Cultural Resources for Coping with Technological Progress

One of the most important factors affecting the future of mankind is the progress at technology. In my paper I shall ask how far human values are endangered by technological development and, conversely, how far certain restrictions placed on technology by these human values can be justified. It seems to me, however, that to specify such values and to legitimise certain restrictions on technological progress would be a very abstract undertaking. We philosophers are often satisfied if we can present conclusive arguments in our papers and books. Technological development, by contrast, is a very concrete and powerful movement which impinges on and changes the living conditions of human beings throughout the world. I should like to call this process the globalisation of technical civilisation. It serves little purpose to agree in an abstract and universalistic way on certain values which might possibly be endangered by this process. In my view we ought rather to ask about the resources which are available in the various regional cultures of humanity to enable those regions to come to terms with technological development. I am not, therefore, asking about human values in general, but about values which are realised in cultural praxis, that is, in modes of living, in customary behaviour, in institutions and, more generally, in forms of communal life. I am not asking in general terms about the cultural resources for assimilating the effects of technology. Instead, I shall argue from the background of European or even more specifically German history and