Technology – Page 2 – The Modern Frame

Education: Instrumentality and Specialization

Education in the West has taken many forms throughout history. Like philosophy, its genesis can be traced to ancient Greece, where the first schools of thought were recorded. The first rival conceptions of education–such as those advanced by the ancient sophists, Isocrates, and Plato¹–are in many ways mirrored in modernity, albeit in very different circumstances. Beginning in Greece we find tension with respect to education, which concerns the debate between theoretical and practical forms of higher learning, i.e., between disinterested truth and application or utility. Of course, there is an academic history of this thought, the aggregate of which has come to be known as the philosophy of education. It is not my intention, however, to explore the history of this thought here. It is rather to contrast the varying forms of higher education as they have existed across history in the West in terms of two specifics: instrumentality and specialization. Most important to this comparison will be the question of telos, that is, what is and what has been the goal or purpose of education? What is its raison d’être?

A Sketch of The Workaday World

We live in an age of work for work’s sake, of production, acquisition, and consumption, of income and expenses, GDP and unemployment percentages. Production, acquisition, and consumption have come to be the definitive organizing principles of our lives, conceived–or rather, lived out–as ends in themselves.¹ This provides modern man with what the Greek’s called telos–an end or purpose–and thus structures our lives in a specific way. The tasks of income, wealth, and its management become our primary concerns, and within this Economic sphere, efficiency likewise becomes an end in itself. This situation is unprecedented in history.²

The Instrumental Stance: Analysis and Contrast

The instrumental stance describes the unique approach of homo sapiens to view things as instruments–or means–to achieve some end or goal.¹ Here we will further explore this phenomenon in terms of the role it has played in the rise of civilization, the structure of the rationality it embodies, and its contrast with the non-instrumental.

Three Spheres of Influence

There are many aspects of the world we inhabit which affect us in different ways. Those which yield the most power, and thereby affect us the most, I will refer to as “spheres” or spheres of influence. They describe specific aspects of our world, the investigation of which may help us come to a better understanding of our contemporary situation. Many of the essays published on The Modern Frame will refer to these spheres of influence (e.g., “a growing sphere of economy”).

A General Overview

The modern contemporary world has its own characteristic understandings, paradigms,¹ and circumstances. We think in terms of the ideas that modernity has thrust upon us, and most of us have no choice in the matter because we do so without knowing it. The ideas and ways of understanding the world and ourselves that are unique to our time in the West is what I call “the modern frame”.