History, Metaphors, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader by Hans Blumenberg

Author:Hans Blumenberg [Blumenberg, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Philosophy, Germany, History & Surveys, Biography & Autobiography, Philosophers, Europe, History
ISBN: 9781501747991
Google: RQ6aDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell
Published: 2020-06-15T13:52:26+00:00

5. The Abrogation of the Medieval Separation of Use and Enjoyment

A formidable objection to this account may now be raised: How, with these fundamental conditions in place, could the Middle Ages—the historical sphere of a Christian ontology—be such an untechnical era, in phenomenal terms? Against this objection, it must be brought to bear not only that the genuinely Christian driving forces in the Middle Ages were decisively hidden and kept latent by the impact of ancient metaphysics, which is hardly to be overestimated, but also that against a dynamic realization of these forces stood a peculiarity of the Middle Ages, which was to curtail the exigencies of the world and secular existence sub specie æternitatis [under the aspect of eternity]. Augustine’s formulation, according to which relations with the world were restricted to uti (use) while reserving frui (enjoyment) for the consummation of being in the hereafter as the absolute goal, provides the clearest illustration of this view.8 The significance of this reservation in keeping latent the impulses stimulating technology finds confirmation when viewed from that era’s end: among the decisive preconditions for the specific technical and economic development of the modern age is the abrogation of the difference between uti and frui, between use and enjoyment. The necessary use of nature finds fulfillment in its free and self-sufficient enjoyment.

What emerges ever more clearly is that to define technology as the application of modern science is insufficient as an explanation of its place in the picture of the modern age. For it is not at all self-evident that understanding should not be sufficient unto itself and self-contained, and instead demands application. Classical antiquity found understanding [Erkenntnis] and the knowledge [Wissen] that came with it to be the highest good and the epitome of human striving, as the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics testifies [Met., 1.1.980a22]. Why, at the outset of the modern age, knowledge came to be no longer sufficient unto itself can hence not be accounted for by saying it demanded to be applied. A more plausible interpretation is that the historical understanding of self and world virtually challenged modern science to adopt its instrumental function—indeed, that its own rise was decisively provoked by the advanced state of the technical will. From a philosophical perspective, the commonly assumed precedence of science over technology appears to be inverted.

The consequences of the abrogation of the fundamental medieval difference between use and enjoyment are fathomless. The instrumental use of the world in anticipation of consummation in the hereafter is essentially finite, whereas enjoyment of the world, into which mere use becomes absorbed, is infinite. The replacement of a finite picture of the world by an infinite one—a process in itself characteristic of the epochal threshold of the modern age—also marks this historical line. Though the consequences will only emerge much later, the decisive transition is, in principle, already made here, leading from the use of nature and the application of its laws to its unremitting exploitation and conquest through which the dynamic of technology furnishes its own meaning.

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