Severino and the Great Reset
Technology and Our Time: Severino writes that “ours is the time that has faith in the power of science”
In “The Fundamental Tendency of Our Time and the Meaning of the Future” (“La tendenza fondamentale del nostro tempo e il senso del futuro,” 1988), Severino writes that “the fundamental tendency now underway on earth is the transition from the ideological organization of existence to the technological organization of existence: the progressive reduction of the ideological obstructions to scientific rationality is an ob- servable – and by now amply observed – phenomenon” (1988c, p. 52). Scientific rationality is the ideology of technology, and it does come with its own ethics. That science is a-moral is one of the great delusions of our time. The scientific world is a world where, as Severino writes in Téchne (2013): technology is “the last God,” just as God was “the first technician.” Whereas ethics used to ally itself with God because God was the most powerful power, now that technology presents itself as the most powerful power, ethics cannot but ally itself with technology. One can imagine what this alliance will mean, what events will un- fold, in all contexts: moral, political, bioethical, etc. The old ethics will be surpassed by the new ethics, where the value will be to es- pouse – as far as possible, and with the greatest coherence –, through law and custom, the only real reigning criterion: the lim- itless increase of power” (p. 22-3).
In Being Born (Nascere, 2005), Severino indicates how this overturning will occur:
Today, human beings appeal to technology for salvation. When they turn to the savior – God or technology –, their goal is their own salvation, and they use the savior as the means. But then they realize that, if the savior is only a means that they own, then the savior is weak, because the weakness of the person who wants to be saved is reflected upon him. From then on, they assume as their new aim the power of the savior itself, and so their will becomes subordinate to the desire that the will of the savior be done. This will cannot be God’s anymore. It can only be the will of technology (2005b, p. 263).
https://core.ac.uk/download/539344826.pdf