Oldal 28 [28]
OCR
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.
