Abstract

The goal of the paper is to establish a diagnosis of the actual situation of how technologies influence our morality and ethics. The preconceptions of the greatest philosophers of technology are, in this respect, rather pessimistic. Technology is a growing power with growing autonomy from humans. As it will be demonstrated it does change what we believe is good and right, and the change does not seem to be a good one. Nobody questions the danger technological development may bring about. Deep philosophical analyses carried out by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul help us understand those processes and give us knowledge for appropriate counteract if needed. Both of them believe that the new, ‘technological’ ethics promotes its own values and diminishes the importance of the old ones. In this context, if nothing should be done, the future generations might have entirely different moral point of view than we do. I think that it is our moral duty to preserve our moral ideals. For if we are truly convinced about the rightness of our ethical mindset we are obliged to promote it and conserve it. Technology favours consequentialism over deontology, moral relativism over moral realism. The only way to secure our values for the future is by addressing this technology determined ethical change in the context of moral realism. Personalism seems to be the most suitable candidate here. This paper however will not provide arguments for that. Its intention is to serve as an expression of the today’s challenges for personalism. The article begins with a thorough explanation of the phenomenon of technology and its development. The next section is dedicated to the examination of autonomy of Technology. Thereafter, I discuss the utopian and dystopian approaches toward the technological development, as well as describe possible dangers stemming from it. The following section focuses on Heidegger’s notion of the essence of technology and his ideas how Technology reduces everything, including human beings, into standing-reserve. Subsequently I try to explain why technologies may be so confusing from the axiological point of view. I end the paper with a formulation of the challenge and a request directed to personalistic moral philosophers to take into account the changes that Technology has introduced. For ethics to be widely accepted must be firmly grounded in reality.