Despite significant social and enormous technological and scientific progress, modern man has fallen into a dystopian state of spiritual, ideological, and moral confusion, as well as experiential ambiguity and contradiction regarding his own achievements.

In this book—while paying tribute to all those who have worked tirelessly over time for the advancement of knowledge and the true prosperity of humanity —the author attempts, with objectivity and a sense of responsibility, to explore this contemporary, globally dystopian situation. His intention is to detect and highlight, even if only minimally, certain pathogenic factors which, if they continue to exist, will lead us, instead of to the desired path of our essential prosperity, to our ultimate self-destruction.

Focusing on European culture—which for centuries has had a decisive influence on world history through its authoritarian colonialism – but also more generally on Western European culture, as it has historically influenced and continues to influence internationally, albeit to a lesser extent, it identifies and sheds light on some of the many root causes of our contemporary planetary dystopia. In this context, he highlights the historically, epistemologically, scientifically, and particularly virtue-ologically established discourse of Greek, mainly classical antiquity, which philosophically leads to what is claimed to be a virtue-ological and essentialist epistemology.

He proposes as a solution the convergence of knowledge and ethics, since science and technology are not responsible for every malpractice and destruction, but rather the eclipse of human moral and intellectual virtues.

● Ioannis N. Markopoulos is Professor of Technology and Philosophy of Technoscience at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.