A Preliminary Study On Philosophy Of Technology Thought Of Karl Jaspers

The author interprets the theories of philosophy of technology of German philosopher Karl Jaspers in a systematic way by mainly introducing his two books - Man in The Modern Age (Die Geistige Situation der Zeit,1931) and The Origin and Goal of History (Vom Ursprung und Zeil der Geschichte, 1949).Jaspers divides the human history by stages from the perspective of civilization morphology. At the same time, the historical term "technology" in the prehistorical civilization period, ancient civilization period, the axial period and the era of technology and science is carefully explored. The two books could be seen as special historical "spiritual products" because they were written during World War I and World War II. Basically, on the one hand, Jaspers considered the wars as stimuli to the development of technology;on the other hand, he thought the development of technology had also led to the fierceness of the wars.From Jaspers' point of view, technology is a means which requires guidance. Technology has brought unprecedented opportunities and risks as well. He had a calm mind and contemplative foresight towards science and technology;he believed that science and technology are a "double-edged sword". Due to the specific ideological background of his life, Jaspers was partially between the traditional engineering philosophy and humanism and between rationalism and non-rationalism. This made him maintain a neutral attitude towards technology. The development of technology is one of the main causes of the mental state at that time. When people enjoy the process of enriching the material life by changing "assumptions" into "realities", at the same time they also suffer from the lack of spirits and constraints of technology.Through the analysis of Jaspers' theories with technology in the history, the author analyzes and comments on the technical controllability based on his philosophy "spirit", "freedom" and "transcendence" from the existentialism perspective. Jaspers, with a unique spirit of freedom, recalled the conscience from the bottom of human hearts in order to ask man to leap forward to the "authentic existence" in the process of "transcendence".