Publication Details

Abstract

In several of his late works Martin Heidegger points to a serious problem of Western civilization, which is forced, in the world of global technological systems, to look for a new way of thinking, by means of which the humanity would achieve a proper, free relationship to our technological era. According to his analyses the modern technology is a direct fulfillment of the preceding development of philosophy in the form of metaphysics as well as the development of modern science. They both endorsed the idea of reality being only a resource at our disposal, discerned by a designing and calculating reason and needed to be measured quantitatively. For him technology is not just a means to achieve our objectives or to make our work easier, but rather a specific way of discerning things, in which they are set up and represented so as to provide what is required and expected from them. It is a way, in which technology builds up the world moving along the lines given beforehand. In discerning it technology asks questions prepared in advance, which it requires to be answered. The ambition of such discerning is to build up framings, which would function according to given orders and requirments. Heidegger argues, that a new way of thinking is needed, which would not claim any authoritative statments and whose importance would consist rather in the fullness and seriousness of the asking the questions. Such thinking calls us to approach things in humility and unobtrusiveness as opposed to manipulative control. In this sense it is a challenge to open ourselves towards that, what escapes commanding.