Human being and power. A pedagogical problem

Within the confines of Romano Guardini’s profound reflection on the concept and experience of ‘power’, it is worth examining the problem of the relationship between human being and technology. Among the most interesting texts for such research is certainly The Power. Attempt at an Orientation (1952), Anxiety for Human being (1966) and Letters from Lake Como, published in 1990. These are works permeated by observations and findings that could be described as assertive, yet constantly posed (probably not only in style) as open questions, unresolved and therefore in need of an answer. Looking again at some of these questions — which may appear to a present-day observer as probably already known — arouses the inevitable astonishment of the far-sightedness that characterises Guardini’s critical judgement: these questions, posed at least seventy years ago, today show even more clearly that urgency to be re-discussed or at least raised, since they are sensibly present and unsolved problems.

In Letters from Lake Como Guardini writes: ‘The question that tormented me was this: is it still possible, in the midst of all that is happening, for a type of life to be completely centred on the nature of human being and the work of human being?’.¹ The value of such a question and of the judgements that follow from it seems to lie first and foremost in the exhortation it carries within it, namely the conviction that talking about technology, robotics or any form of tools (on which, in any case, due and decisive distinctions should be made) always means — and perhaps first — talking about human being, the world and life. In this sense, it seems no coincidence that the second part of the title of the work central to our observations, The Power, is described by Guardini as an ‘attempt at an orientation’. With a spirit of acute realism he argues and affirms that the meaning of the ideas understood or generally developed cannot and must not overlook the question of the possibility through which these ideas can be realised or even disproved: ‘What sense would it make to develop ideas and overlook the point from which those ideas can be realised or fail?’² If the starting point of Guardini’s philosophical itinerary is always the so-called ‘concrete-living’, it becomes clear in this space that these are not theories sketched out for a system, but always intended for a living reality, for a concretely verifiable possibility.

The first modality through which those ideas can find space or negation then seems to be the vehicle of education, of the formation of the person in his or her entirety. Education in political tasks, in social conscience, in the relationship with technical instruments must be able to be placed within a broader horizon than mere propaganda instructions, first and foremost within the horizon of a human position: ‘Young persons must learn to think and judge for themselves; they must acquire a healthy diffidence towards ready-made recipes […], they must assert themselves in their freedom’.³ For Guardini, the university is an expression of that horizon of meaning, in which one’s responsibility towards culture, and therefore towards progress, evolution, can begin to be realised. This is clearly a preliminary problem, a cultural problem: the need to really know what one is talking about, what one has, what one uses. To know more, not less, and at the same time to know the reason why something is capable of having such a hold that it becomes a problem. To this hypothesis, to this conclusion, the entire history of technology or in particular information technology serves as proof: spectacles, with their ever more refined optical lenses, are indeed a perfect example of an object of technical progress; however, it would be unreasonable to claim that they have ever constituted or raised an anthropological concern. It is a small example, but one that helps us recognise the need to address the problem by placing at the centre the importance of getting to know better the needs that could be defined as elementary, foundational to the person.

Embracing technology in the vital feeling

A step back in Guardini’s analysis can help shed more light on the results and perspective already mentioned. Faced with what he calls the ‘exaltation’ of scientific and technical progress (the reference here is to atomic energies), the question arises as to the possibility of an ‘order’ of these energies and powers; an order, that is to say, a place in human life and reality. From whom should such an order come and proceed? From human being himself, Guardini states, and from no-one else. This may seem obvious, but even a superficial linguistic observation shows how widespread is the habit of an impersonal, generic, superstructural use of terms that have entirely personal boundaries and origins (an example of this is the common use of the concept of ‘economy’, ‘finance’ or ‘crisis’): ‘in their place, at first at least, mechanical and formal orders take over: “organisation”. But organisation alone does not create morality’.⁴ To ask what order is to be established for power implies a previous question: whether there is and where lies the possibility of an order in human being himself, of his being able to dominate the powers that are proper to himself and to life: ‘but is human being himself ordered? […] capable of becoming all the more sovereign in vision, all the more sure in judgement, all the more prudent in pondering and ordering, the greater the energies that come to his disposal?’⁵

A pivotal term in Guardini’s philosophy is taken up here, namely that of ‘vision’, Weltanschauung, to which it also seems possible to trace the root and horizon of reflection on the relationship between human being and power, technology.

In the process of understanding nature, reality, history, and in the relationship with them, in the way human being acts on them, shaping their trace, the mysterious nexus between reason, creative capacity and action is structured. The danger (or concern) of the substitution of the machine for human being is established precisely on this nexus, bringing to light an inherent fragility of the person, the implications of which will be better described later. Leaving aside in this context the essential considerations on the technologies of the last twenty years and how they have affected the anthropological horizon, it is possible to continue along the itinerary of the problems raised by Guardini, with the aim of identifying some of the questions that — regardless of contingent evolutions — show a character of undoubted validity. Neither the advent nor the development of most instrumental, automated apparatuses seems to Guardini in itself to be able to dig the furrow of that fragility of human being mentioned earlier. The fact that the improvement of machines has — sometimes or often — in history corresponded to the need to rediscover or discover a new role for human being does not exhaust the question that in any case remains central and inescapable. This question can be summarised as follows: in what does human being’s creative capacity consist? how is it possible not to invert the relationship between creation and consumption, between worker and machine, between work in which hand and spirit cooperate and mere mass reproduction? ‘We must therefore once again approach the nature of being and ask ourselves: what is work, considered in the totality of life? what is property […]? what is obedience and how is it reconciled with freedom?’⁶

The reality that human being constructs, when it is made up of devices and numbers, objects and tools, is always a symbolic reality, which is constituted on the basis of human being’s signifying capacity and the ability, on the part of the community of men, to communicate from these signs. In this sense, there is no instrument that can take the place of this power, which therefore represents a limit and an entirely personal challenge: that of maintaining a world in place, of worrying about it and dealing with it without being exempt from it. But it must be said that these signs and these realities take on, for Guardini, very different traits in modernity: if before they found their origin in a shared religious matrix — where by ‘religious’ he means an almost cultural quality, of ‘cultural meditation’, which translates individual belonging to the totality of life —, those same realities now appear artificial, the result of an arbitrariness that threatens human beings instead of liberating them. One can then understand where the question on the relationship between human being and technology comes from. ‘From all this arises the question: what will become of human beings? Will they stand up to their own technology? Will the machine world not impose on them an existence that they will not be able to endure in the long run? Will human beings mature in a way that is ontologically adequate to their ever-expanding work? Or will they collapse under it?’⁷

These questions are therefore not about a value or an anthropomorphic aftertaste of technical instruments, but about emphasising the decisiveness of the person, his ontological constitution, the hope and expectation for the subsistence of vital roots. The whole of existence, of which the identity of the person, his life and work are part, must be judged and ordered according to their own essence, according to — we might say — their truth: ‘Thus the fundamental answer to the question we asked earlier says that human beings must recognise the full extent of their responsibility and assume it. But in order to do this, they must regain the right relationship with the truth of things, with the demands of their deepest self, and finally with God’.⁸

Mention has been made of the loss of the meditative element as the generator of a vision (and therefore of a capacity for action) aimed at the totality of existence; Guardini traces the reasons for this loss to the progressive tendency towards rationalism and activism, which have disarmed human being in the face of the logic of science and technology. This would appear contradictory, were it not clear that he traces the creative power — of consciousness and action — back to a capacity for observation and judgement, which therefore requires a contemplative experience, i.e. a space in which such a gaze is given.

The term ‘contemplative’ here has nothing to do with mysticism, but is as realistic as it is practical. It means that a quid must be introduced into the life of the modern human being, especially the human being who carries responsibility and makes decisions, which can be roughly described as follows. An authentic interiority must be established, which can counteract the externalising and dissipating tendencies of the time. The personal core must be able to experience a consolidation that enables it each time to aim, by virtue of a consciousness of truth, at stances that are stronger than those of slogans and propaganda. Leaning in there, the act that creates distance — and not only with respect to nature, but also to the environment, to the conditions of the age and society, to conventions and traditions of each species — will be able to acquire the strength capable of truly opposing and imposing itself. In this regard, one may recall that conventions in judging things of the spirit can be much more tenacious than social conventions. He will thus come to the condition of being able to see what is happening in a new way, to be able to judge it justly and to penetrate to the depths with his gaze into the apparent evidences and obviousnesses, which have crystallised everywhere.⁹

Establishing the human position in the world, starting from personal existence, is therefore tantamount to distrusting any growth of knowledge that does not coincide (or contrast) with the growth of truth, personal, collective, cultural; if human beings, with their destiny and their entire freedom, are not or cannot be on the horizon and present to those who decree technical and scientific progress, this seems to be the sign of an inevitable defeat, of a structural incompleteness. If the integrity of the conscience and the person is not erected as the foundation and criterion of progress, it is worth asking what progress is still possible to speak of: ‘What use is all the technology if human beings become ever poorer in human substance and ever weaker in their freedom?’¹⁰

Guardini plumbed the experience of his time with honesty and realism, stating that it would be a serious mistake to fall into the two perspectives, both of which are easy to assail, that usually loom up: that of regretting a glorious past in which manual and artisan labour was the mirror of a collected, integral humanity; or the other way, that of a discouraged surrender to an incommensurable development with which it is impossible to keep up and which it is impossible to oppose.

Considering the history of technology and its deviations — so much discussed today — from the point of view of human beings means first of all recognising the difficulty, on their part, of building an adequate and authentic ethos, leaving the borderline (thus crossed) between well-being and freedom, between utility and cooperation, in ambiguity. The human beings who created technology, Guardini states, did not ‘embrace it in their vital feeling’.¹¹ This evocative expression dictates the need to rethink and consider the possibility that knowledge, operativity, and ethical norms always become topical to the extent that they intersect with human being’s vital instinct, thus modifying the social structure, the cultural tradition. All that is linked to truth, to ethos as good, finds correspondence only in an inner, never outer fidelity; in a ‘vital adhesion’, in the strength of an authentic certainty. There is no place for human being other than in the becoming, that is, in the present; the ever new character of this present can and must be a challenge to reason, to the heart: ‘yet remaining sensitive, with an incorruptible heart, to all that is destructive and non-human in it. Our time is given to each one of us as a ground on which we must stand and is proposed to us as a task that we must perform’.¹²

It seems clear that the importance first entrusted to ‘vision’ finds its natural path in the exercise of freedom; just as it is true that freedom is properly expressed in action, so it is true that the sphere of action presupposes the passage into the experience of freedom, that is, of original creativity, of initiative, of respect for the encounter between self and that towards which it is directed. Technical evolution, scientific and technological progress, the extraordinariness of automation always proceeds from the concrete ordinariness of human beings’ position in the world, of their decision. Ordering this way, disposing of it with ever renewed creativity means ordering and overcoming oneself, recognising the breadth of one’s freedom and the reality of the evil towards which one turns; fighting spectacularism, ‘the mechanism of advertising’, preserving that salvific distance of gaze towards the world that educates one not to capitulate in barbarism.

The courageous task of responsibility

It therefore seems distracting to conceive and entrust technology, or instrumental power in general, with an ethical character of goodness or badness: ‘when this happens, and the question “who did this?” is not answered by an “I” or a “we”, nor by a person or a community of people, the exercise of power seems to become similar to a natural phenomenon’.¹³ One recognises in this observation the deafening echo of a lament that is as topical as ever, which tends to give the anonymity of instruments a power that is never anonymous. In the question and in the recognition of its origin and purpose lies a dizzying possibility of a relationship with reality, with history and with one’s own personal and community identity. Power acquires its meaning and direction from the concrete decision of those who exercise it; its scope, its (sometimes astonishing) range of possibilities only illuminates the scope of human freedom itself, which guarantees and allows its realisation: ‘The consciousness of power […] is an immediate expression of existence, which can turn into positive or negative form, into truth or falsehood, into what is just and what is unjust’.¹⁴

Since the exercise of power is not optional for human being, but structural and inherent at every level, there is no power that does not imply, in the action in which it is embodied, a corresponding responsibility: ‘It is always action, or at least permissiveness, and as such a human instance, a person, assumes responsibility for it. It is so even when human being does not want to assume this responsibility. Even when human affairs are so disordered or falsely ordered that a person can no longer be held responsible’.¹⁵

What we have tried to say is certainly only the beginning of a long, difficult and exciting journey that has as its protagonist each human being and the whole of life, time and history, and the possible friendship between human beings. Guardini’s lucid analysis, however, seems to provide a tireless stimulus to a path of knowledge and intelligence, of solutions that are difficult and therefore interesting. Pedagogy, philosophy and in general every form of science is called upon to take on the courageous task of a maturation, which cannot be identified with mere hypersectoralisation, which cannot only proceed towards new goals without coming back within itself and without returning to its own roots, that is to say to the always human needs from which it was born: because ‘despite all automations, the essential, that is to say the ordering of existence, must be implemented by human beings themselves’.¹⁶

It may sound strange in the face of its stupendous achievements to say that technology is from an ethical and human point of view still in its adolescent stage. It is time for it to become mature, and that means recognising its human foundations and taking responsibility for them.¹⁷

The first responsibility, in Guardini’s eyes, is for human being to acquire power over power, that is a personal and communal questioning of the value of research, of progress, of its ends. Such dominion, such questions can only be sustained by one who possesses ‘a capacity for a gaze that grasps what is happening elsewhere, while here this and that happens, and feels responsible for it’.¹⁸

The more one becomes familiar with technical instruments, technological devices, the ever growing potential of science, the more one realises and remembers that every minimal element of that mechanism, of that gear, needs to be constructed, designed, programmed. Is there in human being the same mechanical perfection, the same complexity and programming need, starting from the constitution of the body itself? Certainly there is. With one — decisive — difference: that this order can be subverted, reversed, interrupted by that extraordinary and unforeseen power that is human freedom. Reclaiming and recognising the possibility, limits and value of this freedom can find in the problem of technology a great possibility, without anything being denied or reduced.

Do every single thing as it must be done according to its truth. To act with confidence, in freedom of spirit, beyond inner and outer impediments, above selfishness, sloth, human respect, cowardice. […] This is a path that, travelled with honesty and courage, leads very far, no one knows how far, to where the things of time are decided.¹⁹