Book
Heidegger on Technology
This collection offers the first comprehensive and definitive account of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. It does so through a detailed analysis of canonical texts and recently published primary sources on two crucial concepts in Heidegger’s later thought: Gelassenheit and Gestell. Gelassenheit, translated as ‘releasement’, and Gestell, often translated as ‘enframing’, stand as opposing ideas in Heidegger’s work whereby the meditative thinking of Gelassenheit counters the dangers of our technological framing of the world in Gestell. After opening with a scholarly overview of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology as a whole, this volume focuses on important Heideggerian critiques of science, technology, and modern industrialized society as well as Heidegger’s belief that transformations in our thought processes enable us to resist the restrictive domain of modern techno-scientific practice. Key themes discussed in this collection include: the history, development, and defining features of modern technology; the relationship between scientific theories and their technological instantiations; the nature of human agency and the essence of education in the age of technology; and the ethical, political, and environmental impact of our current techno-scientific customs. This volume also addresses the connection between Heidegger’s critique of technology and his involvement with the Nazis. Finally, and with contributions from a number of renowned Heidegger scholars, the original essays in this collection will be of great interest to students of Philosophy, Technology Studies, the History of Science, Critical Theory, Environmental Studies, Education, Sociology, and Political Theory.
We live in a world where technology reaches into every aspect of our lives. Technological devices are with us from the minute we wake up until the moment we fall asleep. We trade digital information with a host of individuals at a rate that was inconceivable just a generation ago. Contemporary health researchers and technology experts have begun to identify the symptoms of technology fatigue: a form of anxiety that results from always being available and from the need to constantly engage with our technology. Yet despite the impact technology has on our daily life, relatively little philosophical reflection has gone into explaining what draws us into technology’s embrace.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) turned his attention to the framework in which technological devices are understood. Heidegger was one of the most important thinkers of the 20thcentury and his philosophy of technology is based on the relation between two key concepts: Gestell and Gelassenheit. Gestellis often translated as “enframing” or “positionality” and it indicates the way we frame, position, and ultimately reduce the world to resources for production and consumption. Specifically,Gestell refers to our tendency to make everything, including ourselves, a resource ready to be called on in the service of a technological system. According to Heidegger, reducing the world to readily available resources is dangerous because it undermines our creative engagement with reality, alienates us from ourselves and each other, and leads to the destruction of our habitat. The antidote to this condition is: Gelassenheit. Gelassenheitis translated as “releasement” or “equanimity” and it refers to a disposition that blocks us from imposing our will on things and thus opens us up to alternative ways of relating to reality. In short, Gestell and Gelassenheit stand as opposing ideas in Heidegger’s analysis of technology whereby the releasement characteristic of Gelassenheit counters the dangers of our technological framing of the world via Gestell.
Although there are several important books that address Gestelland Gelassenheit when discussing other themes in Heidegger’s work, this volume offers the first comprehensive and definitive account of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. It does so by collecting essays from leading Heidegger scholars on key aspects of Heidegger’s thought on techno-science. Some of the central themes addressed in this collection include: the history, development, and defining features of modern technology; the relationship between scientific theories and their technological instantiations; the nature of human agency and the essence of education in the age of technology; and the ethical, political, and environmental impact of our current techno-scientific customs. Of course, presenting a complete account of a book’s content is beyond the scope of any introduction. However, in Section 1 we explain our scholarly aims and practical ambitions in putting together this volume. In Section 2, we describe the development of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology from his early phenomenological work to his later essays on the essence of technology. In Section 3, we offer a slightly more detailed account of Gestell and Gelassenheit. Finally, in Section 4 we provide a short summary of the seventeen essays collected here.
Martin Heidegger is arguably the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century. He was also a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party. Debate over the relation between Heidegger’s thought and his political engagement has raged since Heidegger officially joined the Nazis in 1933. However, the recent publication of Heidegger’s private notebooks offers scholars new and detailed insight into Heidegger’s intellectual development and political commitments in the interwar period. In this essay, I examine Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis in light of the philosophical account of Western history (Seinsgeschichte) that Heidegger introduces in his 1927 edition of Being and Time, develops in his notebooks and other writings from the 1930s, and finalizes in his lectures on technology in the 1940s. Specifically, I start with a summary of Heidegger’s stated aim in Being and Time, namely, to “raise anew the question of the meaning of being” through a “phenomenological deconstruction of the history of ontology” (BT1/19, 39/63).I then demonstrate that Heidegger’s early enthusiasm for National Socialism was partially based on his belief that the Nazis represented a radical break from the Western tradition that begins with Greek metaphysics and culminates in the environmental degradation and human dislocation in our modern, technologically driven societies. From here, I show that Heidegger came to realize that, far from a break with Western history, National Socialism represented the apotheosis of modern technology. At this point, I also explain how Heidegger’s later critique of technology develops out of his disillusionment with the Nazis, and so amounts to an implicit and occasionally explicit critique of National Socialism. Finally, I object to Heidegger’s philosophical account of the Western tradition by pointing out that his focus on the general trends of history overlooks the concrete suffering of individual human beings, but then I illustrate how this criticism is addressed by one of Heidegger’s most influential students: Emmanuel Levinas.
The Informational paradigm of discourse to the XXIst century is replaced by communicative; due to the spread of the Internet, new features and models of communication based on the subject-to-subject concept of hypertext are formed. Tekstogennost’ as a set of anthropogenically-technical factors of generation, transmission, exchange texts of public communication, leading to the formation and operation of new types of vehicles and generators of information in all spheres of life, which have an impact on them, becomes the essential characteristic of socio-economic discourse. The role of the professional communication support (PR, mass media) of all processes becomes more essential. Thus, the textual, philological, humanitarian dimension determines the effectiveness of social development.
For the last 5 years the market of intellectual capital has dramatically decreased, the graduating students’ knowledge quality steadily decreases and the ambitions for the fee increase. This article describes the application of currently most promising methods of (1) network (graph) theory, (2) data mining and (3) subject-oriented approach to business process modelling for creating and automation of innovative process and therefore for maximization of ROI (return on investments) in universities intellectual and social capital. Descried approach represents the High School activity as the knowledge-made process, reveals students, capable of innovation activity for their further deep study of innovation practice, transfers the moment of novation forming with further discussion the possibility of novation realization as an innovation into the educational process, develops maximum person-independent procedures of innovation work groups forming and expert communities for evaluation of both novations and innovation budgets. The given research was held in a frame of the contract № 13.G25.31.0096 with the Ministry for Education and Science of Russian Federation «Creation of hi-tech manufacture of unstructured information processing in cross-platform system on the open-source software basis in order to increase management efficiency of innovative activity of enterprises in modern Russia».
In many organizations implementation of innovation is initiated by the management with application of so-cold “top-down” approach: strategic targets and key success factors with the initiatives of its achieving are formed and consolidated in different regulations, procedures, rules and instructions, which are brought to concrete employees later. The feedback from employees is occurred on the fact of initiative execution in form of corrective procedures locally, but the forming of innovation is still the top-management prerogative.
Such centric approach is mostly demotivating approach for initiative employees, who generate, implement and use innovation ideas. For this problem correction hybrid methods are used. The creation of special department inside the company is supposed to be done. It bears duties of innovation catalyst (usually R&D and HR departments have this role). Among other things this department is responsible for inspiration of average executive on development of innovation, determination and consolidation of corporate values and standards of behavior. In the end, the employees orientation on single corporate targets, the increase of corporate spirit would again “top-down” imposed and the department is just the retransmitter of values that are determined by the management.
How should the politics of relations between colleagues, clients and partners be naturally created and how to establish the awareness by the company employees of their personal responsibility and their personal role in corporate values realization, creation of innovation atmosphere inside the organization that does not resist the innovation? The approach, which is described in this article, supposes the forming of distributed network inside the organization with the transfer to it the general effort in the sphere of creating innovations and implementing the corporate ethics principals.
The article is based on the introductory part of the collection on “Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches” (2009). The author presents a brief review of concepts that have been lately employed in research on material or technological culture. He attempts to show that different disciplines do in fact use adjacent notions and concepts in thinking about materiality, and tries to delineate ways of bringing the different research traditions to a unified platform that could serve as a theoretical foundation for the complex materialistic study of technological culture.
This volume focuses on innovative approaches to teaching foreign language courses offered to non-language degree students. It includes essays related to the innovative use of ICTs, new developments in methodology, approaches to course and materials design, and the contribution of language theory to foreign language teaching. As the book brings together researchers and practitioners working in a variety of contexts, it provides detailed insight into ways the same challenges are dealt with in different educational environments.