Deconstructing the technocratic paradigm. Anthropological implications and educational keys from the thought of pope Francis, Guardini and Heidegger

Abstract

Transhumanism, big data, robotization, digitalization, social networks, biotechnology are phenomena that demonstrate the immense power of technology and its ambivalence, since it both serves to improve people’s quality of life and can turn against man himself, causing environmental problems, injustices, exploitation and
inequality. As the cause of these problems, Pope Francis points to the “technocratic paradigm” a dominant way of thinking that considers progress for progress’s sake as an end in itself and the key to solving social problems and deploys technology as a tool of possession and dominion considering nature and man himself as exploitation material. This work aims to conceptualize this paradigm and highlight its dominant and absolute character; analyze its development in the pontifical magisterium until Francisco showing its continuity; derive its anthropological implications in dialogue with authors such as R. Guardini and M. Heidegger, highlighting how it modifies the value of the person, how it reduces reason to mathematical reason, closing knowledge to other fields of knowledge, how it replaces the ethical criteria of goodness and justice for those of utility and efficiency and how it breaks the balance of man’s relationships with God, with himself, with others and with nature. Finally, relying on personalist authors, it offers some educational keys to change the paradigm, since it is necessary to decode it to teach today’s man to master the power of technology and put it at the service of the person and the common good.