The Technical Universe in an Ontological Perspective

Abstract

The question of technology can be approached philosophically according to different perspectives: action, ethics, historicity, relationships with science or between technology and nature. The perspective which will be proposed here is the perspective of ontology, in which reality is considered from the point of view of its relation to Being. That perspective was established already at the beginning of philosophical thinking, such at least as it was constituted in the Western tradition. It gives an answer to the concern for what is radical, which animates and in some measure defines the philosophical project. The problem was to find a point of view from which a radical understanding could be developed. Now the very idea of what is radical can be understood either in the sense of what is absolutely encompassing, in the sense of totalization, or in the sense of what is thoroughly fundamental, primary, originary. But each one of those meanings links to the other: an encompassing point of view must be a principle which permits seeing things in terms of what is in them the most essential. What is most essential links them to one another most tightly and determines their common belonging to the same totality; reciprocally, a point of view which seizes things in their most essential constitution must be a principle which permits seeing them in what is their common sharing, which thereby gathers them in an encompassing view. An absolutely radical point of view, according to the two meanings of the term, must have the character of an ultimate perspective, both in the sense of an encompassing totality, which cannot be included in another one, and in the sense of a foundation which cannot be set on a more fundamental foundation. The concept of principle expresses precisely that double requirement.