Page 188 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHILOSOPHY AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS 181

faith in the Holy Trinity of scientific progress, technological innovation
and economic growth have become the new world religion.
All cultural formations rest ultimately on a religious foundation, on a
conception of the holy and of the ultimate ends. If a cultural formation
loses its reUgious legitimations, if it can no longer mobilize the religious
energies of its members, it is doomed. The religion of modernization is
radically human-centered and worldly. Self-deification and worldly
self-salvation are its two fundamental articles of faith. God is almighty;
he knows all and because he knows all, he can control, manipulate,
change all and fabricate everything imaginable. The progress of science
and technology is the becoming of the almighty human God or the godly
Human. But as almighty human God humankind can take its salvation
into its own hands. We do not have to wait for some act of grace from
above, we can deliver ourselves from hunger and misery, from scarcity
and disease, from war and violence and eventually, who knows, from
death. With the help of modern science, modern technology and the
industrial forces of production we are on a steady path to earthly
paradise where there is plenty of everything for everyone, from an
electric tooth-brush to a whirlpool. It should be stressed, however, that
material welfare and abundance was indeed a central element of the
Utopian vision of the modern age, but its vision included as well liberal
democracy, human rights, rational and peaceful solution of conflicts,
efficient, equitable and accountable government etc.
A remarkable contradiction, however, is to be noted in this religion of
the modern age between its optimistic beUef in progress, its belief in
progressive human self-deification and self-salvation on the one hand and
its pessimistic anthropology on the other. Human history had to be
submitted to an anonymous and autonomous economic mechanism that
has created a permanent war-like competition, a struggle for survival
between the economic subjects. Without this anonymous whip of
competition, without the constant appeal to and the stimulation of greed,
jealousy and aggression, humankind would quickly fall back into their
pre-modern sloth. The hberation from first nature, the Uberation from
tradition, modern freedom and autonomy, were only to be had at the
price of total submission to the iron laws of the second nature, those of
the industrial capitalist system.
The spectacular achievements of the modern age regarding science,
technology and economic growth cannot be denied. It can even be argued
that the rule of reason, law and decency has won some terrain from the