Page 259 - Contribution To Phenomenology

252 DON IHDE

On the other hand, and particularly with the European early
philosophical critics of technology—sometimes heralded as the forefathers
of "philosophy of technology"—there also emerged in the second genera-
tion, a kind of dystopian tendency to see in technoscience the signs of
the very "end" of the Greco-European traditions of metaphysics. The first
generation of Technikphilosophie, occured with the neo-Hegelians. Ernst
Kapp first used the term (1877), but Kapp was overshadowed by Karl
Marx, who related technologies to modes of production and introduced
the notion that technologies change social structure. But in the period
between the World Wars, technology again re-emerged as a theme with
Friedrich Dessauer and Martin Heidegger in the late twenties. Then,
again, immediately after WW II, in a "second generation," the dystopian
themes began in earnest. Here I refer to such thinkers as Ortega y
Gassett, Nicolas Berdyaev, pre-eminently Martin Heidegger, and, later,
Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Ellul.
Their critiques, not unlike the metaphysical traditions which they
analyse, are variations on a theme. They saw, in the rise of technologi-
cal culture, a threat to some deep aspect of European culture in its highest
values, Ortega saw the emergence of a "mass man," Berdyaev a loss of
"spirituahty and community," Heidegger saw "calculative thinking" and all
as "standing reserve," Marcuse saw "one-dimensionaUty," and Ellul the
replacement of "nature" with "technique." To phrase it succinctly: modern
technology was seen to be acidic to traditional or "deep" culture.
There were two other generic features to these critiques which I
should like to note: (a) all were "high altitude" critiques, perhaps best
exemplified by Heidegger's interpretation of "Technology" as itself an
"applied" metaphysics, which would be also the "end" of metaphysics, and
(b) all were internalist critiques. Whatever the fate, or negativity, which
clung to "Technology," it was seen as internal to the history of European
thought. Other cultures played no role in any of these critiques—with the
exception of an often muted or indirect critique of "America" as an
exemplification of both high technology and "popular culture."
Were one to take a socio-anthropological view of this tradition, it
might be possible to characterize it as itself highly "Eurocentric." Its
perspective was that of the highest altitude "theory"—metaphysical. Its
proponents were intellectual mandarins, cast in the mold of the magis-
terial professoriat. And—^with Heidegger sometimes adding workshop and
peasant romanticism—they were elitists regarding "high culture."