Heidegger’s Technologies: Postphenomenological Perspectives (review)

This unusual book presents the author’s evolving interpretation of Martin Heidegger from 1979 to 2010. The introduction offers a capsule history of the field of philosophy of technology from its origins to the present day and delineates Heidegger’s place within it. Six chapters follow, for the most part in order of composition. A conclusion returns to the question of the place of Heidegger’s thought in philosophy of technology, examined through the specific example of writing technologies.

Don Ihde’s general thesis is that while Heidegger played an important role in introducing discussion of technology into philosophy, his thought is largely outdated by developments in the study of technology and by the development of technology itself. What Hans Achterhuis calls the “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology characterizes most recent work in the field. The implication is that philosophers today discuss technologies, not Technology. While not quite the whole story, Achterhuis’s point is well taken. Heidegger’s “high altitude” argument concerning the transcendental conditions of modern technology appears excessively abstract today. Furthermore, the paradigm technologies of Heidegger’s world, such as railroads and electric power, are now replaced in contemporary consciousness by new bio-and computing technologies that suggest a very different type of analysis from his. Heidegger is reduced to a historical figure by these developments.

This was not always Ihde’s view, and he is unusual in republishing early papers with which he is no longer in agreement. This admirable forth-rightness enables us to see as in a time capsule a typical case of the evolving view of Heidegger among philosophers in the field. Ihde calls this a “perspectival” procedure, and indeed it resembles the phenomenological method of varying perspectives to gain insight into the object.

Chapter 1, an early English-language appreciation of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, presents a clear exposition of Heidegger’s famous essay on technology as well as an account of the nature of technical action in Being and Time. The conclusion points out connections and differences between Heidegger’s approach to technology in his early and late work. The tone of this chapter is respectful throughout as is the next chapter, which develops Heidegger’s notion of the priority of technology over science.

The mood changes in chapter 3, “Deromanticizing Heidegger.” Ihde suggests that Heidegger’s view of modern technology is conditioned by a romanticized vision of the past. He illustrates his thesis by producing a pseudo-Heideggerian description of the Shoreham (New York) nuclear plant, modeled on Heidegger’s own description of the Parthenon. He concludes that Heidegger’s still-valid contribution, his conception of technology as “a way of seeing” the world, is overshadowed by his dubious critique of modernity.

A reevaluation of Heidegger’s claim that technology is prior to science follows. Ihde at first had believed that this claim was quite prescient and even in this critical essay he continues to credit Heidegger with at least a preliminary notion of the important concept of technoscience. However, Heidegger’s “priority” is not the real intertwining of science and technology, as revealed by serious historical and sociological study. Such study reduces Heidegger’s theory to a “shambles.”

The final chapters test Heidegger’s theory against the evolution of writing technologies. Ihde argues that Heidegger’s preference for the pen over the typewriter reveals an unacceptable arbitrariness at the basis of his approach. He concludes, “Philosophies of technology need to renew themselves constantly, just as the technologies themselves change” (p. 139).

Heidegger’s Technologies is an interesting book that aims to free philosophers to confront the reality of the technological phenomenon. The dystopian vision of a world enslaved to the machine, while a caricature of Heidegger’s views, is nevertheless perilously close to his own more sophisticated approach. As Ihde argues, we are living through a very rapid and radical transformation of technology and of the social institutions and attitudes affected by it. The significance of this transformation is missed when one adopts Heidegger’s “one...