The Possible Wonders of Technology. Beyond Habermas towards Marcuse: a Critical Framework for Technological Progress

Abstract

If Heidegger is right in his reading of Western civilisation, we live in an epoch dominated by technology. This claim is not innocuous. It does not merely say that technology is an aspect, even the prevailing one, of the contemporary world. Rather, it implies that in the technological phenomenon an entire history, namely, the history of metaphysics and of the forgetfulness of Being, comes to its logical conclusion. In other terms, it says that in the technological world of late modernity culminates a historical totality and, as a result, the whole culture is penetrated by technical modes of thought.