Reflection And Criticism Of Technical Practice

Helmut Gollwitzer, the famous contemporary Germany ethicist and philosopherof Left Christian, once evaluated Guenther Anders as follows:“Anders is one of themost important writers in recent years. Everyone who wants to know what kind ofworld he or she lives in and walk out of personal little world to participate in the realworld, no matter whether his or her participation would change the world, should readAnders’s works in any case.” What makes Anders differ from traditional philosophersis that he appealed philosophy to get out of ivory tower and inquire into the specificproblems of human existence with philosophy. He took an active part in the events ofanti-nuclear, anti-war and modernity criticism. Die Antiquiertheit Des Menschen wasthe masterpiece of his modern technical criticism. As a text basis, Die AntiquiertheitDes Menschen demonstrated modern technology from the viewpoint of Anders.Anders believed that practical activity through multi-media was the most directactivity form of technical practice. Firstly he started modern media criticism. Anderswas the first philosophy who realized that television was not only a medium thatcreated an imaginary world, but also a machine that created special types of human.Therefore, television brought up “Mass Recluse” as the “Mass Recluse Machine”.Unique individual in reality became “Mass Recluse”,“Obedient Slave” and “Peoplefrom Consumed World”. Anders started with modern media criticism and went on tomodern technical criticism. When inquiring into technical alienation, Anders alsocriticized that technology made people lose their consciousness. He demonstratedhow people lost their consciousness through two historical stages. One was“Prometheus’s Shame” that demonstrated the loss of human object consciousness.The other one was “Doomsday Blindness” that demonstrated the loss of human selfconsciousness. Anders revealed human existence through criticism of machine and atomic boom, which was “No Time Exist”. Through the above analysis, it shows thatAnders paid special attention to the fate of the world, the fate of the human, andespecially the fate of the individual. So he didn’t stop there, instead, Anders started adeeper criticism on modern technical ethic. The third industrial revolution brought aninternal revolution to human. People developed into the tool-maker from the tool-userand then developed into people as raw materials. The life code was gradually solved,so human lost the naturalness. Moreover, the third industrial revolution brought arapid progress in network, so human became transparent. Anders thought, under thedemand of today’s technical ethnic,“actions should be taken to make your subjectivedesire be treated as generally created demand at any time.” This kind of ethicalabsolute order is not the practice activity in the sense of ethical moral any more, butthe practice activity in the sense of technical ethic. In fact, this is the reflection andcriticism of Kant’s sense of moral practice that develops into Anders’s reflection andcriticism of technical practices.