Abstract
This paper places certain religious ideas of Eastern Christianity about our relationship to nature critically against techno-scientific thinking and practice. Specifically, the two focal issues of the discussion are the concept of religious sin, on the one hand, and the peculiarly modern fusion of science and technology, resulting in the novel phenomenon of techno-science, on the other. Two corresponding theses are advanced: that of sin as an epistemic, and not as a moral, error, and that of the “Eucharistic” viz., celebratory relation with God. The paper then proceeds to trace significant parallels that may be discerned between the Orthodox theological view and Heidegger’s position on technology, and metaphysics more generally, culminating in the suggestion that the way out of the ‘danger’ of technology as techno-science must be found in art or religion.
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Notes
Here I have in mind some recent readings of Patristic texts that claim to reveal an acceptance of evolutionary doctrines on the part of certain Fathers reconciled with the official doctrine of the creation ex nihilo. One such text is the Exahemeron of St. Basil. See a relevant anthology in Th. Natsou et al. 1999. One particular issue that may pose problems for Orthodox theology is human cloning which may well be accepted given St. John Damascene’s view of human beings as a ‘microcosmos’ and the whole created nature as ‘microanthropos’, thus positioning humans in the middle between creation and God. Shouldn’t reproduction in the form of cloning be acceptable then? For relevant texts see Pelikan (1974) and for some recent work by Orthodox writers see Begzos (1992), Breck (1998) and Chatzinikolaou (n.d.).
This is quite evident in the difficulties the Natural Law doctrine has had to solve with respect to what is to be considered as a legitimate extension of nature (e.g., building a house) without violating any Natural Law, which is itself unalterable in its first principles anyway. Hence the doctrines of subtraction and addition: see Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q. 94, aa. 5. Cf. a more modern version of this issue in contemporary Catholic interdictions of contraception in e.g., Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, § 16 that opposes the legitimate use of natural disposition (rhythm method) to the illegitimate impeding of the development of natural process (contraception), i.e., using ‘technologically’ generated (but not artificial?) means to thwart a natural outcome (procreation).
Contemporary political, moral and environmental discussions about ‘extending’ the range of the recipients of moral worth, and the types of participating elements in the ethical community to encompass hitherto excluded species and entities (animals, unidentified strangers, the environment and so on) bear a close similarity to Orthodox theologians’ demand for a restructuring of ethical relations connecting human beings and all natural species, not only humans amongst themselves.
For the purposes of this paper and in bringing out some of the most characteristic theses of the Greek Patristic tradition in a manageable manner, I avoid referring to the original texts of the Patrologia Graeca or the Sources Chrétiennes. Instead, I concentrate at this stage on some of the ideas of St. Symeon the New Theologian whose ideas can be found presented in the excellent study of Keselopoulos 1989. I owe a lot to this book. For a general history of the notion of original sin see Minois (2002).
By Techno-Science I mean the conscious fusion of Technology and Science in such a way that no logical distinction hitherto maintained between the two can any longer be sustained. For what the logical distinction involves (which I think is outmoded by now) see Polanyi 1958, 174-84. Ihde (1991, p. 62) correctly points out that Heidegger gives a profound analysis of the fact that science is dominated by technology, to put it crudely, but that this was first conceived by Bacon. For recent controversies on the notion of technoscience see Barnes (2005).
On this and the further thesis that modern technology fused with science may be seen to have its roots in the Western Church see the seminal work of White 1967. See also White 1962. White’s thesis, as is well known, has been the subject of critique, rejection, or emendation by other scholars. The historical accuracy of the thesis is not my concern here.
Strictly speaking after St Athanasius the radical separation of God and the created that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo necessitated cut out the soul from its erstwhile power to contemplate the divine. This is one further difficulty in effecting a smoothly linear orthodox view. Cf Louth 1981 ch. V.
In the last of his Gifford Lectures published under the title Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg relates a rather telling Hasidic story in which the importance of Technology was ascertained by a wise old rabbi as providing us with the chance to reflect upon the nature (and possible danger) of mundane things. In this sense technology may become acceptable and thus of value as symbolic, by default.
I have in mind here some comments by Gadamer in relation to Heidegger on a different but related occasion, viz. ancient Greek philosophy: see for instance the remarks of the Editor and Translator P. Christopher Smith in note 3 on p. 167 in Gadamer’s 1986. There Smith notices the connection with Heidegger’s Heraklit, part 2, and talks about the “inauthentic existence of those who are caught in the patterns of everyday pursuit, and who, unthinking and deaf, remain oblivious to logos”. To the extent that techno-scientific immersion results in such a clattering of noises, this is an apt description of our situation. It is furthermore very close to the Orthodox view of the “logos of all things” found principally in St. Maximus the Confessor. For the latter see K. Zachos 1998. Cf. Thunberg (1985).
For the following views on Orthodox philosophical psychology as they appear in my text I rely considerably on the excellent study of the late P. Sherrard 1987. To avoid clattering the text I refrain from putting page references to his work. All the information is taken from Sherrard for the purposes of later comparisons. Cf. Sherrard (1959).
For the official view about icons during the Byzantine era see the classic study of Grabar 1979, 259-60: icons contain sacred energy because the energy of the original entity (e.g., a saint’s face) whose image is imprinted on it is ‘retained in the shadow’ of the image projected.
The non-Christian views on these are in certain respects closer to the Orthodox tradition. I cite here merely as an example the thought of the Sufi Rŭmĭ, see, e.g.: “The spirit of all sciences is only this: to know who you will be on the Day of Resurrection” (Chittick 1983, 128); cf. also his quasi-Socratic/Platonic notion that all of Adam’s knowledge was to be found in him already at the start, and hence Adam was like a mirror of God’s attributes (ibid., 62).
For this and the next paragraph I am indebted to Keselopoulos 1989.
Zezioulas 1992, 119-120 (these studies were first published in the King’s College Theological Review, 12 & 13, 1989 & 1990).
The following points of mine are related to Heidegger’s text ‘Phenomenology and Theology’ in Pathmarks.
Though Heidegger does not mention this, the best example of what he has in mind is Leibniz’s efforts to demonstrate the reality of sin in this way.
The famous phrase about questioning being the piety of thought comes very close, suitably modified, to the Orthodox idea of hearing the logos of all entia, as for instance in St. Maximus.
‘The Question Concerning Technology’ in Heidegger 1977, 26. About the antithesis between the natural vs. the supernatural in particular, a dichotomy so much deplored by contemporary Orthodox theologians, the best place to look at is the essay in the same volume ‘The Word of Nietzsche: “God Is Dead”’. On the will to will as a topic developed in this latter essay see also Heidegger 1998, 231.
In the essay ‘On the Essence and Concept of Φύσις in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1’ in Heidegger 1998, 197, Heidegger brings forth another related illusion this time with respect to the claim that supposedly “modern humanity is rushing headlong toward this goal of producing itself technologically. If humanity achieves this, it will have exploded itself, i.e., its essence qua subjectivity, into thin air, into a region where the absolutely meaningless is valued as the one and “only” meaning and where preserving this value appears as the human “domination” of the globe.” Here we must keep in mind the context within these pronouncements are made: Heidegger is making the more general point that any human technē, like e.g. medicine, can ever replace physis which is the exclusive purveyor of any archē, i.e., principles such as the ones on which any cure depends. But the more general point extracted is that such a principle could be totally transferred from physis to technē only when life becomes ‘a “technically” producible artifact’ (ibid.) in which case subjectivity is lost. The lesson Heidegger drives home for us is that any technique (including those based on advanced scientific reason) is only ‘parasitic’ or kata symvvēkos (he uses Aristotle’s term) or ‘in addition’ in the sense that in its essence it is not autonomous from physis. This dispersion or fading away of subjectivity into thin air by means of a toatalizing technical reproduction of life – substituting nature – is I think better understood in relation to what Heidegger says elsewhere about the consuming character of calculation (‘Postcript to Metaphysics, ibid. 235). Technique eliminating subjectivity is analogous to calculating thinking that absorbs and consumes all beings made thus countable.
See the essay ‘The Age of the World Picture’ in Heidegger 1977.
See W. Lovitt’s Introduction in Heidegger 1977, xxxvi, and Heidegger’s own analysis in 40-49; notice also Heidegger’s highly ‘theologically sounding’ language on p. 42 in particular when he refers to man as the “shepherd of Being” as well as of course his whole discourse on ‘saving’ and ‘safe-keeping’.
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Kaldis, B. Techno-Science and Religious Sin: Orthodox Theology and Heidegger. SOPHIA 47, 107–128 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0067-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0067-2