ABSTRACT
In Greek mythology Prometheus plays the important role of bringing the technical arts to humans in the form of fire. Dr. Albert Anderson revisits this story from Plato’s Protagoras in a paper titled “Why Prometheus Suffers: Technology and the Ecological Crises”1 and finds important parallels between the story of Prometheus and our contemporary concerns with ecological crises and sustainability. In the myth the Titans Epimetheus and Prometheus (Epimetheus means “afterthought” and Prometheus means “forethought”) are given the task of distributing the means of survival to each living creature. Epimetheus asks Prometheus that he be allowed to do it, and, with Prometheus’s agreement, he proceeds. Under Epimetheus some creatures were given speed, some strength or cunning, and others flight. When Prometheus returns to see how it is going, he discovers that Epimetheus is finished but that there is nothing left to give to humans. He observes the humans’ discomfort; hungry, cold, and defenseless, he pities them. So Prometheus steals fire from Olympus and with it the technical arts for humans. With these gifts, so Plato tell us, we acquired the ability to know things, to build, to engineer, and to use letters that allow us to “hold all things in memory.” These gifts, though, are not distributed equally among all people, so some are skilled at trade work, others with smithing, others at war.
