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Class #27:Hans Jonas, “The Altered Nature of Human Action,” The Imperative of Responsibility

Hans Jonas is arguing that technology has changed the way humans act. Before they acted different before modern technology .He believes that humans acted different before modern technology; therefore modern technology has created the need for an entirely new kind of ethic. Technology has changed the nature of action itself. Ethics is all about actions, a new kind of action means we need a new kind of ethic. Before modern tech, nature as a whole was unaffected. “Old” action before modern technology was limited to the present, confined to the present generation, did not have accumulative character, no large ripple effects; we could predict consequences of our actions. Before modern technology tech was a simple means to an end and still very limited. There was still this understanding that humans were smart and great, however nature was still more powerful. Innovation and the new coming of modern technology bring about “New” action. This “new” action has an accumulative...
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Class #26: Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”

Heidegger begins with defining what technology is. Technology is a means to an end and is a human tool. He is concerned with understand the essence of technology. He believes the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. We are missing out on the “essence” of technology because we have grown to not take notice of certain aspects of the technologies we use. Technology is a mode of revealing; it comes to presence in the realm where revealing and un-concealment take place, where truth happens. Heidegger speaks of truth, aletheia, and the un-concealing of the essence. Modern technology does not look to nature for its resources but looks to manipulate nature instead. Scientist is at the forefront of this. Heidegger makes it clear that he is not against technology, however he is searching for what makes modern technology different. He argues that modern technology, in its mutual relationship of dependency with modern physics, is also ‘revealin...
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Class #24: Steven Vogel, “On Environmental Philosophy and Continental Thought”

Nature as origin critique represents the background prior to humans, therefor making this view separate to humans. However humanity emerged from this nature, the sphere of nature is separate from the human social sphere. In this critique nature is positioned versus artificial, and nature versus social. The problem is when us humans forget that we are a part of nature, and this sense of alienation is created. Humans are natural, however human activity is unnatural. The critique nature says à nature is a social construct. We lack a concept for that thing to be saved or preserved when we don’t look at nature as an origin, if we want to defend nature, their needs to exist a thing to defend in the first place. Nature as difference critique represents nature as this otherness, a resistance, and nature just is the inescapable moment of otherness. The problem is we can’t talk about it. Nature is built through our practices, constructed through our lab...
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Class #23: Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene”

Heather Davis and Zoe Todd point out the failure of the Anthropocene, as a name to be assigned to today’s epoch. The start date that is being chosen for the Anthropocene is mid twentieth century 1964.  They are drawing connections saying that the Anthropocene, is explicitly linked to the beginnings of colonization. By linking the Anthropocene with colonization, it draws attention to the violence at its core, and calls for the consideration of Indigenous philosophies and processes of Indigenous self-governance as a necessary political corrective, alongside the self-determination of other communities and societies violently impacted by the white supremacist, colonial, and capitalist logics instantiated in the origins of the Anthropocene. They feel that the Anthropocene betrays itself in its name: in its reassertion of universality, it implicitly aligns itself with the colonial era. Heather Davis and Zoe Todd propose a 1610 start date to coincide with colonization p...
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