Julie Kuhlken on the modern ἔθος.
As the early Heidegger intimates, in a world constantly deformed by
modern technology, one cannot rely on socially defined norms to identify noble
ends and the right manner of pursuing them. Moreover, ethical thinking cannot
persevere if it ignores modern technology, and only passes judgment on its
effects. A modern understanding of ethos rather must found itself precisely on a
questioning of the temporality of modern technology. As modern technology
routinizes previously deliberative activities, right repetition acts anew on the
basis of a renewed appropriation of one's concern. As modern technology
proceeds to make whole ways of life obsolete, the human good is "holding-oneself-open" (GA 18: 190/128) to a new interpretation of "genuine living," of
"genuinely putting to work his having of what he is at his disposal" (GA 18: 100/69).
From "Heidegger and Aristotle: Action, Production, and
Ethos".