LESSON PROPER

Human flourishing refers to a state in which individuals and communities

experience a high level of well-being, fulfillment, and happiness. It involves not just the
absence of suffering or illness, but the presence of positive conditions that allow people
to live their best lives. This includes physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual
well-being.

Human flourishing encompasses several key aspects:

1. Physical Well-being: Good health, physical fitness, and access to healthcare.

2. Emotional Well-being: A sense of happiness, contentment, purpose, and
emotional stability.
3. Social Well-being: Strong relationships, social support, and a sense of belonging
and connection to others.
4. Intellectual Well-being: Opportunities for education, learning, creativity, and
intellectual growth.
5. Economic Well-being: Access to resources, financial stability, meaningful work,
and economic opportunities.
6. Spiritual Well-being: A sense of meaning, purpose, and connection to something
greater, whether through religion, philosophy, or personal values.

Human flourishing is about living a life that is rich, meaningful, and balanced across
different dimensions of well-being, allowing people to reach their full potential and
contribute positively to their communities.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) is one of the most significant thinkers and the most
accomplished individual who has ever lived. Every person currently living in Western
civilization owes an enormous debt to Aristotle who is the fountainhead behind every
achievement of science, technology, political theory, and aesthetics (especially Romantic
art) in today's world. Aristotle's philosophy has underpinned the achievements of the
Renaissance and of all scientific advances and technological progress to this very day.
Aristotle bases the understandability of the good in the idea of what is good for the
specific entity under consideration. For whatever has a natural function, the good is
therefore thought to reside in the function. The natural function of a thing is determined
by its natural end. With respect to living things, there are particular ways of being that
constitute the perfection of the living thing's nature.
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.
Aristotle thought that it was possible to conduct rational research with respect to
value. He saw practical science as an essentially evaluative or moral science. A practical
science is ethical to the extent that it takes into account the ethical aspects of the subject
being studied.
Aristotle regarded reality as ordered and taught that order with respect to human
affairs is a project or effort through which people aspire to happiness through the
cultivation of virtues. He asserts that the end of politics is the good for man. According to
Aristotle, the virtue of prudence is personal, freely pursued, and changeable according to
situations. A prudent action for one individual may not be a prudent action for another
person. Nevertheless, the integration of freely made prudent and varying actions results
in social coordination. He believed that economic coordination is attainable when persons
prudently choose and undertake economic transactions with others. Aristotle believed
that human flourishing requires a life with other people.
Technology as a Way of Revealing

Martin Heidegger’s in His Definition of Technology

Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, offered a profound and complex

definition of technology in his work "The Question Concerning Technology" (1954).
Heidegger did not view technology simply as a collection of tools or machines; instead,
he saw it as a way of revealing, a fundamental mode of human existence that shapes
how we understand and interact with the world.

Heidegger approaches the problem of technology with the purpose of finding its
essence. The method is that of reducing technology to its fundamental being, so that all
problems and aspects thereof may be understood. Heidegger pays special attention to
language, frequently referring to the Greek and Latin origins of the vocabulary he
introduces. In this manner, he successively reduces the essence of technology to simpler
and more basic concepts until its relation to humankind is apparent. He is particularly fond
of verbs. The essence of modern technology becomes a type of happening. After laying
bare the nature of modern technology, Heidegger proceeds to identify the
danger and saving power contained therein. As the "later Heidegger," Heidegger
believes truth to be better approachable through poetry, through art, than by logic or
science, and art is the essence of the salvation of technology. The rhetorical form of the
article is to carefully characterize modern technology as a seemingly insoluble problem,
then find the solution in the problem's very definition.
Explication of Heidegger's reduction of technology will involve a series of definitions
corresponding to the steps by which he strips technology down to its essence.
 1. Instrumentality: technology is an instrument to achieve human ends, specifically
those of building up or arranging.
Technology is slipping out of control and its nature as an instrument causes
frustration and excites the will to re-master it, which is a large factor in the growing
discomfort with modern technology.

2. Causality: instruments are designed to for the purpose of causing an end.

A deeper look into causality reveals that the end is the beginning: a cause is
that to which something is indebted and the purpose for which an instrument is
designed is the primary cause of its coming into being. The essence of causality is
reduced to an occasioning, that is a bringing forth into presencing of something
which is not presencing, the Greek poiesis.

3. Revealing: something is brought forth only when it passes from concealment into
unconcealment; when it is revealed.
Heidegger claims that revealing is what "truth" really means. The Greek for
revealing, aletheia, is translated into veritas, truth, by the Romans. The equating of
revealing with truth is pertinent to understanding the danger of technology.

The Danger:
Heidegger now separates modern technology from previous technology and
specifies its peculiar type of revealing. This he shows to be a danger to humankind.
Modern technology is based on modern physics, which is an exact science. It differs from
previous technology in that it does not humble itself to natural forces like the windmill to
wind. Rather, through physics, we can know the energy stored in nature and we can set
upon nature and challenge it to release this energy. We mine coal and damn, rivers,
thereby controlling resources, not merely harvesting them. Objects then
become standing-reserve, ready to be ordered about by humans.
Humans, however, are not the masters. We do not control revealing itself. The
"real shows itself or withdraws". Revealing does not occur beyond humans, but also not
decisively or exclusively in us. Thus we respond to "that challenging claim which gathers
man thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve." In this way, we ourselves are
standing reserve, being challenged to set upon all things, including ourselves, that they
may be ready to be ordered about. This form of revealing is the essence of modern
technology and Heidegger calls it Enframing. Revealing is not only a bringing forth, it is
a destining, for that which revealing brings forth, revealing also starts upon its way. The
revealing to us of Enframing destines us into the process of Enframing, and here lies the
danger.
 This danger is the danger to the freedom of humankind. For Heidegger, "freedom
is the realm of the destining that at any given time starts a revealing upon its way". Simply
put, freedom is that revealing that destines more revealings. It is the revealing of the veil
from under which revealing comes, as a veil. More simply put, it is the revealing of the
fact that more revealings are possible.
Enframing destines us to Enframe. However, we appear to have such a decisive
role in Enframing that we see ourselves as the masters of the world, the orderers of
standing-reserve. In fact, we are but one standing-reserve ordering others because we
are employed merely to the purpose of creating standing-reserve. When this purpose is
governing our activity, we are so engrossed in ordering and securing standing-reserve
that we do not recognize Enframing as a revealing. We thus lose awareness of our
capacity for revelation. All objects become forms of standing-reserve, and we feel that we
encounter only ourselves, but in fact, we do not encounter our essence, because this
essence is revelation. Recall that freedom is the revealing of the possibility of more
revealings. When we lose all awareness of revealing in general, we lose this also. We
continue to blindly challenge and order standing-reserves.

The Saving Power:

The essence of technology contains the extreme danger to humankind by
threatening the loss of what is most essentially human, our capacity for new revealings.
The essence of technology is the revealing of Enframing and in that way, technology's
essence is a permanent enduring in the sense of Plato's Ideas (or Forms). Again,
Heidegger returns to language and notes that Goethe once equated to endure (währen)
with to grant (gewähren). He claims "that which endures most primally out of the earliest
beginning is what grants" (p.31). Enframing, though it presents the extreme danger of
making impossible other destining revealings, is also a granting and as such gives
humankind what we need, but cannot make: a part in the "coming-to-pass of truth" (p.32).
Enframing is a type of revealing and seen as such it contains the saving power that is the
granting of revealing. We must pay attention to the coming to presence of technology, as
opposed to the material products of technology, and we may see the process of revealing
as opposed to the standing-reserve as which technology causes things to reveal
themselves.

The saving power lies in looking into the extreme danger. We must look past the
technological toward the essence of technology, the destining revealing that endangers
our freedom. The arising of the saving power in this essence is the fact that it shows us
that mankind belongs to revealing, to the coming to presence of truth. The essence of
technology is part of the constellation of concealment and unconcealment, in which truth
comes to presence. The sight of the saving power, however, is not the same as being
saved. In addition to looking into the danger, Heidegger suggests a more tangible path to
salvation.

Heidegger's definition of technology goes beyond the practical or functional

aspects of tools and machines. He sees technology as a fundamental way in which
human beings disclose reality, shaping our relationship with the world in profound ways.
While he acknowledges the potential of technology to transform our existence, he warns
of its dangers and urges us to develop a more reflective and mindful relationship with it.

Heidegger’s work encourages a deeper philosophical inquiry into how technology

affects our understanding of the world and our place within it, challenging us to think
beyond the mere utility of technological advancements.

References:
Amadio, A. H., & Kenny, A. J. (1999, May 27). Aristotle | Biography, Works, Quotes,
Philosophy, Ethics, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle

Naess, A. D., & Wolin, R. (1998, July 20). Martin Heidegger | Biography, Philosophy,
Nazism, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Heidegger-German-philosopher