Oldal 28 [28]
26 | Tue Puitosopuy or Eco-Po.itics
political power; the goal is opaque. The process is not reminiscent of
the classic dynamic of the perfection of cultural achievements, because
scientific-technological progress itself creates the problems it solves —
and does so continuously.’ Elsewhere Jonas describes the selfishness of
technological progress thus: “Then, so we found, techné was a measured
tribute to necessity, not the road to mankind’s chosen goal, a means
with a finite measure of adequacy to well-defined proximate ends. Now
techné in the form of modern technology has turned to an infinite
forward-thrust of the race, its most significant enterprise in whose
permanent self-transcending advance to ever greater things the vocation
of man tends to be seen, and whose success of maximal control over
things and himself appears as the consummation of his destiny. Thus
the triumph of homo faber over his external object means also his
triumph in the internal constitution of homo sapiens of whom they used
to be a subsidiary part."
2. Farewell from the nineteenth century
The myth of progress was not created by the self-satisfaction of European
man, however, but rather by determined, impatient hope. This word,
future, never had such a tangible reality as in the eyes of our nineteenth
century forebears. Never did humanity prepare itself with such
expectation and excitement for what was to come than they did. This
pervades their greatest intellectual achievements; they denounced their
own era and rejected it as void in the name of the imagined future. Their
fantastic achievements, the train, the telegraph, electric lighting, the
flush toilet, the photograph and the cinema brought this future ever
nearer. In the nineteenth century it was exactly the future that was most
typically nineteenth century. Whoever explains this era without this,
understands nothing of it. Destitute exiles, revolutionaries, scientists
and conspirators planned the future of humanity throughout Europe,
a future which must occur according to the historical, economic or
biological necessity correctly recognised by them. It is after us, who in
the future live a more meaningful, busy life, after us that the heroes of
Chekhov yearn; it is for us that the revolutionaries sacrifice their young
10
Hans Jonas: Towards a Philosophy of Technology. In: Larry Hickman ed.: Technology as
a Human Affair. McGrow & Hill, New York, 1990.
11 Hans Jonas: The Imperative of Responsibility: in Search of an Ethics for the Technological
Age, p.17. The University of Chicago Press 1984.