Reminder: Heidegger's 'Untimely' Critique of Technology - lecture

The CEU Philosophy Department cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Robert Scharff (University of New Hampshire) on Heidegger's 'Untimely' Critique of Technology Tuesday, 20 January, 2009, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412 ABSTRACT Heidegger’s treatment of technology is undoubtedly and fundamentally critical from beginning to end. About the hegemony and increasingly global reach of technoscientific understanding, he is deeply “distressed.” Yet his critics are wrong to conclude that Heidegger’s criticisms are overdrawn-that he suffers from anti-technoscientific bias or terminal pessimism. Objections of this sort typically misread Heidegger’s aims and selectively read his texts. His critique of technology is, in fact, “untimely” in Nietzsche’s sense. It says what people do not want to hear, precisely when they need to hear it. Hence, the standard objections to Heidegger’s critique are best viewed as the sign of a widespread contemporary tendency-a tendency found even among allegedly post-positivist and phenomenological writers about technoscience-to overestimate the degree to which we have left behind a Comtean, or classical positivist understanding of our age. Kriszta Biber Department Coordinator Philosophy Department Tel: 36-1-327-3806 Fax: 36-1-327-3072 E-mail: biberk(a)ceu.hu