Don Ihde: Heidegger’s technologies: Postphenomenological perspectives

Abstract

Heidegger’s Technologies [HT] is a very good book by one of the philosophical pioneers in technology studies. It should be read widely, both as an engaging record of the author’s own evolving tussle with Heidegger, and as a mini-history of a relatively new field. Along with Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, and a couple of others, Ihde has played a major role in defining the significance of Heidegger’s thought for philosophers of technology. His appropriation of Heidegger (and Husserl) defines a style of philosophizing about technology that has come to be widely and productively followed, not only to describe our experiences with various contemporary technologies, but to reconsider the relation between technology and science, and to address ecological issues, as well as the problem of ethics and the good life in a technoscientific era. At the same time, however, Ihde’s approach to Heidegger has left him less successful in handling wider socio-historical and ontological issues, and what he does say strikes many as too little, too late, and only ‘‘creatively’’ Heideggerian. In what follows, I will consider, apropos the book under review, some issues touching both sides of Ihde’s legacy.