The Evolution Of Modernity: From "human Beings Are Machines" To "machines Being Humans"

In modern society,people are not only under the compulsion of capital logic,but also in the program of machine system,and in the evolution of modernity.What is the evolution of modernity? How does modernity change? Where does modernity go? Th ere are different opinions.From the perspective of the four industrial revolutions,this paper explores the logical presupposition,reflection and criticism of modernity and its future direction,and profoundly explains the evolution of many elements of modernit y.In the 18 th century,Latinelli put forward that "man is a machine",which is a challen ge to God;today,some people say that "machine is man",which is a challenge to man,modernity breeds the concept of historical progress,historical integrity,natural categ ory,instrumental rationality and subjectivity in the relationship between man and mac hine,and it is also many characteristics that make people feel that they still live in the framework paradigm of modernity.A rheological history of modernity is a history of t he relationship between human beings and machines,which can not only trace back to the development of modernity,but also reflect on the antinomy of modernity,and exp lore the future purport of modernity.From a famous work of French philosopher Latrell in the 18 th century,Latrell's important work Man is a Machine set off a historical intuition of the modern industrial revolution: Westerners shifted from theology to anthropology,from the biblical story of the Middle Ages to the story of man-machine-nature of the modern industrial revolution,and behind the drive of the industrial revolution,the machine revolution announced a world outlook transformation from "man is the son of God" to "man is a machine".The first is that the origin of the British Industrial Revolution is the ontology of social existence of the origin of modernity,and the prospect of the development and construction of the British Industrial Revolution is the social material basis and production factors of the origin of modernity,covering the development and activation of "things",the transmutation and transformation of capital,the change of land factors and the formation and development of international trade,and is also the manifestation of an ontological paradigm of social existence.Second,nature is the instrumental rationality of the origin of modernity.Bacon put forward the slogan of "knowledge is power" and advocated the historical role of transforming science and technology into reality,a new concept has entered modern consciousness,the concept of power has no political significance,it is not the ability to control people,but the ability to conquer nature,the essence of "machine" is to reflect the subversion of traditional natural concepts,is the ability to change and use nature to create new things,to create new things at an unprecedented speed.In Smith's view,the development of division of labor promoted the formation and development of commercial society,"society is the market,everyone is a businessman" commercial society,the key element of commercial society is whether science and technology can be widely applied to society,which is the secret of the success of Britain's early prosperity."Man is a machine" machine worship in this period is of historical significance,it not only shows the human through the object of labor to create tools to conquer and transform nature,to bring abundant goods to human beings,but also uncovered by the theology of the natural world and human beings covered,but also human beings from the enchantment of the divine nature to the disenchantment of the mechanical concept of nature,human beings gradually pursue reason,advocating order and building system,the pursuit of a deterministic,precise and causal progress.The modern industrial revolution gestates the basic characteristics of modernity in the vision of machine worship: the first is the physical nature to activate human desire;the second is the subjectivity of human beings to achieve the separation of man and nature;the third is rationalism to pursue the scheme of certainty;the fourth is the concept of historical progress,the trend of historical development;the fifth is the historical integrity,the process of world history.Because of the excessive expansion of the tools of science and engineering and the infinite desire of human subjects,people have caused the suffering of modernity,which has also led to the diagnosis of modernity and opened a historical philosophical meditation on machine alienation.Rousseau diagnosed modernity from the perspective of science and technology and human morality,and put forward that the transition from natural person to civilized person is a historical process.Human nature is natural and tends to be good,science and technology,rational machines destroy human natural goodness and love,put on the "mask of hypocrisy" to human beings,cover up the suspicion,struggle and slavery between human beings,corrupt human soul and fighting spirit,bring punishment to human beings,dispel the national,unique and charming nature of human virtues,promote human leisure and arrogance,bring inertia to human beings,create superfluous,eventful and multi-failure of human time,and create a new era.Every step forward in scientific progress is a step down in human morality.The social state created by the "machine" invented by science and technology is thathuman beings pursue "freedom with shackles" with "mask of hypocrisy",human behavior and morality are alienated by objectified tools,human beings lose the endowment of moral goodness,rational tools are the root of alienation,and the essence of modernity is antinomy.In Hegel's view,the occurrence of the antinomy of modernity is not only reasonable,but also needs to be abandoned.The antinomy of modernity occurs in two important categories of civil society and state,that is,dealing with special interests and general interests,citizen spirit and national spirit,and historical particularity and universality.The essential feature of the modern world is indeed the separation of civil society and political society,which is not the product of spiritual self-distinction or self-activity,but the result and actual expression of the realistic relationship of modern society,sublation and abandonment of this unfortunate separation(alienation)can never be achieved through the reconciliation of speculation.In the field of microcosmic civil society,it reflects the occurrence of antinomy,such as human nature,desire,wealth,labor,division of labor and so on.In the field of macrocosmic country,it also reflects the occurrence of antinomy,such as universal spirit,universal interest,freedom,necessity and so on.Through the analysis of religious alienation,political alienation,alienated labor and surplus value theory,Marx profoundly analyzed the relationship between technology and modernity in the production of machine industry,and more profoundly the role of capital power behind technology in modernity.Capital is the essence of modernity and the inherent provisions,through the profound analysis of the category of capital,we can recognize the antagonistic and contradictory relationship between capital and labor,and thus reveal the profound pair of antinomy categories of modernity.From the criticism of the essence of modernity,Das Kapital profoundly reveals the five antagonistic relations in the inherent negativity of capital:the antagonism between capital and labor,the antagonism between privatization and socialization of capital,the antagonism between technological orientation and humanistic orientation of capital,the inherent competition and antagonism between the intersubjectivity of capital,and the antagonism between the nature of pursuing surplus and the limit of civilized development.From the perspectives of monetary history,exchange history,industrial history and world communication history,this paper profoundly reveals the historical inevitability of the development of industrial civilization in modern society and the periodic law of the outbreak of economic crisis,and at the same time clarifies that the internal tension and external competition of capital in the process of modernity must answer the opposition and unity between man and labor,man and nature,man and society,man and technology,and man and man.The second industrial revolution marked by the electric power revolution and the third industrial revolution marked by the computer information technology,Marx's criticism of modern political economy has never been interrupted,and the criticism of political economy has entered a new historical turning period.With the development of technological revolution,as an object tool-machine form has undergone new changes,people enjoy the convenience of the machine at the same time,the machine is also "acid erosion" of human survival,production and values.The first is the criticism of instrumental rationality,which takes "machine" as a tool to destroy nature wantonly and bring about a profound natural crisis;instrumental rationality quantifies and values everything,which makes people's needs unique and leads to "one-way" people;instrumental rationality purifies all facts,which leads to the "meaningless" purpose and erodes people's mind.The second is the alienation of the world outlook of "machine" : people live on the assembly line and engage in the same monotonous process every day,but they can not make mistakes in any link of the process,which makes people lose their creativity and cause people's psychological tension and depression;the alienation of consumption has changed from commodity fetishism in the sense of Marx to landscape fetishism,people's consumption behavior is no longer based on normal life needs,but the illusion of landscape creation has stimulated people's consumption desire.The form and nature of "machine" are changing,and the relationship between human and "machine" is also changing,and modernity is changing,but people's reflection and criticism of modernity has not stopped.The revolution of intellectualized science and technology has developed rapidly,and the transformation of epistemology has changed from "human is machine" to "machine is human",in the era of "machine is human",the germination of the concept of historical integrity and historical progress of modernity has injected a unique way of thinking and a value of understanding the historical process into modernity characterized by subjective rule.Because of the different development levels of modernity,the categories in the field of modernity are confronted with the following questions: whether life,consciousness and ethics are just the unique phenomena of human beings;whether division of labor,exchange and unmanned workshop arechanging the theory of labor value;whether nature continues to be conquered by human beings or is in harmony with human beings;whether capital logic is controlling human beings or benefiting human beings;whether instrumental rationality leads to the loss of purpose or the reproduction of meaning?Is the subjectivity of human being losing or consolidating? Is the theory of alienation deepening or ending? In the era of "machine is human",is modernity being consolidated or ending? This is to be constantly verified in the era of intellectualization,and to be reflected in the three choices of human future in the evolution of modernity: human being confined by intellectualized machine,human overcoming intellectualized machine and symbiosis between human and intellectualized machine.It is undeniable that "machine is man" not only brings a series of opportunities to human development,but also challenges to human destiny.The "machine is human" era has brought a series of opportunities to human development: first,the diversity,pluralism and leisure of the production process;second,the convenience,cross-space-time and subversiveness of the exchange form;third,the instantaneity,diversity and rapidity of the consumption mode;fourth,the fairness,openness and fairness of the distribution result;fifth,the transformation of human itself.High-tech can use itself as a technological means,so that human beings can use technological means to transform themselves,improve themselves,and become a new means of self-evolution."Machine is human" has also brought a series of challenges to the fate of human beings: First,the boundaries between man and machine are becoming more and more blurred.Second,machines are becoming more and more intelligent,the ability of self-control is becoming stronger and stronger,and the dependence on human beings is becoming smaller and smaller.Third,machines replace human physical labor,the future will replace human mental labor,if human once all the physical labor and mental labor are handed over to the machine,human will be really useless,and human organs will degenerate.Fourth,human dependence on the machine is getting stronger and stronger,lost the attention to nature and the external world,nature and the external world become the object of machine domination,human lost the reflection on the object.Fifth,human beings spend more and more time on smartphones and computers,and use smartphones and computers as "parts of the body" for more and more time,immersing themselves in virtual space,and losing the meaning of human communication.Sixth,human curiosity about science and technology,ignoring the bottom line of moral rules,trampling on humanlife,such as gene-editing babies,is trampling on the bottom line of human behavior,and deep-seated curiosity is a kind of power.In the field of modernity,the theoretical concepts of human,machine,society and state are changing,which also leads to the conception of future society.In the face of the change of modernity,where does the human society come from?De Ri Jin offers two schemes in The Future of Human Beings: "One is the Christian scheme,only when an autonomous gathering center finally appears at the peak of the deep unified world,can it fully arouse,maintain and release the expected consensus promoting force within the still fragmented human group in structure and function,that is,real super love,real big self.".One is the Marxist program,so that human individuals in the origin and development of human beings to see the end of the collective thinking and sympathy to a certain state,so that each individual benefits from participation,it is enough to motivate human individuals and make it determine the direction of progress.In the German and Japanese Marxist program,it can be seen that individuals enter the collective thinking and sympathy is to obtain freedom,"Everyone's free development is the condition of all people's free development.".Today,human society is in the second form of Marx's "human dependence on things",under the premise that human can not get rid of the logic of capital and technological system,but the pursuit of human historical progress,historical integrity,scientific spirit,humanistic spirit and free spirit is the common goal of human pursuit.Pessimists worry that human beings will suffer the extinction of object-oriented intelligent machines,human beings will come to an end,optimists believe that intelligent machines will lighten the burden of labor for human beings,and human beings will achieve full liberation.Nevertheless,human productivity is still developing,human society is still advancing,and the pace of human exploration of nature,the outside world and even the invention and creation of intelligent machines has not stopped.The new era of artificial intelligence empowerment,the national governance system,the harmonious coexistence between man and nature,the belt and road strategy and the Chinese plan of the community of human destiny not only guide the direction of action to achieve the deep integration of scientific spirit and humanistic spirit,but also contribute to the wisdom of the common goals pursued by mankind,and more importantly,become the "beacon" of mankind on the road to modernity.