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6 - Towards a Bright Mountain: Laudato Si’ and the Critique of Technology

from Part II - The Philosophy and Methodology of Laudato Si’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2019

Frank Pasquale
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Summary

Throughout Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality, Laudato Si’, he repeatedly directs his critical attention towards technology. From the Internet connected gadgets that provide people with streams of distractions to the air conditioners that keep people from recognizing that the world is heating, Pope Francis casts technological forces as playing a major role in exacerbating the very problems that propelled him to pen this encyclical. Yet in offering such criticisms Pope Francis’s encyclical should not be seen as an iconoclastic document, but instead deserves to be seen as part of a long tradition of critiques of technology. This chapter seeks to place Laudato Si’ into conversation with the work and thought of past critics of technology, such as Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul, in order to demonstrate the ways in which Pope Francis is advancing the critique of technology in the twenty-first century.
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Chapter
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Care for the World
Laudato Si' and Catholic Social Thought in an Era of Climate Crisis
, pp. 108 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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