The question concerning a vital technology
Heideggerian influences on the philosophy of Andrew Feenberg
pp. 193-215
in: Andreas Michel (ed), Critical theory and the thought of Andrew Feenberg, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
This chapter brings out the aspects of Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, early and late, that have influenced Feenberg's social phenomenology of technology. In the first part of the chapter I evaluate the influence that Heidegger's concept of the enframing (Ge-stell) exerts on Feenberg's philosophy of technology. In the second part I discuss the influence of Heidegger's early phenomenology (interpreted by Feenberg as a phenomenology of action based on the model of craftwork) on Feenberg's phenomenology of technical action. These two influences, I argue, converge in Feenberg's instrumentalization theory, later rearticulated as the functionalization theory of technology. Combining this two-tiered theory about the function and meaning of modern technical devices and production with Marcuse's call for an "aesthetic Lebenswelt" leads Feenberg to articulate a new form of rationality. This new form of rationality includes a reformation of technical design that reflects life-affirming aesthetic and political values and possibilities.
