Date:2/17/08
Published in SCIENCE,TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN VALUES: International
Symposium Proceedings. Eds. L. G. Christophorou and C. Drakatos. The Academy
of Athens, 2007, pp. 135-9.
The Universal Values of the Hellenic Tradition in the Age of Technology
By John P. Anton*
Paper presented at the Academy of Athens International Symposium on “Science,
Technology and Human Values. Athens, Greece. May 2-4, 2007.
I should like to open with a statement on the Hellenic meaning of human values as arete,
best translated as “excellence.” It was viewed as a pervasive value as well as the
fulfillment of human entelecheia, our potentialities, which include reason and are present
as the native endowment of all human beings. Culture, understood in its social and
political mission, has as its role the securing of the conditions for the development of the
human potentialities. Seen as education, culture or paideia is tested by the role it assigns
to science, art, and all institutions in general, including the government itself. The success
of paideia is measured by the degree of integration of human excellences it promotes as a
consistent unity that renders the human personality harmonious. The Greeks were
confident in their idea of excellence as the value that sustains political well-being. They
were equally aware of the difficulties that more often than not prevent the people from
reaching their highest plateau of development. But to move steadily on the path of
fulfillment human beings need the cooperation of episteme, techne and praxis: science,
art and action. All three in their proper mode of interaction is what grants any given
constitution whatever value it can claim to possess. Hence, statesmanship, as Plato and
Aristotle insisted, is the highest, the architektonike art, where the logos of techne and of
science meet as philosophia.
I will now proceed to comment on the role of technology in the shaping of values in the
contemporary world. There can be no doubt about the spectacular developments of
technology and its influential role in human affairs. However, without the scientific
discoveries and their applications to meet projected human needs the immense expansion
of technology in our times could not have taken place. Given this practical function of
technology as an enterprise, its role is still limited to providing solutions to certain basic
needs. While it contributes to the spread of leisure it also serves coordinately the pursuit
of profits through organized industry and the business establishment. To be sure, there is
a working alliance between science and technology, including business, as they facilitate
communication, create job opportunities, and expand educational programs, to which we
should add new forms of international cooperation and competition.
The basic question now is this: does technology create universal values? In exploring the
related issues, we soon become aware of a crucial difficulty. It comes to a head as soon as
we realize that the constantly surfacing demands for satisfactions, even when they meet
certain criteria, fail to gain recognition as universal values valid for all human beings, all
times, and all circumstances. It is not difficult to admit why the values that technology
generates are not universal, even if technology serves many human needs in a variety of
ways. Their wide appeal is due to their serving as means to other purposes and other
higher values.
The philosophers of Greece were right to introduce the distinction between values that
are only means and values that qualify exclusively as ends. I take it that the expression
“human values” in the title of our Symposium refers to values that are at once universal
and ultimate. Without this distinction, the expression “human values” falls flat on its face
as conveying nothing of higher significance. What we are after, and with the help of
scientific inquiry, is precisely the identification of values that are ultimate and universal.
Now, if technology does not and cannot provide such values, we must still ask the
question of what it contributes to our quest. Whatever the answer, it would still be folly to
deny technology its place in human affairs. But that is not the issue.
Since technology inevitably provides mainly a variety of values as means, it does not and
cannot function as a fount of ultimate and universal values. Hence, these “human values”
as we are now labeling them, must come from another source. This is an urgent and basic
demand of our times, given the constant series of crises humanity has been experiencing
throughout history. The problem has become even more acute in our times, especially
after the two world wars of the last century, the deterioration of our environmental
conditions as they continue to worsen in the global pollution in the twenty-first century.
To these we may add the utter complexity of our national and international political
affairs and the problems of globalization and conflict resolution.
Science has been declared by many a thinker as being value-neutral. Perhaps, there is
room for such a claim. But its consequences and applications are not. The politics of
technology, as the agency that explores and exploits the applications of scientific
discoveries, usually end up as the politics of power and profit. In light of this
discrepancy, let us then turn to another source, namely culture. Even here we encounter
new problems when we leave unexamined the concept of culture as the source of ultimate
values. Consider, for instance, the historical fluidity of cultural patterns. A current
dominant view about culture sees it only as a phenomenon in constant change. How,
then, can we arrive at universal and ultimate values for the emerging global community
when culture succumbs to the forces of technology that cause constant change? To add
fuel to fire, their very diversity of these forces continues to act as a destabilizing factor.
I must now return to science as the rational inquiry into the nature of things and all
subject matters, including the nature of humanity. The special constancy that science
enjoys is its trust in human intelligence. That alone when fully understood is one of our
ultimate human values although, as such, science exercises little if any control over its
applications. Being uses, they lie beyond the scientific pursuit of truth, even when the
applications themselves become subjects of scientific investigation.
There is much more to the range of human faculties that affects our conduct and our
pursuits. This is an old and still perplexing part of human nature that almost defies our
power of understanding. We are subject to the capricious outbursts and explosions of our
passions, regardless of their usefulness for survival, pleasure and self-promotion in life.
In their own inevitable way, the passionate nature of our existence has its own voice in
the creation and cultivation of values, some good, some unstable, some highly volatile,
and at certain times leading to catastrophes as well as exaltations in poetic visions and
heroic actions. But it is their dark nature, to speak with Plato, which makes the nonrational forces in us open to justifiable suspicion. It is only with the generosity of the
human mind that the passions acquire a status of legitimacy as founts of universal values.
But are they ultimate al well? The sciences do their best to understand the forceful nature
of the emotions, but controlling and turning them into constructive forces fall outside the
scientific endeavor, the role of medicine notwithstanding. Here is where the heritage of
the Hellenic culture and philosophy finds its perennial relevance.
Now for the last and ultimate question: Can we go back, even better, bring back the
universal values of the Greek mind and their ultimate character as they were defended on
the basis of a rational theory of human nature? One thinks of Plato’s Republic and
Aristotle’s De Anima, of the tragedies of the dramatic poets and the epics of Homer. If
modern and contemporary science is committed to a constantly changing view of human
nature, the conclusion must follow that the Hellenic tradition of ultimate values with
permanent validity, is simply and irretrievably dated. The same holds for their
understanding of human nature. If so, there is no room for the classical culture in our
lives nor is there any reason to expect anything to be gained from another renaissance of
the Hellenic tradition. This brings me to Nietzsche as the spokesman for the modern. If
he is right, all posited values are subject to constant re-evaluation. And if evolution is
turned into an absolute thesis affecting all life and all human institutions, the same
conclusion follows. For some, however, the constancy of human nature, as the Greek
sages understood it, remains the only intelligent pre-condition for the rational formulation
of universal human values. If Aristotle’s thesis of entelecheia is declared false, we have
no choice but to abandon the quest for constant and ultimate value principles. Without the
Hellenic vision of life, ethics will continue to remain divorced from politics and both
from the taming of technology to prevent it from degenerating into an abysmal
technocratia and a new form of tyranny which in turn legitimates power as the final goal
and chief authority. Would that lead to a new middle ages? Who knows?
* Johm Anton is Distinguished Professor of Greek Philosophy and Culture at the
University of South Florida