From Finitude to Mastery: Heidegger on Technology and Being-towards-Transcendence
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Contemporary technological development, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and transhumanist enhancement, has renewed philosophical concerns regarding the relationship between human existence and technological power. While Heidegger’s critique of technology is often interpreted as a warning against the domination of machines, its deeper significance lies in the ontological conditions that shape how beings are disclosed within the modern age. This article aims to reinterpret Heidegger’s analysis of technology by examining the ontological foundations of technological civilization. It investigates the relationship between Heidegger’s concept of Gestell (enframing), the disclosure of beings as Bestand (standing-reserve), and the human tendency to transcend finitude through expanding forms of control. The study further explores the significance of Heidegger’s statement, “Only a god can save us,” within the context of contemporary technological acceleration. The article employs a phenomenological and hermeneutic methodology grounded in Heidegger’s analyses of Being, finitude, anxiety, and technology. Through conceptual interpretation, it develops the notion of Being-towards-transcendence as a complementary existential orientation to Being-towards-death and examines its implications for understanding modern technological projects. The analysis argues that the primary danger of technology does not reside in technological artifacts themselves but in the dominance of a mode of revealing through which beings appear primarily as resources for calculation, prediction, and optimization. It proposes that Being-towards-transcendence emerges from Dasein projective structure and its tendency to seek stabilization in response to anxiety and finitude. Consequently, contemporary projects of enhancement, redesign, and life extension appear not as deviations from human existence but as intensified expressions of an underlying ontological tendency. The study also demonstrates that Heidegger’s notion of salvation cannot be reduced to technical, political, or ethical reform because the crisis concerns the historical disclosure of Being itself. The article concludes that the challenge posed by technological civilization is fundamentally ontological rather than merely technological. The possibility of another beginning depends not upon further technological mastery but upon cultivating alternative modes of disclosure grounded in dwelling, poetic openness, and receptivity to what cannot be engineered or controlled.
Article Details
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
References
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. Sage.
Blattner, W. D. (1999). Heidegger’s temporal idealism. Cambridge University Press.
Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the character of contemporary life: A philosophical inquiry. University of Chicago Press.
Bostrom, N. (2003). Human genetic enhancements: A transhumanist perspective. Journal of Value Inquiry, 37, 493-506. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:INQU.0000019037.67783.d5
Bostrom, N. (2005). The fable of the dragon tyrant. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31, 273-277. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.009035
Bostrom, N., & Sandberg, A. (2009). Cognitive enhancement: Methods, ethics, regulatory challenges. Science and Engineering Ethics, 15, 311-341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9142-5
Clausen, J. (2011). Conceptual and ethical issues with brain-hardware interfaces. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 24(6), 495-501. https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0b013e32834bb8ca
Coller, B. S. (2019). Ethics of Human Genome Editing. Annual review of medicine, 70, 289-305. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-med-112717-094629
Davenport, T. H., & Kirby, J. (2016). Only humans need apply: Winners and losers in the age of smart machines. Harper Business.
De Grey, A. D. N. J., & Rae, M. (2007). Ending aging: The rejuvenation breakthroughs that could reverse human aging in our lifetime. St. Martin’s Press.
Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. MIT Press.
Floridi, L. (2014). The fourth revolution: How the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford University Press.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: Vol. 1. An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Pantheon.
Fukuyama, F. (2003). Our posthuman future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution. Frofile Books.
Guignon, C. (2004). On being authentic. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203646793
Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought. Harper & Row.
Heidegger, M. (1976). Only a god can save us: The Spiegel interview (1966). In W. Richardson (Ed.), Heidegger: The man and the thinker (pp. 45-67). Precedent Publishing.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays. Garland Publishing, Inc.
Heidegger, M. (1991). Nietzsche. Vol. 3 & 4: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Nihilism. HarperCollins.
Heidegger, M. (2002). On time and being. University of Chicago Press.
Helbing, D. (2013). Globally networked risks and how to respond. Nature, 497(7447), 51-59. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12047
Jarrahi, M. H. (2018). Artificial intelligence and the future of work: Human-AI symbiosis in organizational decision making. Business Horizons, 61(4), 577-586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2018.03.007
Jonas, H. (1984). The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age. University of Chicago Press.
López-Otín, C., Blasco, M. A., Partridge, L., Serrano, M., & Kroemer, G. (2013). The hallmarks of aging. Cell, 153(6), 1194-1217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.039
Perrow, C. (1984). Normal accidents: Living with high-risk technologies. Basic Books.
Sandel, M. J. (2007). The case against perfection: Ethics in the age of genetic engineering. Harvard University Press.
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House Publishing Group.
Thomson, I. (2005). Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomson, I. D. (2011). Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolpaw, J., & Wolpaw, E. W. (Eds.). (2012). Brain-computer interfaces: Principles and practice. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388855.001.0001
Young, J. (2002). Heidegger’s later philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Zimmerman, M. E. (1990). Heidegger’s confrontation with modernity: Technology, politics, art. Indiana University Press.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.