TECHNIC AND GUILT IN THE WORK OF KARL JASPERS

Abstract

Karl Jaspers understands technic as a sum of man’s abilities to affect and alter the surroundings in order to improve one’s position or realize some other intention. Technic is thus one of the defining factors of human history, to the extent that Jaspers defined several historical epochs according to the specifics of the technic that was emerging or was already in use in those periods. Major scientific and technological progress that took place from the eighteenth century has directly influenced the growth of human population, which, in order to be sustained, required an elaborate apparatus of mass order. This apparatus has greatly influenced the position of modern man, mostly detrimentally, uniformly equalizing him and detaching him from his historical source. Responsibility for establishing and maintaining such an order can neither be criminal nor political, but rather moral. This means that there is little point in debating how such an order came to pass, but that we are all immediately responsible for partaking in and perpetuating of this situation, as well as we are all responsible for its eventual overthrowing.