I. Heidegger's Philosophy of Technology

     A. Heidegger's romantic program and its ambiguities

          1. rejection of modern mass society

          2. call for a restoration of meaning and mystery of existence

          3. Heidegger's personal naziism

               - nationalism: American, Russia and Europe (Germany)

               - racism: social not biological

               - the challenge of technology: Junger

               - in Introduction to Metaphysics in 1935 talked of "inner truth and greatness of this movement [national socialism] (namely, the encounter between global technology and modern man" (Zim, 42)

               - the Rectorship and later difficulties

          4. the later work: the turn

               - rejection of earlier voluntarism

               - call for detachment and resignation

               - emphasis on being as giving rather than active Dasein

               - history of being and critique of modernity

               - technology as essence of modern age

               - by technology is meant not machines but a technological power drive that reduces everything to plans and raw materials

               - mysterious notion of a post-technological dispensation

"We can say 'yes' to the unavoidable use of technological objects, and we can at the same time say 'no,' insofar as we do not permit them to claim us exclusively and thus to warp, confuse, and finally lay waste to our essence." (Zim, 219)

          5. no renunciation of personal naziism

               - in final Spiegel interview of 1966: "I see the task of thought to consist in helping man in general, within the limits allotted to thought, to achieve an adequate relationship to the esssence of technology. National Socialism, to be sure, moved in this direction. But those people were far too limited in their thinking to acquire an explicit relationship to what is happening today and what has been underway for three centuries." (Zim, 41)

 

     B. Technology in the History of Being

 

          1. later philosophy is essentially philosophy of technology

          2. origins of technological civilization in philosophical tradition

          3. epochal history of being

               - original dispensation to pre-Socratics

               - loss of truth in Plato and followers

               - being conceals itself in revealing

               - continual aggravation of problem till Nietzsche

               - awaiting a new dispensation                   

          4. the great shift: pre-Socratics

               - ontological categories

               - pre-Socratic "physis" as self-revealing of being

               - presencing as self-production, gathering

               - the model of traditional craft

               - truth as aletheia: self-disclosure

          5. the great shift: the tradition

               - ontic categories

               - from presencing as unfolding to distinction of essence and existence

               - from energeia (presencing-as-work) to actualitas (the end product, the finished thing due to cause)

               - from aletheia to truth as representation

          6. in sum:

               - the reduction of causes to efficient causality

               - being as actuality, the merely given

               - the subject as the underlying basis

               - the hidden will to dominate: Nietzsche

          7. technology as realization of modern nihilism

               - technology as a mode of revealing: "the essence of technology is by no means anything technological."

               - all revealing also conceals

               - the concealment of being in technology

               - revealing through enframing and methodical planning

               - the challenging of the earth

               - its transformation into raw materials and energy

               - Junger's notion of total mobilization once again

               - the human subject as pure will to power: humanism

               - "it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself."

               - but that subject is subordinate to being: destining

               - "Modern technology...is...no merely human doing."

               - the danger: 27-28

 

     C. Technology as System

 

          1. applying Heidegger

               - apparent determinism of Heidegger

               - the autonomous technology theme

               - Ellul, Illich, etc.

 

          2. science and technology

               - Heidegger's anticipation of current views

               - science as practice and power

               - questioning of scientism 

 

          3. reforming technology

               - weaknesses and strengths of Heidegger's critique

               - obvious nostalgia

               - artificiality of his notion of essence of technology

               - concepts of potentiality (earth) and abstraction (enframing)

               - gathering in traditional and modern technology

               - reabsorbing the ground into the project

               - two instrumentalizations as alternative account

              

 

          2.

               - these concepts substitute for