THE HUMAN PERSON

FLOURISHING IN TERMS
OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
Objectives:
At the end of this topic, students should be able to:
1. Analyze the steps in scientific method
2. Explain the concepts of human flourishing and their
importance for the “common good” and present examples;
3. Enumerate some career jobs related to science and
technology that lead to human flourishing
Conceptual Background
With the emergence of the Environmental crisis brought by new
technologies that change social structures, students should be given
an opportunity to reflect on those issues that have a significant impact
on society.
This course will reinforce the integral development of learners to
become truly human. This lesson deals with interactions between
science and technology and social, cultural, political, and economic
contexts that shape and are shaped by them. (CMO No. 20, series of
2013) This interdisciplinary lesson engages students to confront the
realities brought about by science and
technology in society.
 Such realities pervade the personal, the public, and the global
aspects of our living and are integral to human development. Scientific
knowledge and technological development happen in the context of
society with all its socio-political, cultural, economic, and philosophical
underpinnings at play. This lesson seeks to instill reflective knowledge
in the students that they can live a good life and display ethical
decision making in the face of scientific and technological
advancement.
The progress of human civilizations throughout history mirrors the
development of science and technology. The human person, as both
the bearer and beneficiary of science and technology, flourishes and
finds meaning in the world that he/she builds.
 In the person’s pursuit of the good life, he/she may unconsciously
acquire, consume or destroy what the world has to offer. It is thus
necessary to reflect on the things that truly matter. Science and
technology must be taken as part of human life that merits reflective
and –as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger says –meditative
thinking. Science and technology, despite its methodical and technical
nature, gives meaning to the life of a person making
his/her way in the world.
To be able to appreciate the fruits of science and technology, they
must be examined not only for their function and instrumentality but
also for their greater impact on humanity as a whole.
 The various gadgets, machines, appliances, and vehicles are
all tools that make human lives easier because they serve as a
means to an end. Their utility lies on providing people with a
certain good, convenience, or knowledge. Meanwhile, medical
research employs the best scientific and technological
principles to come up with the cures for diseases and ways to
prevent illnesses to ensure a good quality of life.
What is flourishing?
It is a state where people experience positive emotions, positive
psychological functioning and positive social functioning, most of the
time, “living within an optimal range of human functioning”.

What is Human Flourishing?

Human flourishing is defined as an effort to achieve self-
actualization and fulfillment within the context of a larger community of
individuals, each with the right to pursue his or her own such efforts.
It involves the rational use of one’s individual human potentialities,
including talents, abilities and virtues in the pursuit of his freely and
rationally chosen values and goals.
 According to Aristotle, there is an end of all of the actions that we
perform which we desire for itself. This is what is known as
eudaimonia, flourishing, or happiness, which is desired for its own
sake with all other things being desired on its account. Eudaimonia is a
property of one's life when considered as a whole. Flourishing is the
highest good of human endeavors and that toward which all actions
aim. It is success as a human being.
The best life is one of excellent human activity. For Aristotle, the
good is what is good for purposeful, goal-directed entities. He defines
the good proper to human beings as the activities in which the life
functions specific to human beings are most fully realized.
 For Aristotle, the good of each species is teleologically
immanent to that species. A person's nature as a human being
provides him with guidance with respect to how he should live
his life. A fundamental fact of human nature is the existence of
individual human beings each with his own rational mind and
free will.
The use of one's volitional consciousness is a person's
distinctive capacity and means of survival. One's own life is the
only life that a person has to live. It follows that, for Aristotle, the
"good" is what is objectively good for a particular man.
 Aristotle's eudaimonia is formally egoistic in that a person's
normative reason for choosing particular actions stems from the
idea that he must pursue his own good or flourishing. Because
self-interest is flourishing, the good in human conduct is
connected to the self-interest of the acting person. Good means
"good for" the individual moral agent. Egoism is an integral part
of Aristotle's ethics.
Human Flourishing in Science and Technology
Must be treated as part of human life that needs reflective and
meditative thinking. What is reflective thinking? It helps to determine
an individual’s strengths and weaknesses by allowing individuals to
question values and beliefs, challenge assumptions, recognize biases,
acknowledge fears, and find areas of improvement.
Example: a.) Think about what happened. Learn from the
experience; that’s reflective thinking b) An example Have you ever
missed the bus and then thought next time I’ll leave the house 5
minutes earlier? This is an example of you being reflective: you
thought about an experience and decided to learn from it and do
something different the next time.
What is Meditative thinking?
Kind of thinking that thinks the truth of being that belongs to being
and listens to it. And also, it helps us to understand our life’s meaning,
placing significance on the individual rather than the collective. When
we “meditate,” we consider our being, our singular truths, and the
meaning of our lives. We, subsequently, develop a self-derived kind of
meaning, a real kind of truth.
Why is human flourishing important?
Human flourishing is the reward of the virtues and values and
happiness is the goal and reward of human flourishing. Self-direction
(i.e., autonomy) involves the use of one's reason and is central and
necessary for the possibility of attaining human flourishing, self-
esteem, and happiness.
Technology as a Mode of Revealing
First, the essence of technology is not something we make; it is a
mode of being, or of revealing. This means that technological things
have their own novel kind of presence, endurance, and connections
among parts and wholes. They have their own way of presenting
themselves and the world in which they operate.
Understanding Heidegger Technology
In his important work, The Question of Technology, Martin
Heidegger urges us to question technology and see beyond people’s
common understanding of it.
Who is Martin Heidegger?
He is a German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the
Continental tradition of philosophy, widely acknowledged to be one of
the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century.
Heidegger’s View on Technology
Martin Heidegger strongly opposes the view that technology is “a
means to an end” or “a human activity. They said that these two
approaches, which he calls, respectively, the “instrumental” and
“anthropological” definitions, are indeed “correct”, but do not go deep
enough; as he says, they are not yet “true.”
 He also, points out, technological objects are means for ends, and
are built and operated by human beings, but the essence of
technology is something else entirely. Since the essence of a tree is
not itself a tree, he points out, so the essence of technology is not
anything technological. What, then, is technology, if it is neither a
means to an end nor a human activity? Technology, according to
Heidegger must be understood as “a way of revealing” (Heidegger
1977, 12).
What is Revealing?
Revealing is his translation of the Greek word alètheuein, which
means ‘to discover’ – to uncover what was covered over. Related to
this verb is the independent noun alètheia, which is usually translated
as “truth,” though Heidegger insists that a more adequate translation
would be “un- concealment.”
What is reality?
According to Heidegger, it is not given the same way in all times and
all cultures (Seubold 1986, 35-6). It is not something absolute that
human beings can ever know once and for all is relative in the most
literal sense of the word – it exists only in relations inaccessible for
human beings. As soon as we perceive or try to understand it, it is not
‘in itself’ anymore, but ‘reality for us.’
What does Heidegger mean when he says that technology is “a way of
revealing”?
Everything we perceive or think of or interact with “emerges out of
concealment into un-concealment, by entering into a particular relation
with reality, reality is ‘revealed’ in a specific way; a) Technology is the
way of revealing that characterizes our time. b) technology embodies a
specific way of revealing the world, a revealing in which humans take
power over reality. While the ancient Greeks experienced the ‘making’
of something as ‘helping something to come into being’ as Heidegger
explains that modern technology is rather a ‘forcing into being’.
Technology reveals the world as raw material,
available for production and manipulation.
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.
Rather, our understanding of the world - our understanding of
‘being’, of what it means ‘to be’ - develops through the ages. In our
time ‘being’ has the character of a technological ‘framework’, from
which humans approach the world in a controlling and dominating way.
Every attempt to climb out of technology throws us back in.
 The only way out for Heidegger is “the will not to will”. 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.