Thinking as a spiritual practice: a way of humanities education in the age of technology
ENIn recent decades, we have been talking more and more intensively about the impact of technology on human consciousness. We embrace technological progress. We fear technology, especially in recent times, as artificial intelligence shows such progress that the technological transhumanism program seems less and less utopian: the singularity could happen and artificial intelligence could take over human’s place on our planet... Heidegger accustomed us to perceive technology as an ontological danger to existence itself, to Dasein. But the same Heidegger also spread a certain hope throughout the world, contained in Hölderlin’s words: “But where the danger is, also grows the saving power” (Heidegger, 1954). My reflexion is an attempt to think about certain elements of these lines. Nevertheless, I find Bergson’s perspective even closer to me, that technology and the human spirit are intimately connected, that technology can be integrated into spiritual life, thereby expanding its capacities (Bergson, 2008: 283–338). This requires both technological progress and the activation of new capabilities of human consciousness. It is this activation that I would like to discuss. I would like universities to engage in this process of renewal of consciousness. Is it possible to give a new life impetus to the deep sense and understanding of humanity in the technologized world? What should humanities education be like in our universities to respond to this task? This is a difficult question. And I think about it as if I were in darkness. Nevertheless, I will make a proposition. It will not be a detailed suggestion or detailed answer about which methods must be used in teaching humanities in our universities. I will consider this question on the level of directions that we should take. I suggest the following: humanities education in the age of technology should be grounded in the conception of thinking as a spiritual practice. [Extract, p. 49].
