Reforestation+in+the+Philosophy+classroom

We propose an activity designed for students of “Education for Citizenship”, “Ethical and Civic Education” and “Philosophy and Citizenship”. With this aim that the students know the thoughts of the thinkers of the Frankfurt School and Martin Heidegger on what they understood as the primary root of the current environmental problem. As we shall advance to the ecological question is not only for those philosophers the sample of our selfish domain of nature, but one of the most striking faces of the twisted path that Western society has taken from the Modern Age. One way to take that bet on a way of conceiving reality based on the techno-scientific thought (forgetting everything that exceeds the thinking in terms of utility) and that has led inexorably to modern industrial and dehumanized societies. To illustrate his philosophical view on this subject the students will view the film called “The Village” by M. Night Shyamalan, and fill in a questionnaire about it. **__ THE __****__ FRANKFURT __** **__ SCHOOL __**
 * PHILOSOPHICAL VIDEOFORUM: **
 * THE VILLAGE (M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN). **
 * ESCAPING FROM THE TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION **
 * __ INTRODUCTION __**

Human beings make use of reason (scientific knowledge) to better understand the universe and improve our conditions of life. However, in the Modern Age, especially since the Enlightenment, Western civilization, according to its most prominent philosophers (Descartes, Kant, ...) made this project an emancipatory ideal. Modern man thought that using the ratio would reach the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity, affirmation of the individual, democracy, progress without end ... But in the twentieth century, many thinkers argue that the achievements of modernity have involved too high a price that modernization and progress have behaved effects, against both the man and the environment. They realized that a technological innovation is not just an added tool at our disposal, but it involves a transformation of our society, our lives and even our ways. Thinkers of the Frankfurt school came to the conclusion that the unrest came the crisis of reason enlightened and power acquired by instrumental reason. Instrumental reason is the belief reality exclusively in terms of means-ends: the rational is real and the useful, which serves a purpose. It is true that the reason of the Enlightenment sought to emancipate man from the minority and claimed establish a social order in which it was possible to develop the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity. According to these thinkers these aspirations have failed. And that failure has occurred precisely because the Western civilization that valued reason, human reason has forgotten the original unity of man with nature and has been away from her master. Western civilization has used the right to dominate and bring nature. However, this domination of nature through instrumental reason has become dominion over ourselves. The current industrial society, repressive, consumerist, limiting creativity .... is merely the inevitable point of arrival of a way of conceiving the real reason and that everything conceived as a means to an end. No wonder the man has become an instrument. But we are no objective means to properly human (dignity, freedom, equality, fraternity, ...) but for the continuation of a system that dehumanized life no one knows where it leads. A system of life that traps us all equally regardless of whether it is mere laborer or manager of a multinational. We are all pieces in a giant mechanism that no one leads. So, why the man instrumental in becoming master and master of nature, filled with countless material goods, but simultaneously dehumanizes him and dominates him. The imperialism of instrumental reason, thinking and calculating and pragmatic, has weakened the meditative and reflective thinking, that leads us to establish personal identity, rooted in nature and social meaning.

As we can see these thinkers to the technological issue is deeper than the problems discussed regularly (negative influence on the environment, the possibility that science and technology become factors of inequality and oppression, seeking views on the limits of research and application of knowledge, tecnodependencia, ...). For them, the root of all these conflicts is an error in our original culture to believe that there is only one way of conceiving things, to think that reality is an instrument to our service. This has not only ended affecting the environment, has also dehumanised people's lives, we become instruments of a big machine that no one can now control.


 * __ MARTIN HEIDEGGER __**

From a very similar point of view a German philosopher called Martin Heidegger argued that the metaphysics (philosophical discipline that proposes a notion of reality), namely the modern metaphysics has made an interpretation of reality as an object capable of being manipulated. Thus, the technique is the representation of the world that has led to the metaphysical interpretation and is established as the fundamental fact of the modern world. The technique is presented as real, obscuring any sense of reality and defining it as anything that can be planned and subject to calculation, as an instrument capable of performance. In this sense the technique is because it sets the metaphysical world of image and set the way things appear. Thus, the most immediate danger to which the technique leads us not only to environmental destruction, but in total submission man. As things are now ready to order objects according to their potential uses, the technical configuration of the world extends its attempt to control the man.

Heidegger perceived the technical omnipotence of thought tends to expel any other way of thinking. Therefore saw no more humane solution to this crisis that a return to pre-industrial ways of life or pre. This thinker longed to return to the rural world in which men have less power, but living a life more human.
 * __

THE VILLAGE __** To illustrate these considerations (the desire to leave a prosperous life, but dehumanised) suggest viewing the film by M. Night Shyamalan called “The Village”. __ Factsheet __

Title: The Village Genre: Thriller Director: M. Night Shyamalan Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones Photo: Roger DEAKINS Music: James Newton Howard Editor: Christopher Tellefsen Source: United States (2004) Duration: 108 minutes

__ Synopsis __ The film puts us in a village inhabited by a society similar to that of the first pilgrims who traveled to North America. The villagers live in harmony in an idyllic setting. However, this community lives with the frightening knowledge that a number of creatures living in the forest that surrounds them ( "those who we do not speak"). So frightening is its "presence" that no one dares to venture beyond the forest. Despite the advice of their elders, a curious and determined Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) has a burning desire to go beyond the limits of the village. The village leader, Edward Walker (William Hurt) warns Lucius of the danger that exists in the outskirts, and Lucius' mother, Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver) advises you to stay at home and forget the greed and desires that exist in the world outside. The strength of character is matched only by Lucius Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), a beautiful and fascinating young blind woman with an unusual wisdom beyond her age. Lucius and the mischievous Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a young retarded, admire Ivy passionately, though in the heart of it there is only one place: Lucius. This will lead to a situation in which the viewer discovers the true origin of this society. __ Questionnaire __ 1. Which is the real origin of the community portrayed in the movie?, who and why do they found her? 2. What events make be doubted by them to some of the members of this community of if the decision to continue in it is guessed right? 3. What objective has the presence of the creatures of the forest in this society? 4. How you would describe the life in this society (technology, morality, religion, freedoms, politics, army...)? 5. Argue your opinion: the solution seems to you to be coherent that the founders of it is a community they took?, do you agree with them?