Because we generally regard technology as no more than a tool (albeit
one of tremendous power), we tend to believe that it is amenable to
human control. Consequently, if we live in an age of technological
excess, the fault is thought to lie only in ourselves. Since the charge
of technology-run-wild is frequent, we are often told to assert - or to
reassert - control over our tools: We must master technology.
In
opposition to this popular maxim stands Martin Heidegger. Although
barely given a hearing in the United States and England, Heidegger's
influence as a theorist of technology continues to be felt on the
European continent. He has spawned a large brood of disciples and
schools, decisively influencing the evolution of philosophy in Germany
and France, where his views about the nature of technology have been
seminal.
Heidegger claims that, in the West, technology does
not merely designate a set of tools or a mode of production: It
designates a cast of mind. The Western technological mind-set is not
new, however. It can be traced back to the very beginning of Western
philosophy, back to Plato. However, Heidegger suggests that Platonic
metaphysics only hints at a technological worldview which comes to full
flower two thousand years later in the thought of René Descartes, the
Demon King of the modern Technological Age. Descartes famously asserted
"I think therefore I am." Upon this allegedly indubitable proposition
he attempted to construct a philosophical system which would serve as
the foundation of all the sciences (of physics, for example). In
Descartes' view, tradition and faith should bow before a more potent
criterion of knowledge: "certainty." Armed with a method for achieving
certainty, the human subject will be able to decide for himself what
counts as knowledge and thus what genuinely exists. Heidegger argues
that, whatever their particular disagreements with Descartes, later
thinkers (e.g., Immanuel Kant) merely modified this central idea,
extending it to include moral and aesthetic values. In their view,
human reason - or in some cases human feeling - "creates" or "produces"
the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, beautiful and
ugly. Thus the dream of humanism, a dream harkening back to the Italian
Renaissance, finally crystallized in a form which placed the human
subject at the center of the universe. Having displaced God from the
center, mankind now banished Him from the sidelines. Soon humans
assumed God's creative role in all aspects of life: Man became God.
Access to
the full article is free, but requires you to register. Registration is
simple and quick – all we need is your name and a valid e-mail address.
We appreciate your interest in bridges.
Because we generally regard technology as no more than a tool (albeit
one of tremendous power), we tend to believe that it is amenable to
human control. Consequently, if we live in an age of technological
excess, the fault is thought to lie only in ourselves. Since the charge
of technology-run-wild is frequent, we are often told to assert - or to
reassert - control over our tools: We must master technology.