This paper provides a phenomenological interpretation of technological and natural childbirth. By using Heidegger’s ontology of technology to think about childbirth I argue that these two types of contemporary childbirth present us with a false dilemma as both reflect the same norms Heidegger associates with modernity, namely order, control, and efficiency. The paper briefly explains Heidegger’s concept of the enframing as the essence of the technological age whilefocusing on how it helps us to avoid falling into a technophilic or technophobic (...) trap. Although the technophobic approach popularized by Lamaze gained some favor with feminists who saw the increased use of reproductive technology as an extension of patriarchal control over women’s bodies, I argue that this natural birthing technique incorporated order and control in ways that are similar to its technophilic counterpart. In order to move beyond what I call the reproductiveenframing, it is necessary to recognize the false dilemma presented by the technological and natural alternatives. (shrink)

If we are to understand the premises at the core of debates regarding the philosophy of technology, as in the works of several prominent figures such as Marcuse, Ellul, and Habermas, we must confront Heidegger's philosophical legacy. Based on a broad overview of early and later Heidegger, and some of his notable followers, we argue that Heidegger's philosophy of technology created a problematic intellectual legacy. This resulted not only from his well-known political involvement with the Nazi regime but arguably from (...) the philosophical structure that enables such political views to be grounded in his thought. We argue that Heidegger's understanding of technology as possessing an essence [Wesen], which arises from his interpretation of metaphysics as onto-theology, continues to serve as the point of departure for technological discourse. This article traces the infrastructure of ‘Heideggerian Intellectualism’ that accepts the totality of technology as a form of thinking and yet entails multiple fluctuations regarding how we are coerced to engage with metaphysics, making it difficult to evaluate its contributions or limits. In the framework of the rapid technological changes underway at present and the concerns regarding them, there is a tendency to once again delve into Heidegger's thought on this matter. This article attempts to demonstrate that such a tendency also entails a certain degree of danger. (shrink)

Marc Van den Bosche suggests that Heidegger’s conceptions of Gestell and Gelassenheit, taken together with his analysis of Nietzschean Nihilism, depicts our era in a way that “supplements” Andrew Feenberg and Don Ihde’s work. Weaving these sources together, he sees the possibility of our becoming “technicians” that “live, in a released way, within the groundless.” Here, I raise some questions about whether the author has really fitted all these sources together and argue that his idea of becoming post-modern “technicians” appears (...) to require that we first practice a very un-Heideggerian kind of “renunciation.”. (shrink)

This article argues that the strengths and problems of Shawn Loht's Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience (2017) are rooted in its method, which derives from a specific interpretation of Heidegger's existential analytic and from the critical strategy implemented by Heidegger – and thus later adopted by his readers and applied to various disciplinary domains – in his polemical engagement with the history of philosophy. Central to this method is what I refer to as the ontic-ontological (...) schema, and the article maps out the ways in which it operates in Loht's book: how it shapes his critical intervention into film studies and his claims about film ontology and spectatorship. My argument is that the ontic-ontological schema, while allowing the author to make interesting inroads into debates in film-philosophy, nonetheless undermines the coherence and efficacy of his claims about the cinematic experience as well as his attempts to mobilize these claims in the analysis of specific films. That is, Loht's disciplinary application of the ontic-ontological schema makes for a compelling discursive polemic, but it also exposes a crucial conceptual incompatibility in the work's configuration of and navigation between ontology, aesthetics, and criticism. (shrink)

This article seeks to demonstrate the importance of the philosophical work of Mary O'Brien. It does so by showing how O'Brien's work counters Heidegger's strict differentiation between the ancient Greek metaphysics of presence and modern technological thinking. O'Brien's ideas indicate two critical lacunae in Heidegger's interpretation of the ancient Greeks: the latter's attempt to secure paternity and their overlooking of birth as a form of unconcealment. According to O'Brien, the way in which we understand and experience human reproduction influences both (...) our sense of self and our sense of continuity. According to Heidegger, the way in which things are brought forth or unconcealed is fundamental to our being-in-the-world. Neither O'Brien nor Heidegger lived to see the current advancements in reproductive technology, but both would consider them significant and meaningful beyond their social, political, and even ethical implications. Furthermore, recent reproductive technology draws attention to birth as revealing—although as increasingly Enframed. Rapid changes in reproduction may reveal Enframing as Enframing, and also show that technology is not something that we can simply master. But for this to occur, we must take into account the radical critique and rethinking of Heidegger's philosophy implied by O'Brien's thought. (shrink)

Many attempts of contemporary philosophers to reduce ‘mind’ to ‘body’ notwithstanding, where the ‘body’ is understood in the Cartesian framework, the continental philosophers in general repeatedly remind us that body has a significance that goes beyond its materiality as a bio-chemical physical substance. In “questioning body,” we wish to take up the philosophical underpinnings of the significance of body as a framework or tool to understand ‘technology’. By doing so, we are able to see the link between technology and body (...) as more than a fortuitous relation. Relying on the writings of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ihde, the paper attempts to show how a “sense of body,” particularly the notion of “agentive body” as distinguished from the “symbolic body,” hermeneutically evolves from the way in which it is entangled in the technological matrix. (shrink)