The question concerning technology: a japanese reply

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2024

Authors

Carvalho, Tiago Mesquita (Author) FLUP

Journal

Title: East Asian Journal of Philosophy (EAJP)

Vol. 3 No. 1

Pages: 159-187

ISSN: 2813-0448

Publisher: sdvig press

Other information

DOI: 10.19079/eajp.3.1.159

Abstract (EN): This paper explores the common idea that Japanese Buddhism presents conceptual resources for an alternative understanding of the challenges of the Anthropocene. Using Heidegger’s thought, I examine how Japanese Buddhism envisages the relationship between human beings and nature and its bearing on how technology is conceived. The idea that a whole culture’s commendable or reprehensible environmental performance can be entirely inferred from its metaphysical background should be dismissed. Japan is a case in point given its ruinous environmental history. I nevertheless accept that comparative studies are relevant as the Japanese art of gardens is an example of a focal practice able to co-exist with technology while revealing nature as it is itself and not as a resource. In this way one may overcome the West’s Frankenstein syndrome by which technology is seen as something beyond control, but also has implications on how man-made disasters can be taken as natural events.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific