14 I CHRONICLESnTECHNOLOGY AND THE ETHICALnIMPERATIVE by Thomas MolnarnThere is a very interesting article by Professor DavidnLevy in the February 1987 The World & J, whichndeserves a further meditation on the issue it raises. Twonthinkers provide Levy with his point of speculative take-off:nArnold Gehlen {Man in the Age of Technology) and HansnJonas (The Imperative of Responsibility). Their fundamentalnthesis, that Levy (a professor at the Middlesex Polytechnicnin London) makes his own, is that modern technologynhas become something else and something more than thenmain formative influence of a new civilization — mankindnfaces technology as it once faced nature itself, that is, as annoverwhelming power against which protection must bensought. What the 19th century called “progress,” linked tongreat expectations, we have come to experience as anfrightening presence and a dehumanized perspective. Thendifference is even more important: Nature is not man’sncreation; it used to stand in awesome magnitude that wasnimperative to reduce to manageability. Technology is anhuman product; it grew out of the enthusiastic effort tondomesticate nature. Now that the task is to a large extentnaccomplished, and since we cannot go into reverse accordingnto the modern industrial ethos, the new task, accordingnto Jonas and Levy, is to find lessons “in archaic conceptionsnQn^MffifO/^ai InIM^mnk ^ MKmnE^in^^^H|I ‘nr’^P^^^nSJP ‘fejLiton’tf^^Pln’^M^B^ra^^//n^ ^ ^ mmw^^m.nI^mf^^^-ftS^fiv^ ^^m^/^,^ ^ “%nMI^^^Mn^^m^ 4^m râ„¢ l^^p*n*#*•n’>?^^^*^I^I^kMn^ ^ ^ ^nQp^pr’^^i’njr „ ‘JPTillLj – .wtinvSOtfu//Tlma^^nvV ..^Si^^W Iwn^^^^^^^^^mf'” w^^ 1 ^^i^-d^^n’ ,-^M v>*^nX^vnft^ls^S^ny^Wj^ _^mLM fn1 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ” /nJ^^^^Kn^5^’ f ^ ‘^ w^ Ja^^n^^Pv ^^^^n^M^^^^gjiny..K.5.2’f- jnThomas Molar is visiting professor of religious studies atnYale University and author of The Pagan Temptationn(Eerdmans).nnnof world order and man’s place within it.” These lessonsnwould be more “salutary than [those offered by] the stillnpotent legacy of Enlightenment optimism.” With HansnJonas, the author opts for a “heuristic of fear” and an “ethicnof cosmic responsibility,” whose consequence he expects tonbe the realization that we, human societies, have become asnresponsible for nature’s integrity as we have been for thenintegrity of our cultural institutions.nAn admirable discovery, diagnosis, and proposal. Thenreasoning is a part of a great current of “reactionary”nspeculation by a line of authors who had dedicated themselvesnto the critique of modern mechanization: Bergson,nOrtega, W. Weidle, Sedlmayr, Guenon, Ellul, and, whynnot, Heidegger. These men have investigated the phenomenonnof dehumanization and mechanization in philosophy,nscience, art, literature, and social institutions, and theynconstitute a sturdy group of opponents to our mindlessnenthusiasm as Zauberlehrlinge. The last reference suggests,nby the way, that the “heuristics of fear” has roots in thenperhaps overmaligned 18th century, of not only the Enlightenmentnbut also of G. Vico, Rousseau, and Goethe. Allnthree displayed an early sensitivity to what was to becomenthe modern devastation.nIt seems to me, however, that the call for a salutary fearnand an ethics of responsibility is rather ineffective. It maynalso be an oversimplification to hold that technology presentsnus with the core of a new civilization, challenging usnsimply with its own problems in need of definition andnhuman decisions. As Gehlen realistically says, men knowntoday that “they cannot count on an internal constraintnupon the use of [the now available technical] power, sincenthe tendency for two hundred years has been exactly tonremove such constraints … in favor of efficiency.” Thusnfor Levy and Jonas to expect hubris-drenched modern mannto fear and denounce technology and feel responsible fornthe wasteland he has created is naive. By force of habit, ofndaily, hourly persuasion, and sophisticated indoctrination,nwe have reached a point where we do not sense thenconfiguration of the milieu. Technology for us is representednby machines which do a job, from dishwashers and videoncassettes to jet planes and heart transplants; we are conditionednnot even to notice the further uses and misuses ofntechnology, such as surrogate motherhood or federal monitorsnstationed in bathrooms to detect drugs in the employees’nurine. We are saturated with technology and its effects:nthe destruction of ozone in the atmosphere and thenrepainting, in vivid poster colors, of Michelangelo’s surfacesnin the so-called restoration of the Sistine Chapel.nWe were born in the midst of technology as previousngenerations had been born among gardens, dusty countrynroads, and towns surrounded by walls. In spite of sporadicnawakening to ecological preoccupations, it is unrealistic tontrust the consciousness, as Jonas has it, of “man’s obligationnto nature,” to moderate the horrors being perpetrated daily.nFor one thing, every mutation of the pre-machine age ^n