The Cautionary Ontological Approach To Technology of Gabriel Marcel

[Jim Choate]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote:

> The Cautionary Ontological Approach To Technology of Gabriel Marcel
> http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Tech/TechGend.htm
> 
> ABSTRACT: I present the arguments of Gabriel Marcel which are intended to 
> overcome the potentially negative impact of technology on the human. Marcel 
> is concerned with forgetting or rejecting human nature. His perspective is 
> metaphysical. He is concerned with the attitude of the "mere technician" 
> who is so immersed in technology that the values which promote him as an 
> authentic person with human dignity are discredited, omitted, denied, 
> minimized, overshadowed, or displaced. He reviews the various losses in 
> ontological values which curtail the full realization of the human person 
> in his dignity. The impact of technology leads too often to a loss of the 
> sense of the mystery of being and self, authenticity and integrity, the 
> concrete and the existential, truth and dialogue, freedom and lover, 
> humanity and community, fidelity and creativity, the natural and the 
> transcendent, commitment and virtue, respect of the self and responsiveness 
> to others, and especially of the spiritual and the sacred. Thus, the task 
> of the philosopher is to be a watchman, un veilleur, on the alert for a 
> hopeful resolution of the human predicament.

Then accept your humanity, that is the only resolution to the 'human
predicament'. (as if there were a predicament outside of the belief that
humans are somehow outside of the rest of the cosmology - philosophers are
always trying to escape rather than face)


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                Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
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