Monday, February 11, 2019

"instruments of the human soul"

     "Werkzeuge der menschlichen Seele" is the ontological status that Marianne Schark, in her Lebewesen versus Dinge:  eine metaphysische Studie (Berlin:  de Gruyter, 2005), assigns the tools we create, according to Ludwig Jaskolla, "Der Mensch als 'homo faber'?  Überlegungen zur Philosophie der Technik," Stimmen der Zeit 233, no. 6 (June 2015):  389 (385-392).
     More from Jaskolla, who (it must be admitted) does here little more than re-state the obvious:
Technology is not a marginal phenomenon of culture-creating man, but a fundamental constant of man in general:  we are creative beings through and through!  [(386)] 
this creative activity can therefore only be good in the ethical sense when it serves the well being of man [(dem gelingenden Leben des Menschen)].  Only technology that contributes to our realization of the potential of man as an integral whole [(unsere ganzheitliche Potenziale des Manschen)] is good technology [(389)].
Yet because our understanding of the reality we modify, regulate, and change—not to mention our grasp of the consequences of our actions—is never complete, our creative, technological capacities must be exercised with great humility (391).

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