A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and ...

Latour is a world famous and widely published French sociologist who has written with great eloquence and perception about the relationship between people, science, and technology. He is also closely associated with the school of thought known as Actor Network Theory. In this book he sets out for the first time in one place his own ideas about Actor Network Theory and its relevance to management and organization theory.

Martin Heidegger is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century: viewed by some as a charlatan; as a leader and central figure to many philosophers. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, 'Being and Time', and its major themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. This is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-century existentialist philosopher.

"... Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." —Science Books & Films "Don Ihde is a pleasure to read.... The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work... the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." —John Compton "A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies.... perhaps the best single (...) volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." —Choice "... important and challenging... " —Review of Metaphysics "... a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition... The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." —Teaching Philosophy The role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book. (shrink)

He adds, "I show my worries to be less about the loss of subjects or authors, than I do about (there) not being bodies or perceivers". The book has two parts.

Ihde's book breaks new ground and... makes an important debate accessible." —Robert Ackermann Instrumental Realism has three principal aims: to advocate a "praxis-perception" approach to the philosophy of science; to explore ways in which ...

' Speaking out of Turn : Martin Heidegger and die Kehre ' examines the difference between Heidegger's own understanding of 'the turning' and that understanding which originated with Karl Lowith and was later presented to English-speaking readers by William Richardson in Martin Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought . The study focuses on Heidegger's own introduction to Richardson's book, and argues that, far from confirming Richardson's view that there is a 'Heidegger I' and 'Heidegger II' connected by the 'reversal' or turning, (...) Heidegger sought to indicate with (sometimes indirect) reference to his own works that the 'turning' is a movement in thought that it was part of the original project of Being and Time to carry through, but which he only succeeded in describing much later. The study attempts to illustrate this by a close examination of the works to which Heidegger alludes in his Foreword to Richardson's book. Many of these were not available when Richardson published (1963), and so it has only more recently been possible to amplify Heidegger's earlier published works with reference to his lecture courses. The study concludes that the horizon of time and the analytic of Dasein never really disappear from his later thinking, as many have claimed, and proposes that the relationship between the earlier and later Heidegger be re-examined. This re-examination takes the form of accepting that far from the 'turning' representing a fracture, where Heidegger abandons the existential-temporal analytic of Dasein in favour of an attempt to think only being ( das Sein ) as such, the 'turning' represents the point of unity in Heidegger's work. This point of unity shows how Dasein and being 'belong together' in 'the event' ( das Ereignis ). (shrink)

The question concerning technology.--The turning.--The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead."--The age of the world picture.--Science and reflection.

Volume 18 of Martin Heidegger's collected works presents his important 1924 Marburg lectures which anticipate much of the revolutionary thinking that he subsequently articulated in Being and Time. Here are the seeds of the ideas that would become Heidegger's unique phenomenology. Heidegger interprets Aristotle's Rhetoric and looks closely at the Greek notion of pathos. These lectures offer special insight into the development of his concepts of care and concern, being-at-hand, being-in-the-world, and attunement, which were later elaborated in Being and Time. (...) Available in English for the first time, they make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of technology, in particular mediation theory, has largely neglected language and has paid little attention to the social-linguistic environment in which technologies are used. In order to reintroduce and strengthen these two missing aspects we turn towards Ricoeur’s narrative theory. We argue that technologies have a narrative capacity: not only do humans make sense of technologies by means of narratives but technologies themselves co-constitute narratives and our understanding of these narratives by configuring characters and events in a meaningful (...) temporal whole. We propose a hermeneutic framework that enables us to categorise and interpret technologies according to two hermeneutic distinctions. Firstly, we consider the extent to which technologies close in on the paradigm of the written text by assessing their capacity to actively configure characters and events into a meaningful whole; thereby introducing a linguistic aspect in the theory of technological mediation. Secondly, we consider the extent to which technologieshave the capacity to abstract from the public narrative time of actual characters and events by constructing quasi-characters and quasi-events, thereby introducing the social in our conception of technological mediation. This leads us to the outlines of a theory of narrative technologies that revolves around four hermeneutic categories. In order to show the merits of this theory, we discuss the categories by analysing paradigmatic examples of narrative technologies: the bridge, the hydroelectric power plant, video games, and electronic money. (shrink)

In philosophy of emerging media, several scholars have insisted on the fact that the “new” of new technologies does not have much to do with communication, but rather with the exponential growth of recording. In this paper, instead, the thesis advanced is that digital technologies do not concern memory, but imagination, and more precisely, what philosophers from Kant onwards have called productive imagination. In this paper, however, the main reference will not be Kant, but Paul Ricoeur, who explicitly refers to (...) the Kantian productive imagination in his works, but also offered an externalized, semioticized, and historicized interpretation of it. The article is developed in three steps. In the first section, it deals with Ricoeur’s theory of narrative, based on the notions of mimesis and mythos. In the second section, it is first argued that human imagination is always-already extended. Second, it will be shown how mimesis and mythos are precisely the way software works. In the third section, the specificity of big data is introduced. Big data is the promise of giving our actions and existences a meaning that we are incapable of perceiving, for lack of sensibility and understanding. Scholars have used the Foucauldian concepts of panopticon and confession for describing the human condition in the digital age. In the conclusion, it is argued that big data makes any form of disclosure unnecessary. Big data is an ensemble of technological artifacts, methods, techniques, practices, institutions, and forms of knowledge aiming at taking over the way someone narratively accounts for himself or herself before the others. Hence, another Foucauldian notion is representative of this age: the parrhesia, to speak candidly, and to take a risk in speaking the truth, insofar as such a possibility is anesthetized. (shrink)

In this extraordinary introduction to the study of the philosophy of technology, Andrew Feenberg argues that techonological design is central to the social and political structure of modern societies. Environmentalism, information technology, and medical advances testify to technology's crucial importance. In his lucid and engaging style, Feenberg shows that technology is the medium of daily life. Every major technical changes reverberates at countless levels: economic, political, and cultural. If we continue to see the social and technical domains as being seperate, (...) then we are essentially denying an integral part of our existence, and our place in a democratic society. Questioning Tecchnology convinces us that it is vital that we learn more about technology the better to live with it and to manage it. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory, (...) which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger’s questioning of technology as belonging to “classical philosophy of technology,” postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Heidegger is now widely recognized as one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the twentieth century, yet much of his later philosophy remains shrouded in confusion and controversy. Restoring Heidegger's understanding of metaphysics as 'ontotheology' to its rightful place at the center of his later thought, this book demonstrates the depth and significance of his controversial critique of technology, his appalling misadventure with Nazism, his prescient critique of the university, and his important philosophical suggestions for the future of (...) higher education. It will be required reading for those seeking to understand the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and National Socialism, as well as the continuing relevance of his work. (shrink)

_Interprets Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Aristotle’s philosophy._.

Paul Ricoeur has been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of the century. Oneself as Another, the clearest account of his "philosophical ethics," substantiates this position and lays the groundwork for a metaphysics of morals.

At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves, with beings formed by nature. This distinction persisted until Marx, who conceived of the possibility of an evolution of the technical object. This philosophy developed while industrialisation was in the process of overthrowing the contemporary order of social organisation, which highlighted technology's new place in philosophical enquiry. Bernard Stiegler goes back to the beginning of Western philosophy and revises (...) the Aristotelian assessment, developing a complex argument whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinctive temporality and dynamic of its own. The author engages the ideas of Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger, the paleo-ontologist Leroi-Gourhan, the anthropologists Vernant and Detienne, the sociologists Weber and Habermas, and the systems analysts Maturana and Varela. (shrink)

My paper shows how the concept of phronesis was the basis of Gadamer’s thought, right from the beginning. In fact, the problem of the development of Aristotle’s thought, and his outdistance of Plato and in his critique of the doctrine of ideas, takes place because of this concept. I would also refer to the first review of Jäger’s book which is not set out on the discussion of the development of aristotelian Metaphysics on the basis of the doctrine of ideas, (...) but on the basis of the critique of Good, of the True and the Right. Aristotle develops it in his First Book about Nicomachean Ethics and basically on the basis of the critique of the unity of knowing and acting, which constituted the central core of Plato’s ethics. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Conversation On A Country Path About Thinking deals with the concept of Gelassenheit experienced as the essence of thinking, a thinking that is not intended as representing, as self-determining thinking, but is conceptualized as “meditative thinking.” Meditative thinking is the kind of thinking that thinks the truth of being, that belongs to being and listens to it. To understand Gelassenheit as the essence of thinking means to have a different and more radical insight into the essence of who (...) we are. The aim of this paper is to investigate what Heidegger means by Gelassenheit, but not proposing an answer to a “what is” question. This paper is instead an attempt to enact a thinking transformation that through a close reading of Heidegger’s work will lead us on that path towards Gelassenheit, on which a different understanding of man’s innermost being can be glimpsed. (shrink)

This clear and concise book investigates the relation between materiality and the subject in Marxism, (post-)structuralism, and material semiotics. It introduces the three approaches in an accessible way and serves as an introduction to different kinds of materialism and theories of the subject. For each approach, the modalities of materiality of the respective materialism are defined and the relationship between these multiple materialities and the subject are presented as specific to the theoretical approaches discussed. Beetz argues for a non-reductionist materialism, (...) which conceives of materiality as more than matter or matter in motion. In such a materialism the subject is seen as an effect of material conditions, relations, processes, and practices. He shows how the constitution and decentering of the subject is conceptualized in the approaches presented and highlights the role of material instances in these processes. (shrink)

Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology, the contemporary American generation addresses (...) concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (shrink)

Critically engages the work of the philosopher Don Ihde.

During the past decade, the “script” concept, indicating how technologies prescribe human actions, has acquired a central place in STS. Until now, the concept has mainly functioned in descriptive settings. This article will deploy it in a normative setting. When technologies coshape human actions, they give material answers to the ethical question of how to act. This implies that engineers are doing “ethics by other means”: they materialize morality. The article will explore the implications of this insight for engineering ethics. (...) It first augments the script concept by developing the notion of technological mediation. After this, it investigates how the concept of mediation could be made fruitful for design ethics. It discusses how the ambition to design behaviorinfluencing technologies raises moral questions itself and elaborates two methods for anticipating technological mediation in the design process: performing mediation analyses and using an augmented version of constructive technology assessment. (shrink)

Contemporary scientific research and public policy are not in agreement over what should be done to address the dangers that result from the drop in driving performance that occurs as a driver talks on a cellular phone. One response to this threat to traffic safety has been the banning in a number of countries and some states in the USA of handheld cell phone use while driving. However, research shows that the use of hands-free phones (such as headsets and dashboard-mounted (...) speakers) also accompanies a drop, leading some to recommend regulation of both kinds of mobile phones. In what follows, I draw out the accounts of the driving impairment associated with phone use implicit in research and policy and develop an alternative account grounded in philosophical considerations. Building on work in a school of thought called postphenomenology, I review and expand concepts useful for articulating human bodily and perceptual relations to technology. By applying these ideas to the case of driving while talking on the phone, I offer an account of the drop in driving performance which focuses on the embodied relationships users develop with the car and the phone, and I consider implications for research and policy. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme of (...) a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

In recent years several approaches—philosophical, sociological, psychological—have been developed to come to grips with our profoundly technologically mediated world. However, notwithstanding the vast merit of each, they illuminate only certain aspects of technological mediation. This paper is a preliminary attempt at a philosophical reflection on technological mediation as such—deploying the concepts of ‘transparency’ and ‘opacity’ as heuristic instruments. Hence, we locate a ‘theory of transparency’ within several theoretical frameworks—respectively classic phenomenology, media theory, Actor Network Theory, postphenomenology, several ethnographical, psychological, and (...) sociological perspectives, and finally, the Critical Theory of Technology. Subsequently, we render a general, systematic overview of these theories, thereby conjecturing what a broad analysis of technological mediation in and of itself might look like—finding, at last, an essential contradiction between transparency of ‘use’ and transparency of social origins and effects. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Conversation On A Country Path About Thinking deals with the concept ofGelassenheit experienced as the essence of thinking, a thinking that is not intended as representing, asself-determining thinking, but is conceptualized as “meditative thinking.” Meditative thinking is thekind of thinking that thinks the truth of being, that belongs to being and listens to it. To understandGelassenheit as the essence of thinking means to have a different and more radical insight into theessence of who we are. The aim of (...) this paper is to investigate what Heidegger means by Gelassenheit,but not proposing an answer to a “what is” question. This paper is instead an attempt to enact a thinkingtransformation that through a close reading of Heidegger’s work will lead us on that path towardsGelassenheit, on which a different understanding of man’s innermost being can be glimpsed. (shrink)