Heidegger on Technology and Morality: An In-Depth Analysis
Heidegger on Technology
Heidegger aims to find the essence of technology, and to this end, begins by noting that technique is not the same as the essence of technology. He articulates two statements that answer the question regarding technique:
- Technique is a means to an end.
- Art-making is a human activity.
This definition, which considers technique and the human element, is the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology. It is a correct definition, but correctness does not necessarily reveal its essence, where the truth lies. To reach this essence, we must seek the truth through what is right.
First, to understand the instrumental definition, Heidegger begins questioning causality. The idea of causality that we have (the idea of making) is different from that of the Greeks: what something is, is indebted to the four causes (material cause, formal cause, final cause, efficient cause) which make it what it is. The four causes are responsible for what something is.
To see what lies in the instrumental, we must see the initial sense of causality and responsibility, and not see this responsibility in a moral sense, or as a mode of conduct. The four modes of being responsible are responsible for bringing something to appear, letting it come to be in presence. Being responsible is the fundamental feature of letting something come into being.
Think of bringing something forth in the full extent and meaning of the Greeks. Bringing something forth brings it from the state of hiding to the state of unconcealment, putting it forward.
The essence of technique and revealing the truth is the same. Technique is a way of revealing the truth. Technique essentially happens in the region where revealing the hidden and unconcealment occur, where the truth happens.
The revealing prevalent in modern technology is not a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis; it is a provocation that puts nature before the requirement to supply power that can be removed and stored. Nature is emplaced in the sense of provocation. This site is a promotion that promotes revealing and setting-upon, and this promotion is set to promote other things. This means that the revealing which completely dominates modern technology has the character of setting-upon, in the sense of provocation. That which comes through the deployment of causing, Heidegger calls it: the standing-reserve. They characterize this way; all that is concerned with revealing the truth that is in the direction of standing-reserve is no longer before us as an object.
The resulting site, through which the real is taken out of the hidden as existence, takes place in humans. However, the state of unconcealment which shows or is removed whenever the real and effective is not something that man has. When he brings out what is, he is responding to the call of unconcealment. Thus, modern technology, as a solicitor of revealing, is no mere doing of man.
At that interpellation that causes men to ask what comes out of the hidden in standing-reserve, we now call it the enframing (Ge-stell). Ge-stell means the gathering of that setting-upon which calls the man who provokes him to reveal the real and hidden in the way of a request as soon as a request of standing-reserve.
Enframing is the way of revealing that pervades the essence of modern technology (a way which is nothing technical).
Heidegger questions art in order to illuminate our relationship with its essence. The essence of modern technique puts a man on the way to go to standing-reserve. The revealing carries a danger because man can be treated as a mere existence.
Enframing threatens to leave the most original unseen, and thus could prevent experiencing the call of a larger truth initially, but it also makes it grow so that it saves, in the sense that it puts a man on the road to the essence of truth.
Morality
Morality is the set of beliefs and norms of a particular social group or person that acts as a guide for action (i.e., they provide an indication of good or bad, right or wrong of an action or actions).
Morals are the rules that govern the conduct of a human being in relationship with society and himself. The term has a positive effect against the “immoral” (against morality) and “amoral” (not moral). The existence of actions and activities subject to moral evaluation is based on the human being as a subject of voluntary acts. Thus, morality is related to the study of freedom and includes the action of man in all its manifestations.
“There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretation of phenomena.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
The word “moral” comes from the Latin word mores, meaning custom. Moralis (Latin mos = Greek custom). So “moral” per se does not entail the concept of evil or good. These therefore are the habits that are virtuous or harmful. Morality could also be defined as the sum total of knowledge acquired about the good to which a person adheres.
The ancient Romans gave to the mores maiorum (customs of the elders, the customs of their ancestors laid in a continuous series of judicial precedents) a capital importance in legal life, insomuch that for over two centuries (until about a century BC) it was chief among the sources of law. Its effect lasts through the codification of those precedents in a text that comes to us as the Law of the Twelve Tables, developed around 450 BC.
The concepts and beliefs about morality are generalized and codified in a culture or group, and thus serve to regulate the conduct of its members. Compliance with these encodings is also known as morality, and civilization depends on the widespread use of morality for its existence.
Morality is also identified with the religious principles and values that a community agrees to comply with.
Action and Morality
All human action is essentially social. Directly or indirectly correlated with the social life of the conglomerate in which the protagonist finds himself is conscious action. Harmonious and happy coexistence requires the observation of minimum standards. Ethics deals with the rules or regulations that govern the behavior or set of individual or collective actions. If the action conforms to the standard, the action will be called ethically good. Otherwise, it will be considered and judged as ethically wrong or inappropriate action.
Every action has an impact on the social milieu in which the life of social actors unfolds. These effects may be classified as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, admitting intermediate attributes between these extremes. Arguably, ethics describes social action in relation to the effects produced by a prior ranking of projects.
If we describe the effects as good or bad, then the actions that produce them, and the attitude and the person from which they come, inherit those assigned adjectives.
Morality and Ethics
Many authors consider these terms as synonyms. However, in the field of philosophy, ethics is considered one of its main parts. Hence, we can say that an ethical proposal is the set of standards suggested by a philosopher, or from religion, while “morality” would come to designate the degree of respect accorded to individuals’ ethical standards prevailing in the social group. In a practical sense, both terms become indistinguishable and therefore are considered equivalent.
The nuance is delimited by observation or practical application of the rule that involves the ethical mandate. Therefore, the theory will always be an ethical standard, as is customary morality or practical application.
On the other hand, morality is based on the values that conscience dictates, in turn, based on learned behavior. Therefore, morality is not absolute or universal, since its validity depends on the habits of a region, the same way that ethics does not have absolute validity, being both categorical imperatives.
Objective Morality
The set of moral standards is called “objective morality,” because these rules exist as social facts regardless of whether a subject wants to comply with them or not. Moral acts come from the belief that the act of an individual is always done for certain purposes and that everyone who does something should do it with a purpose unless reason does not check, as in varied situations. However, sociological realities suggest that people often act out of habit, custom, tradition, or unreasoning, called “mass mentality.”
Opposed to this position of self-justification is the acceptance by the individual of his liability. Using moral values, one can become the architect of his own destiny, or a better fate.
Throughout history, and from culture to culture, there have been differing views of morality. Generally, morality is applied to fields in which the choices made by individuals express an intention on other individuals, although not members of society. Therefore, there is an academic dispute about whether morality can exist only in the presence of a society, or in a hypothetical individual unrelated to others. Morality is also measured when the person is alone, not being observed by anyone, for example, in situations where you need to have a lot of integrity.
Autonomy and Heteronomy
A conception of morality may move towards any of the possible directions in a given field. There are indeed morals that recommend certain restrictions on behavior (heteronomy), and there are morals that recommend totally free self-determination (autonomy) and a variety of intermediate positions.
Immoral and Amoral
Under the concept of “moral,” two concepts arise that are, each in its own way, antonyms and usually confused. One is “immoral,” which refers to any behavior or person that violates their own moral or public morals. This person would be acting improperly, would be acting badly.
The other concept is “amoral,” which refers to people without morals, so they do not judge the facts or events as good or bad, right or wrong. The best defense of amorality is performed by the Taoists.
Taoism says that morality corrupts the human being, forcing him to do good things when he is not prepared and forbidding him to do bad things when he needs experience to realize the implications of his actions. Everything ‘moral,’ they say, means forcing the nature of human beings and is the result of mistrust and fear of others, what they can do if they are not subject to strict government laws that govern their behavior. Clearly, this view has taken root in the first world where the liberal mentality opposed to travel parallel moral values, “Live according to your approach and do not follow the requirements. Apparently morality has not been replaced, especially in countries with high rates of religiosity, but in more socially developed countries, it has vanished, leaving only ethics without morality based on religion.
Individual Moral Responsibility
The reflective element of discernment and freedom, because it produces the effects of human actions.
1. What it is: The full and normal exercise of intellectual faculties, known under the names of: perceived understanding, reflection, imagination, and reason, which are grown through education but remain dormant for lack of enforcement.
2. Freedom: It is the fullness and power normally resolved by a discussion and work in the sense of a determination born of discernment.
However, when an action or event has coexisted with the discernment and freedom of man, this is attributed exclusively to the attribution of the act. If the alleged act is repugnant to the moral sense, it is believed that man has done wrong, but if the act is in accordance with the moral sense, it is believed that man has done well. Behold the classification of merit or demerit of human actions.
Moreover, the direction indicated by the moral sense and that further human behavior must be a constant relationship between Discernment, Freedom, and our aim, which is therefore a principle and as it governs the actions of man, acquires the character of law.
There is therefore a moral law that is imposed by itself as sufficient reason, “as a categorical imperative” in Kant’s words: love. This complex law can be broken down into rules of conduct, each of which is called Duty.
Regular exercise of duties on certain kinds of actions is a virtue; the frequent violation of these duties, characterizing the moral sense, is a vice.
It is not possible, but very difficult to synthesize all the duties of individual and social order of man. The imperatives of Kant refer only to social morality. But their concepts include the principles of Roman law:
- Honest life: regulation of individual behavior.
- Want for everyone that which you want for yourself: social virtue of justice.
- Elevate the humble: social virtue of benevolence.
Plus two principles:
- Know thyself: Summary of wisdom.
- Love your brother: Summary of universal love, which cannot be reached without knowing oneself, in his three entities of body, soul, and spirit.
As the philosopher Joaquin Trincado says in their various works: “If all science requires first a degree of moral efficiency, the study of philosophy requires many degrees of moral science few covers, and as all-encompassing philosophy, a student of the philosophy, should be moral at all, and if not, is a textbook authors philosophaster …. whereas, dominated by prejudice, bias that others write biased approve them, and behold, that makes many philosophers of name, but that is the philosophy of the individual, because each individual has his own philosophy, which is equal to the degree of morality … ” (P.19).
Aristotelian Ethics
Two ethics were written by Aristotle:
Eudemian Ethics that highlights some Platonic influences and Nicomachean Ethics, which is the final version of Aristotelian ethics since it belongs to the third quarter.
The ethics of Aristotle is, first, an ethics of happiness… but it is also an ethics of virtue because it is the best means to achieve happiness.
Happiness
Happiness is the perfect exercise of man’s own activity. Such activity is none other than the activity of the soul, which to be perfect must be accompanied by all the virtues.
Towards the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that the activity most typical of men and that will provide greater happiness is theoretical contemplation: namely, wisdom. This is how ethical empiricism leads him to an eclectic position: happiness is to balance virtue, contemplation, and external goods.
Virtue
Aristotle moves away from the Socratic intellectualism that links virtue with knowledge. For him, virtue is the disposition of the soul, that is, the capacity and capability of this to behave a certain way:
“It is not enough that the action has a particular character for that behavior is right or good, it is necessary that the man acted in a manner determined primarily knowing that, secondly, to proceed because of a conscious decision and preferred that action by itself; finally, that he adopts a strong and unwavering position.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Virtue then, is acquired through exercise and habit, meaning that for a man to be made righteous, he must practice righteousness. Aristotle believes that nobody is just “by nature” (though a natural predisposition is important) nor is education sufficient.
Moral Intellectualism
This is a moral theory that states that moral behavior is only possible if it rests on the knowledge of good and justice. All the Greek philosophers advocate to a greater or lesser extent moral intellectualism, but certainly the most prominent representative of this view is Socrates.
The essential thesis of moral intellectualism is: the moral experience is based on the knowledge of good. Only by knowing what is good and justice can one do right and justice. Socrates makes the following remarks to his fellow citizens: when one of you is ill, you do not propose a vote among members of the family to establish what is the appropriate remedy to cure the disease: you rather call a doctor and submit to his judgment and recommendations. When an army wants to defeat the enemy, you do not hold a referendum to establish the mode of attack; it is the strategist who decides how to lead soldiers and raise the battles. When you want to lift a building, you do not hold a vote to decide how to build it; we let the architect impose their own criteria. And then Socrates asks: Why, when it is the most important of all, that is the good of the city and the laws that are adequate for coexistence among citizens, do we let the whole world’s opinion and submit to the majority and not call him who knows?
For moral intellectualism, moral and political issues have to be a thing of experts. This proposal may result in Socratic political interpretations that are undemocratic and elitist (as, indeed, is clearly seen in the political philosophy of his disciple Plato).
The view of Socrates is vitiated by ambiguity: when Socrates asks for the basis of moral and political knowledge, what kind of knowledge does he mean? We can distinguish between knowing something and knowing what it is that something. For example, the artist knows how to make beautiful things, but he may not know what constitutes beauty, and what concrete steps must be followed to achieve it. The first type of knowledge is knowledge understood as a skill (either physical or spiritual) for doing something, and the second type is knowledge understood as explicit knowledge and awareness of something (as for example in science). It is easy to see that these two forms of knowledge need not necessarily go together, and the historian and art critic can explicitly know many things about beauty but perhaps not be able to create art and beauty. It seems that Socrates asked for knowledge of the second type as a guarantee of good deeds and fair. Hence the confusion it created in their partners when asked for a definition of that for which they are supposed experts. Our convictions are contrary to ordinary moral intellectualism as we believe that someone may know something is wrong and yet do so. For moral intellectualism, moral perfection is a consequence of the perfection of the intellect or reason. But other authors such as Aristotle are closer to the current view considering that knowledge is not a sufficient condition for right conduct and good. This author will practice as a foundation for moral perfection of the will rather than the perfection of the intellect; good behavior is not so much of knowledge as the discipline of the will in performing righteous deeds. Thus, from the standpoint of Aristotle and against moral intellectualism, surely it can be concluded that in fairness we need to know how to do justice, but here this word is not an explicit knowledge and theory of justice but the possession of a skill or available to perform righteous deeds.