there a "natural diet, ends first gratuitously (perhaps accidentally) gener- science" as a growing body of theory to guide such semi- ated by technological invention become necessities of life theoretical, prepractical activities, plus their social institu- and set technology the task of further perfecting the means tionalization. In routines as well as panoply of instruments, of realizing them. accomplished as they were for the purposes they served, the 4. Progress, therefore, is not just an ideological gloss on "arts" seemed as settled as those purposes themselves.** modern technology, and not at all a mere option offered by it, but an inherent drive which acts willy-nilly in the formal automatics of its modus as it interacts with Traits of Modern Technology operandi society. "Progress" is here not a value term but purely descriptive. The exact opposite of this picture holds for