|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
In Defense of Technology: A Respectful Reply to Grant
| Article
# : |
10681 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1986 |
3,521 Words |
| Author
: |
Frank Flinn
Frank Flinn is a consultant in Forensic Religion and a
consultant to the International Religious Foundation. |
Does the coming to be of technological civilization portend the final darkening of the idea of justice in the way the West lives, moves, and has its being in the world? Readers of George Grant's English-Speaking Justice often believe that is what he is saying. But Grant has warned his readers that he is speaking in terms of neither pessimism nor optimism. He is simply trying to uncover what is. And the principal reality that Grant believes he has uncovered is that there has been a darkening of clarity about justice both on the practical and theoretical levels in the age that defines itself as technological.
An important question is: what does Grant mean by technology? And an equally important question is: what does he mean by justice? There are no simple answers to these questions, as Grant has gone through various stages of thought in which his ideas about technology and justice have changed. A brief overview of those phases is in order.
Stages of Grant's Thought
The first phase of Grant's thought was summed up in Philosophy in the Mass Age (1959; reissued in 1966). In that book he tried to hold together the philosophy of Plato with the philosophy of Hegel, and to evaluate fairly the competing claims of Marxism and pragmatism in our times. Grant summarized the conflict between the ancients and the moderns under the terms "myth" and "history." He gathered under the term "myth" the ideas of nature as a cosmos, natural law, ethical limits to action, time as the moving image of an unmoved eternity and contemplation. Under the term "history" he gathered the notions of freedom, time as progress, limitless technological advance, and action.
... (1999 of 20938 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
