The Reign of Technocracy
The End of the Human Being?
In this young decade of the third millennium we are finally beginning to see the true face of technology. How we can prepare and give human responses to the coming tidal waves and tempests upon us is the focus of this course.
“An anarchy of catastrophes is upon us.” Martin Heidegger
Central Question
This Masterclass presents the full scope of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. This philosophy cannot be divided from his attempts to articulate ways of poetic existence within the currently and only seemingly prevalent technocratic-scientific framework.
We focus on pivotal essays by Heidegger where he lays out his understanding of the technological age as an epoch of objectification and making-available and operable. But we also consider the thinking of the Ereignis (event) in order to appreciate the true scope of his thought on technology.
In addition, we also focus on those essays in which Heidegger presents ways of wholesome dwelling and community-building possible within the overarching seeming exclusivity of the dominant technological will to power. Appreciating our own and the mortality of our peers is pivotal in this regard.
We can appreciate the true meaning and scope of Heidegger’s pondering about technology also only when we retranslate core terms from the German anew so that his true thought begins to shine forth in English as well.
This course is for anyone who wants to understand our digital-technological future and how we can remain human.
"Only A God Can Save Us Now!"
Heidegger’s Spiegel Interview, published shortly after his death, is as widely known and notorious as its true scope remained concealed.
Yet, today we are urgently being necessitated, coerced even to see what has been announcing itself for long: The total technocratic rule and domination of the human being and his world.
This "world" is now a global interwoven network of nodes and which as such is precisely what rules, organises, reorganises, shapes, structures, leads, drives and steers the world. Simply put, the planet itself becomes a cybernetic system. But who or what steers it?
It is in this interview that Heidegger proclaimed:
“Only a god can save us now!”
But who or what is Heidegger's god?
How could this god save us?
How can we be human through the digito-technocratic catastrophe?
How can we establish a free relationship with technology?
Texts We Will Read
All by Martin Heidegger:
- “The Question Concerning Technology”
- “The Age of the World Picture”
- Heraclitus Seminar with Eugen Fink
- “The Thing”
- Excerpts from the Black Notebooks
- “Building Dwelling Thinking”
- “What are Poets for…?”
- "Overcoming Metaphysics"
Full Course Curriculum
- Introduction (14:29)
- Lecture 1: The Question Concerning Technology (188:06)
- Lecture 2: The Loss of Nearness/The Danger and The Thing (189:06)
- Lecture 3: The Cybernetic World Picture (227:57)
- Lecture 4: Technocracy and the Reign of Enframing (205:39)
- Lecture 5: Poetic Existence and Communities of Mortals (261:02)
- Proseminar Recording (216:50)
Your Teacher:
Johannes Achill Niederhauser, Ph.D.
I hold a PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick.
I have been teaching internationally at Birkbeck College London, the University of Warwick, and the University of Bucharest. For more than two years now I have been building my own online philosophy Academy.
In 2021 Springer published my book on Heidegger on Death and Being. I have given more than twenty talks on Heidegger at international conferences and have published several articles on Heidegger, i.a., in the Hegel Bulletin and the International Yearbook of Hermeneutics.
