Disciplines

Continental Philosophy | Rhetoric | Science and Technology Studies

Abstract

A discussion of Heidegger's analysis of the essence of modern technology as a version of what Heidegger names Nietzsche's highest will to power read together with Heidegger's understanding of Nietzsche's statement of the nihilism of our day. It is argued that Heidegger's philosophic questioning of technology is inevitably foreclosed by his stylized, hermetic reading of Nietzsche's expression of the will to power. Thus it is necessary to read Heidegger's critique of technology in the light of rather than against Nietzsche's critique of science and culture. This entails a reading of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche against Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche. But to say this is also to say that we must learn to read Heidegger. Reading Heidegger against Heidegger, as Michael Theunissen observes, is not merely a necessary preservative against, as Juergen Habermas contends, Heidegger's damning political convictions, but the condition sine qua non of a genuine Auseinandersetzung with Heidegger.

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